Superfast Cymru - Job Done?

According to the BBC Story Here The "Superfast Cymru" project will be completed by the end of this month. I can think of several locations locally where FTTP works appear to be only partially complete.

I'm wondering if they are being a little hasty in declaring "job done" when more than one Village locally has partial completion with poles erected and fibre ducts put in place but no connections made - along with areas like that served by Cabinet 4 on Pembroke exchange which is pretty much surrounded by FTTC but has no VDSL due to the distance from the PCP that serves it, again some new poles have arrived but have sat in place for more than 6 months with no further progress.

I'm sure these are not the only examples - I feel sure the situation is being fudged and that in reality, completion is still some way off.

In reply to a post by warweezil:

I'm wondering if they are being a little hasty in declaring "job done" when more than one Village locally has partial completion with poles erected and fibre ducts put in place but no connections made

...

I'm sure these are not the only examples - I feel sure the situation is being fudged and that in reality, completion is still some way off.

Nope its like that in London as well, we have all the FTTP hardware installed hand have had it since 2011 - 2012 and currently only one home on our hardware can get it, and BT / Openreach says the hardware isn't live, however it is due to that one home has it and is in fact using FTTP.

The way I see it BT takes the tax payers money to install fibre and just refuses to allow the homes on that said hardware order fibre, and when said people provide proof that its all completed and is live, BT / Openreach just stop responding.

Paul

BT takes the tax payers money to install fibre

Not that that is true in your case since no BDUK funding was involved, nevertheless a most unsatisfactory state of affairs all round.

The website superfast-cymru.com/where-and-when

now takes you to http://gov.wales/topics/science-and-technology/digit... and you can check availability by clicking "Step 2 > Check Availability" on the left hand side.


My very small exchange area (Rhos) has had no upgrades yet and is delayed for up to 12 months (June 2017) so NOT JOB DONE.

I think they are referring to having 96% of wales connected to FTTC/P not 100%

So you and others are gonna be in that 4%. Someone has to be!

I hoped my post would be pretty clear that the areas I referred to are known to be in the plan, some works have been executed under this funding but not completed. There is no commercial roll out here - Across Pembrokeshire any roll out is a BDUK project. I believe the nearest Commercial roll out is Llanelli, some 50 miles away.

Waterston is on the plan, The infrastructure works that have been carried out are easily visible - and incomplete. Waterston residents and businesses - there are a couple of Business parks there all very frustrated at being on (on a good day) Circa1Mbps connections - have been told that "Superfast is coming" to them. I think that Rhos may be (I'm sure I read somewhere that it was confirmed to be on the plan) but I have no certain knowledge about that exchange.

Pembroke PCP4 was confirmed (by Mr S among others I seem to recall) back last year as awaiting FTTP. This is probably due to the fact that despite being on the closest side of town to the exchange at Pembroke Dock, due to a lack of capacity at the time - the development (late 60s) was connected to a quite distant PCP which I believe is sited between the 2 towns at the junction of Ferry Lane/Pembroke Road/Buttermilk Close/ Bush Hill.

New posts have appeared with a new chamber constructed at the base of the one at the bottom of Bush Hill. the same coils of conduit/cable are visible at the top of the posts that we see in Waterston.

If they are now considered to be "in the 4%" then money has been wasted on erecting unused infrastructure - AND people misled.

I note that this morning - the Superfarce line checker is not working, the whole Superfast Cymru web presence has been a waste of money seeming to be nothing more than a channel for rehashing PR Puff. There has never been much hard information there. I wonder how many people the money wasted on that could have connected?

Edited by deleted (Mon 27-Jun-16 12:17:04)

If they are now considered to be "in the 4%" then money has been wasted on erecting unused infrastructure - AND people misled

That would depend if there was any underspend and/or claw back to go beyond the original target

Surely claw back and under-spend wouldn't relate to works scheduled and started a year ago? Waterston is a long delayed phase due to many collapsed ducts -ironically this may be the result of the business parks. PCP4 was discussed here a long time ago where I believe MR Saffron checked and found that it was planned to be an FTTP area within the FTTC rollout that was completing at the time. This would suggest it was planned and budgeted in the program at the time, not to be a later addition.

