Stepps Exchange - Cabinet 23 NEW

Hi all!

Looking to help a friend out with some information regarding a newish housing estate.

The estate is built in a town called Muirhead, which is on the outskirts of Glasgow. It is served from the STEPPS exchange and the estate has just had a new cabinet installed. Just a standard cabinet, not the Huawei cabinet which indicates FTTC.

Site is built by Persimmon and is named Heathfields.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18hFiLa2T8CG6UMWqSw...

Yellow is the new area that P23 will serve and purple is P19 which shows the estate it serves.

It's cabinet number 23 and it is definitely very new as looking at CodeLook's website, they don't have it listed yet but on DSL checker (and Digital Scotland's Where and When), it references P23 - Typical postcode for the area is G69 9FH.

As Stepps fell under the Scottish Government roll out, would it be expected for the Scottish Government to catch this one in the near future?

Approx 48 properties have been sold, 15 are up for sale at the moment and there are still another 90 properties to be built and put up for sale. Definitely looks like this cabinet will be the sole provider for this area...

Any help would be appreciated, as always!

Scotland is pushing for 100% superfast for 2021, so all depends on what you call near future, and how co-operative developer has been with BT Openreach, or other broadband options they have

No plan yet on Openreach site

The Government projects pick up new build in reviews every couple of years

Thanks for that Andy.

Still baffles me to see new housing estates going up and not going for a FTTP route, especially following on from the Athletes village in Glasgow being installed 2-3 years ago (after games ended and a retrofit carried out).

Considering the high value of this particular housing estate, it's got to make commercial sense to tap into those with a higher income the possibility of having a greater budget for a higher priced internet service.

A lot depends on when the estate started, new ones starting the journey now with > 30 premises get FTTP offered, but even then a belligerent builder can still mean the estate gets just copper.

Some new builds even lock out Openreach and go for independents, so if builder felt it was important there would be lots of options.

it will be a copper only site -- tell tale sign will be a new cab at entrance to development that would indicate the developer only asked for voice services and did not r sign a fibre agreement for that site -- assume this was registered with Openreach some time pre 2015 announcement

156 homes on development according to website so that cab will only serve that development -- that cab will not be on any programme

That was my thinking as well. It would then fall under the Scottish Government works. I can only assume that cabinet is not listed on any future phase.

All the cabinets on STEPPS were picked up under the Scottish Government phase.

http://i.imgur.com/bZRY6fk.png


I guess the options are: find someone who can confirm if this cabinet is on a future phase under Scottish Governement

OR

Contact the local MSP and see if they can find out...

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Apr-17 14:46:40)

Absolutely put pressure on Persimmon to co-fund the cost of the upgrade with Openreach. Take it to the local press if needs be. There's big noise being made about developers not ensuring decent connectivity is provided these days.

The last thing they'll want is negative publicity.

If they're still building on the site, consider a sign in your garden that prospective buyers will see, informing them of no fibre broadband availability.

it wont be in any of their plans or current intervention areas as I assume it had no postcode available when the intervention area was determined

suggest you write to your developer and then see what happens -- its not the only site like that in that situation in Scotland or elsewhere

Quick update from this.

Still no sign of fibre activity within this area. Total number of properties in here are going to be 156 properties and there are now 87 of them sold.

Interesting thing I found is that on the map here - https://drive.google.com/open?id=18hFiLa2T8CG6UMWqSw... - the area named Woodend Farm actually has a Fibre to the Premises. It appears Openreach ran fibre direct to this premise and a few others south of here linking up with Woodhead Road.

The staff at Persimmon definitely can't help here but who is the best person direct at Scottish Government level or Openreach to contact to enquire about it?

They may have personally paid for FTTPod.
It shows up as standard FTTP at the address after activation.
Nobody at the Scottish government you can talk to, and digital Scotland are pretty useless.

Persimmons is responsible for your property as it's brand new. Unless OpenReach decide is commercially worth putting as cabinet in then the developer is your best bet. I like the idea of sticking a huge sign in the garden saying "Don't buy a home here the broadband is useless and Persimmons won't do anything about it"
Contact the local press etc.

Persimmon definitely can help.

They can either part, or wholly fund the upgrading of he cabinet to FTTC.

You need to start a canpaign that will stop peope buying houses on the estate until it affects persimmon enough to make them do something about it.

In reply to a post by hippyharry:

The staff at Persimmon definitely can't help here

The staff at the sales site will gracefully decline any knowledge ... to people who have already parted with their money.

They will be more motivated to respond to those who haven't bought yet.

Your mission, should you ... blah blah ..., is to get all those potential new homeowners to quiz the sales staff before they even put a deposit down.

Signs in windows. In cars. On lawns - where they can be seen from visitors to showhomes or to the site. Local papers. etc

Get friends to go visit the showhomes & sales staff and ask ... to walk away uninterested because of the poor speed.

Persimmon will pay attention when sales slow down.

Not to dig up an old post, but this cabinet is now in Build Process as stated on the digital scotland where and when.

Help me please though folks, - does this look like the possibility of a fibre cabinet or something else? The writing on the pavement says S/L

Possible Fibre Cabinet Location?

Well the grey paint �looks� like an indicated position for a cabinet ....

The red paint would seem to be marking something else, sewer line maybe ?

My money is on there being a Huawei VDSL2 cabinet appearing one day, which date in the next year is the hard part.

Red paint would likely indicate power, possibly from the street light

We had indication that Persimmon put their hands into their pocket to fund this. Being told from Openreach that they have a contractual delivery date of June 2018 for FTTC.

I suppose it them looking at using the Street Lighting connection could work since it�s an unmetered connection they�d use for it.

Cabinet is then essentially getting build behind the footpath avoiding any adoption procedures for Persimmon and local authority.

Timeframe from this point then? 5 months or so? Anyone see anything on their databases that aren�t publicly available?

CodeLook now says this for Stepps Cabinet P23:

FTTC doing Design, live due by August 2019

Phase Privately Funded 22a

<no premises passed count>

Huawei

<no approx postcode>

Edit: that's publicly available at https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm. Enter locality as Stepps, then list all fibre cabinets. Limited to 20 free lookups per day apparently.

Edited by andrum99 (Fri 19-Oct-18 00:31:34)

Roadworks Scotland now has an update for it:

BT022-S000000022005 (2544289)
75 M SOUTH WEST FROM 2 HAINING WYND, MUIRHEAD, GLASGOW G69 9FG
HAINING WYND, MUIRHEAD
Openreach
03316678246
06/12/2018 - 14/12/2018
10 Working Day(s)

Looking positive now!

Update!

Cabinet has now been installed. It's the big one they've put in which I think allows for 288 lines? There are only 185 properties connected to it so plenty of capacity.

A few more new builds are due in the area but a maximum of 30 I believe and there's a chance they'll be put onto FTTP anyway. (Not in the same estate).

They took the electrical connection from the substation shed thingy at the same time so I believe it's all wired up too!

Now to play the waiting game of seeing it go live on DSL checker.