Fibre on exchange only line

On an exchange only line in Leicester what is the time scale for getting fibre on an exchange only line we checked openreach website it said accepting orders put an order in engineer came out did not seem to know whats going on did tests then a month later BT cancelled our order and check again on openreach says IN SCOPE where exploring solutions phone BT they said they had laid our fibre cables to the wrong cabinet is this true has it happened before in other places has it happaned to anyone else if so it's a big mistake b y openreach anyone know how long it will take to fix it by putting the cables to correct cabinet

When you say fibre do you mean full fibre or VDSL2 the answers will be very different as two different physical technologies

i.e. was technology FTTP or FTTC on Openreach website

To be honest what you said makes no sense.
If you are on an exchange only line then you are not connected to ANY cabinet.
OpenReach could have rolled Heinz spaghetti to the local cabinet and it would make no difference to you.

I don't believe for a single second that they feed fibre to the wrong cabinet by mistake.
The chances are that you were marked as being on a fibre enabled cabinet by mistake, which they corrected after you placed an order.

Could you visit here...

https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/

enter your full address (not postcode) and paste the result from the very top line.
It will look like... 123 YourStreet, Town, AB12 3CD, on Exchange YOUREXCHANGE is served by Cabinet X
or
It will state you are on an exchange only line.
We only need the bit in bold, not your address.

If it gives a cabinet number then someone can check further into for you.
If it says your line is exchange only then you were mistakenly labeled as connected to a cabinet. That's the only way you would be able to order an FTTC service.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 23-May-18 11:19:53)

Some EO bits of London have gained in fill cabinets, and lots more is marked down as FTTP on the way.

So there is a chance a cabinet is involved, though also a chance depending on where poster has been looking that they have been confused, since some places call the different EO bundles cabinets.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/258240

This is the petition to get them done asap.

You are walking a tightrope between spamming and just pointing out that the petition exists

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You are walking a tightrope between spamming and just pointing out that the petition exists

Surely its spam, 10 post (4 today and 6 on 18th April) cross multiple threads.

Was at 3 when I made the comment.

Very poorly written petition. Stinks of spam and entitlement.

Exchange only lines are those that do not have a cabinet and are usually feet from the exchange

Usually feet from the exchange? Lol wut?

This affects hundreds of properties around the country

Is it really hundreds? My exchange alone had hundreds of EO lines.

The current UK broadband backend provider (Openreach) must be take over the costs and be held responsible.

Why should OpenReach pay?
You know they are a private company right? With a duty to make profit for their shareholders.

Why don't you start a petition to force Virgin or some other provider to roll out an upgrade to you?

Failing this the government must set up a fund to unlock these lines, in order to offer all super-fast broadband.

They have already.
They've been working away at EO lines just like all other lines with sub SuperFast speeds.
As they are using state money, they are going for the easiest to reach properties first.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 10-Jun-19 13:59:42)

Ignorance if not stupidity driven. The petition is pointless and a total waste of time.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You are walking a tightrope between spamming and just pointing out that the petition exists

You seemed to think it was spamming a couple months ago.
Not sure how reposting the same junk changes that.

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/notspot/t/4617317-...

The only reason he's now posting the link again as the petition requires you to give 5 signatures before it's published/goes live.
It's taken him 2 months to reach the 5 signatures.

Was being kind, so can see what the reaction to it is.

I understand how a regular member encouraging others in the community to sign a worthwhile petition can be a positive thing.

Joining a site and posting self serving links the day you registered, adding nothing to the site/community, then returning 2 months later to post the same links is a little spammy.
Just my opinion though

I have zero pity for their cause.

I feel sorry for those who only get 2-3Mb or less, regardless of how they receive it.

They get above 20Mb on their Exchange Only ADSL line and think it should be some special priority to be upgraded.
Why an EO line "feet from the exchange" should have some kind of priority over a line connected to an FTTC cabinet 2 miles away is beyond me.

Back in the early 2000's peeps like the OP would have been more than happy to be on an Exchange line, they got the best speeds then and probably did until FTTC came along. So they had it good for many many years when the rest of us had rubbish to deal with.
If i was in the OP's position i would simply cancel the line, let it be disconnected at the exchange, give it a month or 2 and then re-order a new line.

It's up to 14 signatures now. The government must be quaking in their boots.

Unchanged since 12:53 today then .

Re-ordering a new line would just result in an EO line as before so it would't gain anything. Until an infill FTTC cabinet or FTTP is built there is no alternative for an EO line (I have one...)

EO lines don't necessarily give the best speeds. Where my sister used the whole village was on EO lines connected to the exchange in the next village about 4 miles away and got a whooping 512Kbps on a good day.

They get above 20Mb on their Exchange Only ADSL line and think it should be some special priority to be upgraded.
Why an EO line "feet from the exchange" should have some kind of priority over a line connected to an FTTC cabinet 2 miles away is beyond

This petition is of course pointless as it is not currently a political issue (and even if it was, petition written like that would not get you anywhere) but I wonder about the origins of the notion that EO lines are generally super fast on ADSL standards.