Money has been spent, hardware is in place and standing idle. If this publicly funded work has been wasted and the public misled then heads need to roll.

Could just have moved on with extra cabs which are easier to get the coverage figures ,then come back to complete the more difficult/ slower to build FTTP later. At the end if the day, if they hit the coverage target and have money left for another 1 or 2% it doesn't matter where the coverage is, it's just a numbers game.
AIUI, no payment is made on a scheme until it is complete.

Edited by deleted (Mon 27-Jun-16 13:15:46)

I like many am frustrated by the opaque nature of this spend. Little information has been provided, which has then changed without any accountability.

In my locality fibre conduit is hanging in coils from new poles that were set last summer. In recent months there have been lots of roadworks and miles of new ducting dug to reach outlying villages but I don't think they've been attached back to the exchange.

It seems as though the the superfast-cymru website has just had a global reset applied with "FTTP likely June 2017" thrown on there as a place holder. Similar wholescale changes have been applied to previous availability checkers going right back to the days of 21CN updates for ADSL.

It would be nice to think that the over-provision of unconnected infrastructure will just be there "ready and waiting", but the reality is more likely to be that we've paid for an incomplete build and will have to pay again in months/years/decades to re-think, re-plan, re-schedule, likely scrap the half-complete schemes and re-pay to finish off. Unless BT & their subcontractors are *really* busy this week.

Communication has always been a problem with Superfast-Cyrmu, the FTTP message originally told us that FTTP was in scope but they couldn't provide stage by stage updates due to the process it took but that they had a beta test in progress which would provide further information. That beta test turned out to be telling everyone that they should have FTTP by June 2017.

I don't blame the people responding to my requests for further information as I'm sure they're just relaying what they've been told, though I have noticed that the two lines of communication I had with them, Twitter and Facebook have both been closed in the last few weeks without a replacement, at a guess I'd say they'll hold onto the 'available by the end of June 2017' message, at which point Superfast-Cymru will cease to exist and BT Openreach will wipe their hands of the whole thing...

It is probably wise to draw a distinction between the original coverage target being reached, from the phase 1 work being completed, which could extend actual coverage beyond the target. And to keep that separate from phase 2.

I tend to think of the percentage figures as nice targets for publicity.

However, the detailed contract requires BT to "pass" a certain number of properties each phase, following their detailed speed templates, and allowing substitutions when a cabinet area gets delayed.

It is quite plausible to reach "job done" by the detailed contract, without appearing to in publicity terms, and while leaving some work ongoing. And, of course, any "long delays" at this stage are bound to cause things to be substituted into a phase 2, if not abandoned.

BT has publicised the risk of engineering challenges, so abandonment isn't impossible; the public have never been misled on this. BT only get the money for those they do pass within contract terms, so they won't, of course, be getting any public money for those pieces of abandoned work. No public waste involved - that's all part of the risk taken by BT.

Dont lose heart!

Waterston has finally gone live, and yesterday there was a contractors van parked next to the new chamber and pole at Bush Hill Pembroke, the van was liveried as a fibre contractor, so maybe the people on PCP4 are finally going to catch up with the rest of the area.

Don't worry, I'm sure something will be done eventually (ribble did say so)http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4483715-fib...
We were one of the last exchanges in Wales to get ADSL (July 2007) and no upgrades since.

It's difficult to express the sense of frustration felt in rural communities, especially like ours that have coils of fibre tubing on every other lamppost with little yellow badges nailed to them indicating fibre ahead, for whom fibre has always been a distant promise that stands little chance of being fulfilled.

SFC/Openreach appear to have picked the low hanging fruit to get their stats up but ultimately making little difference to access. My parents, like many in their street, have had VM fibre for years as part of their package and have absolutely no intention of having a BT line installed just to be able to get FTTC broadband. Didn't stop Openreach putting in new cabs just to be able to say that those homes have been "passed".

