Promise of Fibre not delivered

Hi All

I am looking a bit of advice in relation to my broadband. I live in the countryside although I wouldn't consider us living in a rural area as there as numerous towns and villages within a 5 mile radius.

We live about 1.5 miles from the nearest exchange which became Fibre enabled in 2010. We currently get a max speed of 1.5 Mbps

In January 2015 when checking the Openreach website I noticed that our status had changed to In Scope and that Fibre would be coming soon.

In May 2015 a new Fibre cabinet was installed about 200m from my address, the cabinet was connected to the grid and work began on the underground cabling. I spoke to engineer who said he would expect I would be able to order Fibre in the next 8 weeks.

The engineers disappeared one day and never returned to complete the work. Meanwhile other cabinets on the exchange were activated by the end of the year.

In December 2015 our status changed to "Under Review" to "Coming Soon"

In March 2016 our status changed to "In Scope" mentioning FTTP however in December we are now back to "Under Review"

I have tried to get further information without any success

Does anyone have a similar experience and if so do they have any advice as to getting a resolution with BT for better speeds?

Well we waited for 5 years and all our FTTP hardware was in place already back in 2011 - 2012.

It took loads of emails from my local MP and myself to finally emails to the CEO of BT Group and Chairman of BT to get our FTTP.

Have you tried to get your local MP involved ?

Paul

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

I live in the countryside although I wouldn't consider us living in a rural area as there as numerous towns and villages within a 5 mile radius.

That still makes you rural. ONS defines "urban" to be towns with populations of 10,000+. If you're not in one, then you are rural, even if you live close by. In fact, most rural parts of the country are relatively close to towns and villages.

ONS have a separate definition known as "sparse" for places, and make the following distinction:

Using classifications that show sparse areas of England, some topics, such as incomes and qualifications, show �two countrysides� � a better off, less sparse and more accessible one, and a less populous and isolated sparse countryside.

Within England, only about 1.5% of the population live in "sparse" areas, which amount to about 15% of the land area.

Meanwhile 19% of the population live in "rural" areas, which amount to about 80% of the land area.

Obviously there is a large proportion of the "rural" population that aren't really in the "sparse" part, but are nonetheless out in the countryside.

And, of course, there is still a significant portion of the rural area to cover. More than 25% at the moment.

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

Does anyone have a similar experience

There are some cabinets that have been stood, and delayed for long periods. There are even some cabinets that have been stood, and subsequently removed. Plans definitely change.

There probably isn't much that people can do to help and advise without knowing which exchange and cabinet number.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/notspot/t/4523156-p...

I believe that cabinet project has been abandoned.

Thanks Guys for your replies.

I tried the MP several times and still awaiting a response.

I guessed that FTTC had been scrapped when FTTP appeared on the Openreach progress checker. We're back to under review however

My thinking is that Openreach have had the intention of delivering FTTC. They started the work and discovered that it wasn't viable. Should they not have picked up the unsuitableness of FTTC before they started the work?

Unfortunately some things are not always apparent until a spade has been in the ground e.g. power cost estimate may have changed significantly after a previous estimate from the power company once they did some surveying.

Also there has been a slow shift towards more FTTP in Northern Ireland.

I don't think it was a power issue. Cabinet definitely has power. Reason I know this is the engineers left it wide open one night and there was lights on. I also saw the power company working at it

If this was 18 months ago, should a plan for FTTP now not be in place, if that is the route they have to go down? Why has Openreach website gone from saying we are In Scope for FTTP back to Under Review?

FTTP is in the area (about a mile away) with 300 Mbps. This property is about 5 miles away from it's exchange (a different one to ours) and we are 1.5 miles away from ours. Other property would be more rural than ours

Both FTTC and FTTP, whichever you may get, are likely to be supplied from a different exchange from your phone connection.

This is very common. In the case of FTTC the two services meet at the FTTC cabinet. Im the case of FTTP they may remain separate or you may get the phone service supplied over the fibre.

