Fibre finally comes to EO line

First, a bit of background. We're in a rural village (40 properties) on a poor exchange only line, about 4 miles back to the exchange, Rampton (SLRAM). The lines locally are poor and noisy, and ADSL is poor, and slowly deteriorating. There are no above ground cabinets between the pole and the exchange, only underground inspection chambers.

Historically, all 600-odd lines were exchange only lines with no local PCPs, and no hope of fibre. However, Notts County Council's 'Better Broadband For Nottinghamshire' stepped in and has installed new cabinets in the villages over the last couple of years, I would guess 90% of village properties on the exchange now have FTTC.

However, our 40 properties were not included in the scheme. Last year, BBFN were still telling me that there was nothing on the horizon, but earlier this year, 20 properties at the nearest (to the exchange) end were suddenly upgraded to FTTP from pole mounted pods, with 300Mb ultrafast available. I was in touch with BBFN again, and they informed me that this end of the village (the remaining 20 properties) would be getting fibre between January and March 2018. Naturally, I thought more FTTP.

However, BBFN told me we would be connected to a new PCP, cabinet P5. I assume this will serve the remaining 4 poles and 20 properties in the village. According to roadworks.org, this new PCP is to be situated about 200 metres down the road from me, next to properties with FTTP - work starts on March 13th.


I thought I had got the hang of this FTTP business, I was rather looking forward to moving from a crackly EO line, but it now looks like we will be getting a FTTC solution. Is this sort of arrangement of a cabinet to serve only 20 residential properties unusual?

Does this mean we will remain on our EO line for voice, which is absolutely diabolical at times?

Is a new PCP install likely to be G.Fast enabled?


Sorry for the long winded post and the questions, but if anyone has any pointers as to what's going on, I'm all ears!

In reply to a post by sparky_paul:

I thought I had got the hang of this FTTP business, I was rather looking forward to moving from a crackly EO line, but it now looks like we will be getting a FTTC solution. Is this sort of arrangement of a cabinet to serve only 20 residential properties unusual?

Not unusual at all, I have only seen the odd couple like this.
I have also seen it the other way round where there are about 6 homes connected to my PCP (phone cabinet) that can get FTTP, the remaining 300+ homes can only get FTTC.

In reply to a post by sparky_paul:

Does this mean we will remain on our EO line for voice, which is absolutely diabolical at times?

No, you will either get a small AIO (All In One) cabinet which contains both the PCP and the Fibre hardware, or you will get both a PCP and Fibre cabinets.

Paul

Thanks for the info Paul, I'll be glad to get rid of the long voice line.

In reply to a post by sparky_paul:

Thanks for the info Paul, I'll be glad to get rid of the long voice line.

Well it will still be a long voice line, just that there will be a PCP cabinet in between.

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Well it will still be a long voice line, just that there will be a PCP cabinet in between.

Not good news, the lines back to the exchange are really poor.

In reply to a post by sparky_paul:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Well it will still be a long voice line, just that there will be a PCP cabinet in between.

Not good news, the lines back to the exchange are really poor.

It was the same on my copper line here, which was why I moved everything over to fibre, so our copper line is no longer being used.

Your copper line should be ok for voice, the broadband will only use the copper line from the cabinet to your home.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Wed 17-Jan-18 19:21:17)

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

It was the same on my copper line here, which was why I moved everything over to fibre, so our copper line is no longer being used.

Your copper line should be ok for voice, the broadband will only use the copper line from the cabinet to your home.

I would have loved to move voice over to FTTP, voice lines here are really poor. We have had multiple incidents of flooding of underground connection chambers over the years, and there are always ongoing issues with intermittent audible noise.

20 properties is fairly low number for an all in one rearrangement, FTTP usually suits smaller projects than FTTC, but each project has it's own set of variables and the gainshare money still has to be best value I guess.
One thing is fairly certain though. You won't g.fast too soon.

Edited by witchunt (Wed 17-Jan-18 20:05:31)

In reply to a post by witchunt:

One thing is fairly certain though. You won't g.fast too soon.

I can't say that won't be disappointing, after watching the other 20 properties in the village get 300Mb FTTP a few months ago.

One other thing which made me think FTTP was coming was when we had a new pole installed before Christmas. The new pole has a loop in the cables clipped to the pole where the FTTP pod was fitted on the other poles, and a new empty duct was laid at the side of the new cables to the inspection box.

I wonder if FTTP was the original plan, but for some reason they swapped to a FTTC solution?

Edited by sparky_paul (Thu 18-Jan-18 13:06:04)