For us, it just feels like we've been lied to right from the start, with each query being answered that anyone who read SFC's facebook page and twitter feed regularly would know was subterfuge.

Shortly before SFC withdrew from social media, I was advised that we'd have FTTP by the end of the summer 2016. Now the checker says 2017. I'll bet come end of 2017, I'll still be scraping by on 2meg if the weather conditions are good and [censored] all when the wind rattles the line through the trees for the 3 miles from the exchange to here.

The coils of fibre are for FTTP. Which means your parents couldn't get FTTC even if they put a "BT" line in.

What new cabs have been put in?

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 26-Jul-16 18:16:05)

Am seeing more of the Welsh FTTP getting done and the majority of the rest is showing as in build phase on the Openreach checkers, i.e. less secret than in the past, so they might be still reaching for the 4% (80,000 target) but it takes longer to do FTTP.

The coils are near me, not them.

Any chance of an update on Llandovery Cab 2, SA200YW?

Alas nothing other than in its build, but will say it is a very large FTTP area, so it is likely that some areas will go live before others.

In some area large areas it is the business heavy postcodes that have been done first, but that is an observation not a hard and fast rule.

Thanks for checking.

In that case you should have made a clearer post.

what made you think my parents, with VM, were rural?

Anyone know why SFC have changed the way you can talk to them?

They no longer communicate with the public via social media and their email account and website is now a few pages on the gov.wales domain with reduced amount of info.

The title of this thread...to coin a phrase

they think it's all over..........

I can see the BBC has removed?? the news article linked to in the first post....strange


Ian

Edited by ian007jen (Sat 30-Jul-16 08:49:03)

Strange indeed.

My friends in Waterston both have dates for FTTP installations, they will finally have speeds above 1 Mbps!

But still no news for those at Whitehall drive/avenue, Pembroke (PCP4?) waiting for fibre services, they are stuck in a no mans land surrounded by FTTC, with the feeds to the town running in ducting that passes the end of their road.

That must be very frustrating for them. There was a contractors van at the new pole and chamber at the bottom of Bush hill and the rolls of "cable" have gone from the top of the pole but nothing else seems to have happened.

Seeing a fair bit of FTTP in the wait/build stages, but also keep finding chunks going live, so it looks to be a case of they will get there eventually.

No idea why the BBC article is now gone, very rare for that to happen.

Thanks for the update. I will pass that on to my friends in that area.

I am looking forward to seeing an FTTP installation, Ive only seen photos so far, but on the 9th my employer and his father both have installations being done so I will be seeing it as it happens.

We had the exterior works guy turn up yesterday but due to a wide load being moved in the street to the LNG plant opposite which meant there was a parking ban along the entire road, and the need for a platform - the junction is above a street light mounted on the pole and apparently they are not allowed to work on that from a ladder - they cancelled the job.

I hope they don't clash with the next wide load coming in - we haven't been told which day that will be so we cant help them avoid it.

I emailed the BBC when that article first appeared and said that it was incorrectly suggesting that the Superfast Cymru project would be completed by the end of July 2016. I never got a response but note that the BBC removed it from their website a few days later. I also referred the article to Superfast Cymru and they agreed that it had caused a degree of confusion but confirmed that the project had been extended until end of June 2017. Just a case of poor journalism it would seem.

I'm hoping they still respond via email to specific enquiries, added both email address as recipients as i wasn't sure the [email protected] one was still being used.

Haven't received an automated acknowledgment like I used to, will have to wait and see.

Up until mid-June 2016 I sent any email enquiries to [email protected]. However, following their recent reorganization, I then received this email from them on 24 June 2016:
The team in Welsh Government will continue to deal with enquires and you can contact them using this address:
[email protected]
Please be assured that it's only the Marketing side of the business that is coming to an end, the roll out of fibre will continue!