There are of course many of those (near exchanges) but at least in London it appears to be 80's and early 90's thing to cable everything to the exchange, no matter how far away. Some of these areas were done using aluminium, not copper. East London has plenty of EO areas where average speed is 2-3mbps. FTTB providers have generally done most blocks of flats but those in houses do not have anything better in sight - 4G USO service with a data cap will not be of much help to an urban streamer or online gamer.

Despite spamming and a badly written petition EO lines are a pain. They are the most expensive to upgrade and it seems that they are just being ignored. Quite a lot of investment goes now to upgrading FTTC areas to FTTP or FTTC to G.Fast as the current Openreach business model just does not have an incentive to do anything to the areas expensive to upgrade. There is always a new technology or something else that directs the investment to non-EO areas.

For example in my inner London constituency full fibre goes forward in amazing leaps according to Thinkbroadband statistics. Every month shows an increase in full fibre footprint - but the percentage of non-USO compliant lines remains strong and stable at 7.6%.

Not sure what can be done if anything but the problem is real.

In reply to a post by hvis42:

East London has plenty of EO areas where average speed is 2-3mbps. FTTB providers have generally done most blocks of flats but those in houses do not have anything better in sight - 4G USO service with a data cap will not be of much help to an urban streamer or online gamer.

Streaming on Three 4G is fine and genuinely unlimited. £20pm or £22pm depending on your choice of method. Useless for gaming, I accept.

It is fine, where it is fine, but it often is not fine. It is great at our house on a rural edge of a small town, where I get 80/30 reliably (and is now my primary Internet connection).

When I'm out and about in high density parts of London however, it is often sub-ADSL levels of not fine.

Note the poster and content I replied to. Your situation is irrelevant to my post. He was ruling it out because of data caps, not speed.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 11-Jun-19 12:42:04)

There is no rule that every comment thread should get more and more razor focussed as it goes down the tree..

You pointed out that there are no limits on Three and claimed that "streaming on Three is fine".

I expanded on that to say that Three isn't always fine and in many areas of London (which is where the poster was talking about) it can be worse than poor ADSL.

If the poster's mobile speeds were poor I would be 95% sure they would have said so at the same time as pointing out the caps problem. It is far more important. Don't you agree? So I took it for granted they were fine.

As for being razor focussed, that's exactly what my post was. So is this one of yours. If you had replied to hvis42 raising the speed question I would not have been bothered, but for the above obvious reason as a reply to me I was not pleased by it.

Simples.

I have never been able to get a steady bandwidth good for 4k from a 4g service. They seem to become saturated at prime time.

Of course 4k streaming is not a human right and very much nice to have. It just seems sad that areas in arguably the most vibrant city in Europe areas will be depending on internet solutions one would expect to find in rural areas only - just because there is no business model to make it worthwhile for anyone to provide anything better.

The only existing business model is community fibre partnership but these are complicated in London where people do not generally know (or even want to know) their neighbours, 70% of which will be tenants anyway.

On the positive note Hyperoptic et al seem to have lowered their threshold and they are now interested in smaller blocks of flats as well. This leaves only houses in limbo.

Which mobile provider are you with?

Not anything anymore, my fixed line problem is luckily solved now with Hyperoptic. The townhouses across the street is a different story.

I was with Relish and got 30Mbps early mornings and 2-5 at evening prime time. As I was able to get decent speed out of hours I assumed it was just network saturation.

In reply to a post by hvis42:

Despite spamming and a badly written petition EO lines are a pain. They are the most expensive to upgrade and it seems that they are just being ignored.

In my area, last year a new cabinet sprung up to serve just 29 properties which were on EO lines. So it's clear that some things *are* being done - just not fast enough for everyone's liking of course.

Why they didn't just put an FTTP splitter there, I have no idea.

In reply to a post by hvis42:

Quite a lot of investment goes now to upgrading FTTC areas to FTTP or FTTC to G.Fast as the current Openreach business model just does not have an incentive to do anything to the areas expensive to upgrade. There is always a new technology or something else that directs the investment to non-EO areas.

You're not missing out on FTTP investment because you're on an EO line.

Costs to roll out FTTP to EO lines are similar to those on cabinet fed lines.
The copper is left as it is now, wether the line is connected to a cabinet or direct to the exchange.

An Exchange Only line in the middle of London is probably going to get FTTP before my 45Mb FTTC line in a small semi-rural town.

They should target those with the lowest speed regardless of how the line is fed.

There's many lines with FTTC who get lower sync speeds than EO lines on ADSL.
There's also many cabinet fed lines with only ADSL who sync lower than shorter EO lines on ADSL.

I think the whole "nothing is done about EO lines" is nonsense.
The hundreds/thousands of infill cabinets and FTTC cabinets outside exchanges across the country shows they are making an effort to reach EO lines.
There's also all the FTTP that's been rolled out to such lines.

