Only house in postcode where fibre not available.

I have been trying to get BT to upgrade me to fibre broadband for the last three months, but they keep telling me it is not available. My neighbour has it and on checking the Openreach web site, I find that everyone in my postcode (BD22 0LJ) can get broadband, except me (Highfield Farm). The message says that the cabinet is enabled, but I am not able to order fibre just yet. Distance from the cabinet is not an issue, as we are the second nearest to the cabinet. Can anyone tell me what is going on? Many thanks.

Your address is down as an unserved premises, which is down to you are too far from your fibre cabinet.

It doesn't matter how close you are from the cabinet walk distance, its all down to how long the cables are and how they are routed.

Going by the speeds the others get on that post code, then its all down to you are just too far from the cabinet.

You will see the exact same thing said to you when you use the checker at openreach:

In reference to www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/when-can-i-get-fibre.aspx:

Your cabinet is enabled for Superfast fibre however you're not able to order fibre just yet.

This might be because the length of the line is too long to get Superfast speeds. We're actively looking at other options.

I did some checks and have the following:

HAWS BARN		- FTTC on Cabinet 14,	2.2 - 8.3 Mbps  
HAWS FARM		- FTTC on Cabinet 14,	1.8 - 7.2 Mbps
HIGHER WINDHILL FARM	- FTTC on Cabinet 14,	1.1 - 2.2 Mbps
HIGHFIELD FARM		- FTTC on Cabinet 14,	(too far)
SKYTHORNS FARM		- FTTC on Cabinet 14,	1.2 - 4.5 Mbps

LOWER STUBBINS FARM	- FTTC on Cabinet 3,	6.6 - 18 Mbps

We can ignore LOWER STUBBINS FARM due to its on a different cabinet than the rest.

I am also assuming by the speeds that your neighbours either side of / or close to you are possibly HIGHER WINDHILL FARM and SKYTHORNS FARM, is this correct ?

TBH, those other four lines on your cabinet are lucky they can even order FTTC with those speeds, I have seen areas with higher speeds be refused fibre due to the distance.

Paul

To reinforce Paul's statement of it depends on how the phone cables are routed, which may be radically different.

The 2014 FTTC is 10 Metres from my front door; and I can see inside it from our lounge window, when its doors are opened. So my house is the clear-cut nearest in conventional terms.

The 1967 PCP is 40 Metres away, across a minor dead-end road; and my house is in the second-nearest group to that PCP.

The cable length from the FTTC via the PCP to my house is about 300 Metres, 1967 cable ducts on a greenfield site.

PCP to house established when helping a PO lad clear a fault away back in dial-up days.

Thus on the estate, given the above geographic locations, my group of houses has the lowest forecast speeds on the estate.

---------

Compounding that, a later greenfield estate fed from the same PCP and FTTC and significantly further away, on the other side of the local main road, has higher/faster forecast speeds.

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The actual speeds I get are around 37/9 Mbps, on a 40/10 contract, so I am happy in that respect.

Yeap at those distances its on the edge of not being offered, or even worth the upgrade unless ADSL speeds are sub 0.25 Mbps currently.

So happy to say its just variations in cable quality/distances and would not be surprised if others once live find the speeds are a lot slower.

Exactly what I thought.

When I did the checks for the 5 addresses on cabinet 14 their ADSLx speeds wasn't that much slower than the speeds it says for FTTC (basically their ADSL2+ was 1 Mbps with a range of 1 - 3.5 Mbps).

So if it was me I would stay on ADSLx, unless FTTC was cheaper and the speeds listed was correct or better, then I would got for fibre.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Sat 03-Dec-16 13:25:08)

Hi Paul, many thanks for the information, it is very useful.

On his speed checker, the neighbour at Haws Barn tells me he regularly gets up to 9 Mbps, which agrees with your figures. Incidentally, I currently get about 0.7 Mbps.

The line from cabinet 14 comes up Cowling Hill underground. There is an underground junction at the bottom of our field which supplies both Haws Barn (20 metres) and Haws Farm (30 metres). The line continues in a straight line underground for 50 metres to Highfield and then underground for 140 metres to the top of my drive, where it travels on poles along the road for 350 metres to Skythorns. From here it goes down another drive for about 380 metres to Higher Windhill.

My assumption is that I should be getting about the same as our nearest neighbours, Haws Barn and Haws Farm and much better than Skythorns and Higher Windhill.

Interestingly, whenever BT engineers have called in the past, they have commented that the head office diagrams do not reflect the actual routing of the cables. The last engineer to call, said he would get them changed, but I don't know if this has been done. Could this have a bearing on the matter?

Regards,

John.

I accept that because of the distance from the cabinet, we won't get anywhere near the advertised speed, but I currently get 0.7 Mbps and my nearest neighbour, who is on fibre, gets up to 9 Mbps, so even if I only get 7 Mbps, that is a ten fold increase.

suggest don't use the postode checker use the tel number as that will be far more accurate

This up to 9 Mbps is that the estimate or a speed test result?

Not always the case, I see a good number of phone errors that get pushed through for correction.