In response to a recent email enquiry I made about the confusing BBC article mentioned in this topic, I received a reply from this email address: [email protected] � Martin Rodgers, Superfast Cymru Team
A subsequent email enquiry to [email protected] generated the following automated response: This mailbox is no longer in use. Please forward your request to [email protected]
Then, when forwarding my email to that address another automated response was received, this time to say that it was not recognised.

I subsequently discovered that the correct address is: [email protected] but this seems to be only the Welsh Government�s General First Point of Contact Centre.

It�s a complete shambles and I too have also have not received the usual automated acknowledgement.

I reckon the correct email enquiry address for superfast broadband is now: [email protected] . It�s also the one that was in use before Superfast Cymru came into existence.

The Superfast Cymru contract included £1.7 million for BT to provide marketing & publicity activities including management of Superfast Cymru web site, Twitter & Facebook sites. The original contract end date was June 2016 so it seems that it was budgeted for this end date. The Welsh Government Investment in Next Generation Broadband Infrastructure (www.assembly.wales/laid%20documents/cr-ld10444/cr-ld10444-e.pdf) makes interesting reading and highlights the WG inadequacies to hold BT accountable for the shambolic deployment of this contract.
Work in my locality started December 2013 with many cancelled completion dates. The only information we now have is the generic June 2017. So much for Job Done.

My main criticism of Superfast Cymru (�SFC�) is in dealing with enquiries. Their remit seems only to extend to giving out basic information on specific roll outs using �template response formats�. It�s possible that BT�s apparent reluctance to allow SFC to provide more detailed information, particularly on FTTP deployments, may be due to (i) commercial sensitivity matters or, more probably, (ii) not wishing to raise expectations in case planned works do not eventually transpire. What�s very frustrating is seeing initial FTTP completion dates being continually extended without any reason being given. It�s easy for SFC to hide behind the fact that FTTP is more complex and takes longer to roll out, but it would help if they could provide a more realistic indication when build out would definitely begin or explain why it has been delayed yet again.

The provision of accurate and timely information for residents was one of the key issues raised by my Welsh AM in a meeting with BT�s Director for Wales and other senior representatives in January 2016. Following that meeting, SFC indicated in February 2016 that the �Where & When� checker on its website would be revamped (hopefully by the end of March 2016) to provide progress updates for planned FTTP deployments similar to what it already did for FTTC ones. However, such a feature is yet to be introduced but no one in the SFC team, or its apparent successor (NextGenerationBroadband), is able to confirm whether or not it is to be implemented despite the fact that its website is in a �BETA in Testing� mode.

It�s no surprise that the more difficult/slower to build FTTP areas would be addressed towards the end of the SFC project. Some planned FTTP deployments, initially scheduled for completion by end of June 2016, have now been moved to the second roll out phase with an anticipated vague completion date �by the end of June 2017, although it might be sooner�. The continued use of standard phrases such as �Currently in Scope�; �Currently in our Plans�, �In some instances our FTTP plans change� etc. does not guarantee that those still waiting will eventually get access to a superfast broadband connection.

Finally got a response, it actually came from the [email protected] (First Point of Contact Centre) so maybe they accept the emails from NextGenbroadb email address - once they accepted the email I got a automated acknowledgement.

Looks like the deployment completion date is now pushed back towards Christmas, so back to waiting.

Will add a foot note to our item covering that news.

Believe that BDUK Wales in terms of hitting its announced footprint is at 97% (translates into 93% once you expand to areas not announced) and we know of more FTTP on the way that would add perhaps another 1%.

I�ve just got a response from [email protected] which was also copied to [email protected]

Re my ongoing enquiries to establish when the �Where & When� checker on their website would be revamped to provide progress updates for planned FTTP deployments (refer second para of my posting on 1 August 2016), I finally got this response from them today:

�It is still our aspiration for the Fibre Journey on the website Where and When checker to be updated with FTTP data. However, we are currently working with BT to determine if this is possible so we are not able to give a definitive answer on this yet�.

Odds on it won�t happen.