A change of mind over that question may be what has stalled Openreach.

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

If this was 18 months ago, should a plan for FTTP now not be in place, if that is the route they have to go down?

They don't have to go down *any* route. They can decide not to cover you at all ... at least while the targets are less than 100%.

If something happened to the FTTC plan, but FTTP remained as a viable option, then your area would be re-costed, and would appear somewhere else in the order of viable locations.

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

Why has Openreach website gone from saying we are In Scope for FTTP back to Under Review?

The biggest "unknown" element always tended to be power. If they had that sorted out correctly (and presuming the power company didn't go back asking for more money), then the next idea would be a planning issue or a complaint about the location.

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

FTTP is in the area (about a mile away) with 300 Mbps. This property is about 5 miles away from it's exchange (a different one to ours) and we are 1.5 miles away from ours.

For FTTP budgeting, it would be a question of distance from the aggregation node, not the distance from the exchange (or, more exactly, the head-end exchange).

Thanks for the info guys. I bit more patience on my part is the only thing for it. Not sure if I have any left though

Yeah, happens. My cabinet has been 3 to 6 months away since 2010, according to the various checkers, but what actually happened is they gave up on it in 2012 due to a power issue and never updated their website. If I check now it says "in build, typically 5 months", same as it said a year ago - I know both are fictional though, because they never re-applied for planning permission (original granted 2011, expired 2014).

Guys

Just received info today that Openreach expect the commissioning date for the cabinet to be the end of April 2017 (subject to change). When using the term commissioning, do they mean the date the cabinet goes live?

do they mean the date the cabinet goes live

Yes, but I think you have been misinformed

See below part of the email I received from Openreach (I've had to many setback at this stage to take it as Gospel":

"Apologies for the delay in providing service to your cabinet. Unfortunately there has been a significant delay in the provision of the cabinet as the previous supplier we had assigned to upgrade the cabinet is unfortunately no longer able to fulfil the contract obligation and we had to look for another supplier to complete the work.

However, a new supplier has now been found and work is now progressing again which is currently within the planning stages. This unfortunately has added as significant delay to the overall project and we estimate that the commissioning date for the cabinet will now be End of April 2017."

Well let's hope so.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Yes, but I think you have been misinformed

Yes, but is this thinking informed? Or just "I've learnt to never trust BT's dates" pessimism/realism?

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Jan-17 02:56:19)

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

When using the term commissioning, do they mean the date the cabinet goes live?

When they give a date for "commissioning", I would normally assume that to be the start of the commissioning process - whereby a connected, powered box is running and monitored, but not live. This process can take a couple of weeks.

They would normally give an RFS (ready for service) date for the time we would consider it to be "live". It will probably take a day or two to appear in the checkers as available.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Yes, but I think you have been misinformed

Yes, but is this thinking informed? Or just "I've learnt to never trust BT's dates" pessimism/realism?

I totally agree there, I have loads of those said emails about 30 odd each saying there was work still to be done and then give an exact date of completion.

Well the first several emails gave an exact date, then the next two years worth of monthly emails were re-worded to use the word "estimate" in them to cover their backs.

Paul

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by Bluehero:

When using the term commissioning, do they mean the date the cabinet goes live?

When they give a date for "commissioning", I would normally assume that to be the start of the commissioning process - whereby a connected, powered box is running and monitored, but not live. This process can take a couple of weeks.

They would normally give an RFS (ready for service) date for the time we would consider it to be "live". It will probably take a day or two to appear in the checkers as available.

Exactly.
They called mine commissioning when they started to do the work and then once it was all completed it was signed of as being commissioned where it then went live, in my case on the same day.

Paul

No. The commissioning is a final checklist carried out in a single visit to (hopefully) ensure its safe, functioning and secure. If it's passes the checks then should be accepting orders within a few days. There is no monitoring period for FTTC cabs