New AIO Cabinet goes live then delay ........

The much awaited new AIO cabinet NEWICK 9 went live for orders for 24hrs or so, according to the BT Wholesale ADSL Checker. Now the checker has changed giving a WBC Availability Date 17.01.2017 Any thoughts why BT would be putting it this halt, the cabinet has the silver lock on it and the fans are turning.

Filled up on Day 1 perhaps. Now needs another line card. They aren't fully populated at Day 1.

No, it's a new AIO, it's got a 96 port VDSL card in it but has only got 70 odd copper pairs running through it, so this is on Cabinet that should never run out of capacity!

Think they are 48 ports cards and usually are commissioned with 1 card

Thanks Witchunt, the Openreach contractors who installed the cab gave me the 96 number but I've no reason to doubt your number either. Regardless there is no way that 60% of the households served by this cabinet pounced on day one! Still can't figure why BT have stopped orders, as far as I can see no one managed to place an order as the ISP's database seem to lag behind the BT Wholesale one.

Problems with line cards?

Probably wasn't ready and shouldn't have shown as available

Witchunt, yes you're probably right. Odd though that it's all powered up but two months before they are taking orders. The BT Openreach can I get fibre says that its "Accepting Orders" whereas the Wholesale checker says that it isn't till 17th Jan, so there is screw up somewhere either technical or admin!

In reply to a post by plankton:

Witchunt, yes you're probably right. Odd though that it's all powered up but two months before they are taking orders. The BT Openreach can I get fibre says that its "Accepting Orders" whereas the Wholesale checker says that it isn't till 17th Jan, so there is screw up somewhere either technical or admin!

I think your looking at the wrong information.

I bet its saying that your exchange is accepting orders and not your cabinet and or your address.

Paul

In reply to a post by plankton:

Witchunt, yes you're probably right. Odd though that it's all powered up but two months before they are taking orders. The BT Openreach can I get fibre says that it's "Accepting Orders" whereas the Wholesale checker says that it isn't till 17th Jan, so there is screw up somewhere either technical or admin!

I've had a similar experience with my AIO cabinet.

The cabinet was activated over a month ago, and the Openreach checker said our cabinet was accepting orders and that we could order a fibre service now.

The BT Wholesale checker didn't show any services as available however.

Recently, the checkers have updated to say a service will be available from November 29th, so I'm assuming that's the planned date for the live-to-live migration.

While the OR checker says you can order a service, what does it show for technology? I've found that the database isn't set up to deal with AIO's that are live, but not yet migrated. While the journey status shows as accepting orders, the official cabinet status is enabledarea.

Exchange name: Wylam
Exchange status: Fibre enabled
Cabinet number: 7
Technology: -

That's what ours shows when it's at the enabledarea status. Using a phone number is actually saying FTTC is available now (which is right, because BT are now accepting orders again - although the migration is yet to be completed).

Exchange name: Wylam
Exchange status: Fibre enabled
Cabinet number: 7
Technology: FTTC

That's the only difference between the two in the GUI, but the actual JSON result is quite differnet. When the technology shows as FTTC, it's because the cabinet is now showing as accepting orders and is returning a speed estimate.

Edited by Toonshorty (Tue 22-Nov-16 10:01:00)

No, 100% looking at correct data. The exchange has been live for FTTC for a number of years and I've been getting FTTC from NEWICK Cabinet 2 for two years, which is 1200m from me. BT OR have now placed cabinet 9 which is an AIO box 50m from me (Powered and Fans Turning). The checker showed 2 statuses. If you currently are connected to FTTC to cabinet 2 it showed connected to 2 but the speeds that you might get from 9. If you had have no FTTC it shows that you are connected to cabinet 9 and the speed estimate. The status was set to available for 48hr, then showed 17th January for orders, now BT have removed all reference of FTTC from cabinet 9. It's now impossible to tell if BT are having database issues or there is a technical problem. I do hope BT manage to get it sorted and we get VDSL from this cabinet before it rust and crumbles back into the ground.

The databases are often very messed up when an AIO cabinet is being commisioned.

A little patience is all that's required.

Sorry I've lost patience with these people, they are there to serve themselves not customers. Maybe BT should release an infinite amount of monkeys with crimping tools to get the job done. BT stood this cabinet in April, dug a trench August, connected it to fibre in Oct, Powered it up in November and then seem to have gone into some strange twilight administration zone. I does strike me that if an BT Openreach Executive was tied to each cabinet when they where first sited and you could throw rotting food at them as you drove by, then the time to taking orders could be radically improved.

There will be a valid reason.

Openreach don't leave expensive kit idle for comedic value. Kit which isn't live isn't generating cash.