Someone here explained to me a couple of years ago that EO lines are actually more expensive to upgrade to FTTP as they need to do more digging - it is easier to use the shorter conduits from cabinets. Not sure if this is true.

In my area we are not even in plans or programmes yet according to BT checker. I don't think their priorities are wrong in this case despite being frustrating to homeowners in the area. As altnets have cabled all blocks of flats, it is only houses scattered around a large geographical area that currently need an upgrade. Despite having to do a lot of cabling take-up would not be too impressive. £35 for 150/150 from Hyperoptic is competitive and similar services from OR based operators tend to cost more - people in blocks of flats would not switch back to OR network even if it became available.

Maybe they will do the area one day but as we are not even in a programme yet, it will be years before anything happens there.

Someone here explained to me a couple of years ago that EO lines are actually more expensive to upgrade to FTTP as they need to do more digging - it is easier to use the shorter conduits from cabinets. Not sure if this is true.

It's not true.

They need to do more digging with direct buried cables but not all EO lines are direct buried and plenty cabinet fed lines are direct buried.

Cost is dependant on things like location (rural etc), civils involved, distance to nearest Agg Node etc.
The fact some EO lines may be very expensive to upgrade to FTTP is unrelated to them being an EO line.

The deployment of FTTP to EO lines is done identically to everyone else. The copper isn't touched and the cabinets aren't touched.

On a side note regarding direct buried cables.

If the cable is run through ducting in the garden/customer land then where is the termination point at the Openreach end? I do not recall ever seeing any Openreach tee/toby style boxes like what Virgin media use in the pavement.

If it run's back all the way to the drop point how are replacement cables run through, as surely using a cobra would end up meandering through other customers ducting (or are they all kept separate).

In reply to a post by gary333:

If the cable is run through ducting in the garden/customer land then where is the termination point at the Openreach end? I do not recall ever seeing any Openreach tee/toby style boxes like what Virgin media use in the pavement.

Our street has BT pavement chambers every 3-4 houses. I believe the DPs are in those chambers.

Interesting.

How do they provide FTTP in practice (now talking about urban areas and underground cabling)? Are there aggregation points somewhere along the route or does all cabling come from an exchange? My BT EO line is over 2 miles long. If that was ever ugraded to FTTP, would they replace it with another 2mi long fibre following the same route or would they build an aggregation point somewhere and reroute the line from my home there? Do they use existing conduits or do they need to dig up streets to get this fibre in place?

In reply to a post by gary333:

On a side note regarding direct buried cables.

If the cable is run through ducting in the garden/customer land then where is the termination point at the Openreach end?

Confused by the question.

Direct buried cables (aka DIG, Direct In Ground) do not have ducting.
They are usually armoured cables buried in the ground.

In these cases they usually leave the buried copper cable and (when possible) they install new ducting for the fibre drop wire.

There are also fibre/copper combined cables that can be installed.

OpenReach don't usually have a Toby for every property like Virgin do.
They tend to have a Distribution Point (DP) in underground chambers that serve a number of properties.

Where a property is fed by overhead cable they tend to use the same telegraph poles for the fibre. The DP is usually on a local telegraph pole.
The copper drop wire from the pole DP to the property can be replaced with a combined copper/fibre drop wire.

When FTTP is rolled out they only install fibre as far as the DP, for both overground and underground DP's.
It's only when an order for FTTP is placed by the customer that OpenReach will visit the property to decide how the final drop wire from the DP to the home should be placed.

The fibre comes from Fibre Aggregation Nodes.
These are often already out in the network.

Aggregation Nodes are also where the fibre for FTTC cabinets come from.
There's usually an Agg Node for every 3 or 4 FTTC cabinets.

In some rural areas the Agg Node can be placed at/near the exchange but for most areas the Agg Nodes are deeper in the network, nearer the homes they serve.

The route of the fibre doesn't have to follow the route of the existing copper.
The only part of the existing infrastructure that the fibre shares is any ducting/poles that may be in place.
The lack of or existence of a cabinet is irrelevant.
Where possible they use existing poles and ducting.

So it's fibre from the exchange to an Agg Node, then to a fibre splitter, then to a distribution point, then finally from the DP to your home.

If there are FTTC cabinets closer than the exchange then the fibre would likely come from the direction of 1 of them.

Some EO lines can indeed be more expensive to install FTTP than some cabinet fed lines, but this is down to their individual circumstances (location, lack of ducting, distances, civils required, etc) and not specifically because they are EO.
The same goes the other way round.

That's 'my bad' for mentioning direct buried, this was what got my brain thinking what happens when the cable isn't directly buried and where ducting has been placed to the property.

Is there simply ducting from each property to the street chamber (where the DP is). If so is this ducting shared (like VM) or are there multiple ducting exists within the street chamber?

The ducting from the final DP/chamber to the properties it serves isn't shared. Each property will have its own duct back to that final chamber.