The clever bit is gathering all the data and not hearsay to try and figure out if worth putting forward a correction request.

It is the speed test result.

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

suggest don't use the postode checker use the tel number as that will be far more accurate

I didn't the postcode checker, I used the address checker due to I had no phone numbers, granted the check via phone number is more accurate to do with speeds etc, but 9/10 chances address and phone checks will return the types of services.

Paul

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Not always the case, I see a good number of phone errors that get pushed through for correction.

The clever bit is gathering all the data and not hearsay to try and figure out if worth putting forward a correction request.

Agreed, I normally try the phone number when checking, but that has often failed in that past so I have had to fall back to the address checker.
Plus a lot of people are not comfortable giving out their phone number to a stranger.

Like my BT phone number for our FTTP which is on FVA fails the checks via phone number and all I get is the following message:

In reference to www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.telephone:

There is no data available for this number. This could be either because it is not a BT line or it is a new BT number that has just been provided. Most new numbers will appear on the checker 24 hours after BT has installed the line.

And I think its the same for some other phone providers, so in most cases the address checker is more reliable than the phone number.

Paul

Paul

The OR checker will rarely ( never) have date for FVA lines as this is not OR data and the number could be anywhere ( In the world in an extreme case!)

For WLR fixed line numbers ( and in rare cases numbers ported to FVA) they will have the data as it is OR data.

They do not have data for LLU numbers as LLU operators do not tell OR which line each number is physically connected to.

OR can only check by number for their own numbers.

In reply to a post by airebase:

My assumption is that I should be getting about the same as our nearest neighbours, Haws Barn and Haws Farm and much better than Skythorns and Higher Windhill.

You'll be 200m further on that those two, plus the length of your drive. You should expect to be at least a couple of Mbps lower.

In reply to a post by airebase:

Interestingly, whenever BT engineers have called in the past, they have commented that the head office diagrams do not reflect the actual routing of the cables. The last engineer to call, said he would get them changed, but I don't know if this has been done. Could this have a bearing on the matter?

The data held in BT's database that describes the losses between the cabinet and your DP (black joint box at the top of the pole) could be wrong ... and this is one of the primary sources for the estimator when deciding whether to offer the service.

I'd say it has to be worth trying ... anything's better than 0.7Mbps.

If all else fails, I'd be thinking of a wireless point-point link to that neighbour who gets 9Mbps - to the extent of getting a second line put in there!

It may appear to be simplistic; but have you been through the basics of the Quiet Line Test, including your own internal (phone) wiring?

Costs nothing apart from about 5 to 15 minutes of your time.

Thanks for your input. I am only 50 metres further on from Haws Barn and Haws Farm, as the line runs underground from the junction that supplies them, so the loss should be about 1 Mbps.
It looks like the database may be incorrect, but how do I get it checked and changed?
Many thanks,
John.

What formula is the 50metre and 1 Mbps loss based on? VDSL2 due to the higher frequencies does perform differently to ADSL2+

Have seen lines where same distance from DP and same bundle with different performance levels, reason being that somewhere else there are repair joints or other differences in the lines.

Apparently you can use the below form

https://www.formwize.com/run/survey3.cfm?id=7214&embed

Or email the CEO of BT explaining the problem, and laying out your evidence.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Paul

The OR checker will rarely ( never) have date for FVA lines as this is not OR data and the number could be anywhere ( In the world in an extreme case!)

For WLR fixed line numbers ( and in rare cases numbers ported to FVA) they will have the data as it is OR data.

They do not have data for LLU numbers as LLU operators do not tell OR which line each number is physically connected to.

OR can only check by number for their own numbers.

I agree with most of that, but even the Openreach Where and when checker says there is no data.

Paul

Many thanks for all your comments. From the information that you have provided, i think that the fault lies within the Open Reach database, which is showing that we are too far away from the cabinet and therefore dissuading service providers from offering us fibre broadband.

Engineers who have visited in the past, have mentioned that the wiring diagram for our hillside, shows the cable routing in the opposite direction to what it actually does. Based on this, we would be last and furthest away. However, in reality, we are one of the first and nearest. If the database uses data from the wiring diagram, then it would be reasonable to assume that this is why it is showing "too far".
Would I be right in this assumption?

Thank you Ronski for the form which I have sent off and thank you Paul for the data to support my case.
Regards,
John.

In reply to a post by airebase:

Engineers who have visited in the past, have mentioned that the wiring diagram for our hillside, shows the cable routing in the opposite direction to what it actually does. Based on this, we would be last and furthest away. However, in reality, we are one of the first and nearest. If the database uses data from the wiring diagram, then it would be reasonable to assume that this is why it is showing "too far".
Would I be right in this assumption?

The impression I got was that the "opposite direction" would be coming from a different cab; if they are using that, then the checker would have the wrong cab number too.

But it is certainly possible for some data to have been fixed (such as cab number) while other parts haven't (like the loss from the cable).

As MrSaffron says, sometimes differences can occur because of different repairs in the past. Other differences can occur when different thicknesses of copper get used - though this would require a separate cable.

In the end, all you can do is try it ... and to do that, you need to persuade Openreach to update the database.