There have been a lot of problems with the AIO cabinets, exacerbated by Openreach's inability to communicate even internally let alone with ISPs and their customers. As a result of this I have been without a service since 31 October and the best Openreach are promising is, like the cabinet in this thread, to reopen it for orders on 17 January 2017. This is probably just a hope for the best date rather than a planned one

No one is saying what the exact cause of these problems is, but they relate in part to live to live migrations. In my discussion with engineers (there have been lots of very unhappy Openreach engineers called to the cabinet in the last few weeks) and what the ISPs have been able to glean from Openreach there have been a number of failed migrations

All these have been characterised by the failure of the migration team to tell the parts of Openreach which deal with faults, new orders, and interface with the ISPs what is going on. So the engineers are being sent out on wild goose chases all over East Anglia on failed cabinet migrations which they are unable to deal with, and face a daily ear bashing from disgruntled customers who have been without a service for weeks. This is happening so often they have now been offered overtime to work on Saturdays to clear the backlog of other faults.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

There will be a valid reason.

Openreach don't leave expensive kit idle for comedic value. Kit which isn't live isn't generating cash.

Erm yes they do.

Our lower part of my road and side roads have had FTTP hardware in place since 2011 - 2012 its all live and has fibre going to them from our splitter node which is located the bottom of our road, we (as in everyone on our phone pole) was only given FTTP due to I showed proof its live due to a home 4 doors from me had it, sadly everyone else that could get FTTP if BT flicked the switch (i.e. bottom of my road) cannot order fibre, and I have been told they are being downgraded to FTTC and that they will have to wait for a FTTC cabinet to be installed.

So they do leave expensive kit idle for comedic value and waste even more money when they downgrade them.

I just thought I would mention that.

Paul

Come across cabinets that have stood incomplete for years while openreach move on elsewhere. The cabinet which would have provided FTTC where I used to live has stood incomplete for over 5 years now. Openreach have only recently revisited it with a view to complete it.

Edited by witchunt (Thu 08-Dec-16 19:41:41)

Well I know one of our PCP cabinets that supplies our road and side roads is a very old cast iron one that's in a very bad state, BT installed a brand new PCP cabinet about a few feet from it about 2 or so years ago and its yet to even be used.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Thu 08-Dec-16 20:01:57)

gerarda ........ Interesting that the 17th January is a date that appeared for two unrelated AIO cabinets (now disappeared in my case). Maybe this is a date that Openreach have decided that they will become sentient. BTOR are clearly trying to reduce cost to a minimum by using the cheapest possible labour for each task step in FTTC deployment, their parsimoniousness is I'm sure welcomed when it comes to Executive Bonus time. However for me this resulted in a my old PCP cabinet being replaced by the chuckle brothers using angle grinder to cut it away disconnecting a number of my neighbours. When the AIO cabinet had the copper run through it the contractors managed to cut off a people too. It then took a series of bewildered and inexperienced OR Engineers to figure out what had happened. It took an age for the work gang to get the pipe for the fibre through, how hard are you going to try and get past a blockage in a duct on 3.00pm on a Friday when you can make it someone else's problem? The person who "owns" the job has never been to site and the people who are on site don't "own" the job.

Openreach laid fibre and installed a node in our village in 2013 which is all sitting idle as they changed their mind and decided to put in an FTTC cabinet instead.

In reply to a post by plankton:

gerarda ........ Interesting that the 17th January is a date that appeared for two unrelated AIO cabinets (now disappeared in my case). Maybe this is a date that Openreach have decided that they will become sentient.

Well the existing superfast lines (other than the ones like mine Openreach have cut off and no longer regard as existing lines) were supposed to have been migrated yesterday. I am not sure how it went as I don't know anyone who has still got a line to migrate but I suspect badly, as like yours, the 17 January availability date has now disappeared.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Openreach laid fibre and installed a node in our village in 2013 which is all sitting idle as they changed their mind and decided to put in an FTTC cabinet instead.

Agg and Split Nodes are used for FTTC as well, so that node in question is probably in use.

Paul

A happy ending to this one. BT OR turned up at the Cabinet NEWICK9 this morning and switched my VDSL from Cabinet 2. Got maximum possible FTTC speeds, so at last I join the ranks of Superfast broadband with 76/19. Hopefully peace and goodwill will now break out in the household as everyone can now stream and play without a shouting match about who is hogging the bandwidth.

Grats.
I hope you all enjoy it

I know we did when ours was installed

Paul

After high level intervention my service got restored on Tuesday, and the cabinet is now showing available again.

At some stage I suspect someone will divulge what went wrong with these AIO cabinet installations.

Glad its all sorted.. The AIO situation isn't straightforward it would seem.

We are waiting on the final network rearrangement work for our AIO Cab.
It got stood in October (although the process started in Oct 2015 when we managed to get the developer to fund the network upgrade, houses around us have FTTP, and they forgot it seems people want/need good internet speeds more than many things these days). Initially indications were that it would go live in October and as the Cab was stood and the copper connections were quickly rerouted to the the new PCP, I was hopeful.

They had a few issues finding the power, but that got sorted within a week or so.

Then the challenge of records. OR have to get all the records sorted and as we currently have FTTC but via another cab (1.3km away) there will have to be another rearrangement to move the connections across, and thats what I am hoping is going to happen in the next week or so.

I won't mention names but there have been two chaps in OR who have been fab ! They have given updates and are trying to drive the process through. So even though its taking longer than expected I wanted to highlight there are some great people working hard at OR trying to improve things.