How Long?

So I am now finally on the build stage but funny thing is Roadworks doesn't show any work being done anytime soon and also on the Openreach website Technology says nothing for me my guess would be FTTC is what they are going to fit.

My question is how long (roughly) after being put on Build Stage can I expect a Cabinet to appear?

Could be 6 months or more

6 Months? To only put the Pipe, Foundation and Cabinet in place.... The hell..... That has to be the worse case scenario right?

No ,that's typical .could be less, could be more. Its not the amount of work required but the resources to do it.

Edited by witchunt (Fri 26-May-17 10:49:21)

The worst case scenarios I have seen for the cabinet to be Accepting orders for FTTC is several years after the FTTC DSLAM cabinet shell is placed on it's stand.

Any issues or challenges along the process can cause delays.

Though as others have said around 6 is typical, however can be quicker or longer.

Edited by cymru123 (Fri 26-May-17 11:04:28)

6 Months? To only put the Pipe, Foundation and Cabinet in place.... The hell.

What of arranging the power, blowing and splicing the fibre, verifying it all works before accepting orders.

We had one near me failed the electrical safety checks and got taken away and nothing reappeared for 6 months.

In reply to a post by FastInternetPlz:

6 Months? To only put the Pipe, Foundation and Cabinet in place.... The hell..... That has to be the worse case scenario right?

It isn't about how quickly one cabinet could be installed if everyone focused on just that one.

It is more about the pipeline of many, many cabinets ... and how full the worklists are for the people working on them, and for the necessary admin tasks to mature (planning periods, roadwork notification periods etc)

Based on the most recent announcements, BT are currently activating 150 cabinets per week. They need a hefty pipeline to keep that rate going.

Well that's just great, if it takes 6 months to fully connect or even more, I might as well just quit doing Youtube with my 2.1k subs because they will become inactive within that time.

One near where I used to live me was stood for over a year waiting to have the power connected. Apparently the local council wouldn't grant a license until after a 48 week gas main replacement project on the same road had been completed.

In reply to a post by FastInternetPlz:

Well that's just great, if it takes 6 months to fully connect or even more, I might as well just quit doing Youtube with my 2.1k subs because they will become inactive within that time.

That's up to you. Is there not any way you can prepare videos and upload them either as a long overnight task (IIRC you can upload a video to YouTube to be made available at a later time) or using another connection you have access to?

If fast connectivity is critical to you, it is available with modest delay - but leased line products are far beyond the means of residential users.


As has been said, the delivery of Openreach FTTx is heavily pipelined to make best use of the considerable resources Openreach are ploughing into the deployment. This means that tasks are often planned a long time in advance and if anything unexpected happens during deployment then a cabinet can slip back in the programme until remedial work can be planned and delivered.

The FTTC cabinet I'm connected to was stood for nearly two years before it was enabled, though such a long delay is at the more extreme end of the scale.