Openreach "Fibre Journey" moving backwards

Has anyone else had experience of the progress on the Openreach fibre checker (https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadband/when-can-i-get-fibre) reversing?

I live in a massive residential area just outside Sheffield city centre, so its a little frustrating that we don't have FTTC yet. For most of last year the fibre checker listed the cabinets on my local exchange (Sharrow) as being at the "BUILD" stage, then at the start of 2018 they moved back to the out of scope "EXPLORING SOLUTIONS" stage. Have been unable to get any update from openreach after months of trying to contact them, so thought I'd ask here if this is a common experience.

5 years ago this whole area had FTTC through the failed Digital Region scheme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Region), not it seems all that infrastructure sits under the streets of South Yorkshire unused, a real shame considering all the taxpayer money that supported it.

Plans change

Maybe its a sign that they are looking at doing FTTP rather than FTTC

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Plans change

Maybe its a sign that they are looking at doing FTTP rather than FTTC

That would be amazing, have to hope that's the case, they are being very quiet about it if they are.

What cabinet are you on? And what does this list say about the cabinet? There's only 6 cabinets (plus the usual bunch of exchange lines) out of fifty-something cabinets in the exchange that show no fibre (or no fibre on the way).

>I live in a massive residential area just outside Sheffield city centre, so its a little frustrating that we don't have FTTC

Sharrow doesn't have FTTC? That's pretty amazing considering the type of housing around there. Not that this post helps at all.

My 15 year old estate, approx 150 or so houses, two ex-TPON cabs next door to each other one serves top the other bottom half of estate, i'd say roughly half the estate each +-10 houses.

In our case some people on the bottom half went down the community fibre route and therefore Openreach abandoned our 'Build Stage' back to exploring solutions, and now we having to go down the community fibre route also.
They literally came and FTTC'd the one cab and left the other, its 1ft away!
So 100% in my case to get some money.

In reply to a post by olicuk:

What cabinet are you on? And what does this list say about the cabinet? There's only 6 cabinets (plus the usual bunch of exchange lines) out of fifty-something cabinets in the exchange that show no fibre (or no fibre on the way).

Thanks for this link, I'm on cabinet 31. Seems very odd that the 2 cabinets nearby were not upgraded, at least there's no obvious signs from the local geography or road layouts that would hint at it being a difficult task to connect them up.

Given its 5 years on from most of surrounding area getting FTTC and we're no longer in planning stage is it best to just hope for FTTP soon or is there anything more proactive I could try?

The only thing proactive you can really do is a self funded/community funded project.

Do you know where cabinet 31 is, and have you looked to check no work has gone on around it? For that matter also nearby cabinet 30, which seems in the same position? Looking on Streetview, I can see some Openreach-looking cabinets labelled B21 and 2032, but not just "31"... were these other cabinets to do with the DR project you mentioned?

Looking at a random postcode (and property) in the cabinet footprint at dslchecker.bt.com gets an unusual result as it shows the VDSL2 speeds (which it normally does not for properties that aren't in the plans); though I see underneath the table it says:
VDSL FTTC and SOGEA is currently not available on this cabinet due to following reasons:- This cabinet is under review. We'll explore fibre broadband solutions & will update once done..

Address [removed] MOFFATT ROAD, SHEFFIELD, S2 3GP on Exchange SHARROW is served by Cabinet 31

Featured Products | Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) | Upstream Line Rate(Mbps) | Downstream Handback Threshold(Mbps) | WBC FTTC Availability Date | WBC SOGEA Availability Date
High Low High Low
VDSL Range A (Clean) 80 68.9 20 19 61.7 Unavailable Unavailable
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 80 61.9 20 19 51.3 Unavailable Unavailable

It looks like the area can get Virgin Media (can you?), so that will stop Superfast South Yorkshire intervening too I guess.

As recommended on other threads, try OR on Twitter?

Just resurrecting this post to add the update I finally had from Openreach, not intending to restart discussion but thought this might be useful for anyone finding this post later.

I eventually got a response out of Openreach, but it took asking my MP to forward my message along as I was unable to get a reply. They confirmed that the exhange was upgraded for fibre in 2013, but added:

"At the moment we're reassessing our remaining fibre delivery programme across the country. This means that our plans to upgrade cabinet 31 has currently been put on hold."

They continue on by saying they're still "recalculating" their timescales, and after review they'll be able to say if/when the cabinet will be upgraded.

My one lesson from this would be not to use Openreach's fibre checker to inform any decision you might have when looking at broadband options or moving house, the data does not seem very reliable.

In reply to a post by pleasence:

"At the moment we're reassessing our remaining fibre delivery programme across the country. This means that our plans to upgrade cabinet 31 has currently been put on hold."

Not to get your hopes up, but i would wager, that comment is for FTTC. The recalculation would be to see if deploying fttp, now or when would make sense.

In reply to a post by pleasence:

My one lesson from this would be not to use Openreach's fibre checker to inform any decision you might have when looking at broadband options or moving house, the data does not seem very reliable.

95% of the time, the data is normally very accurate (ok the 95% is sorta pulled out of the air); the clean and impacted speeds are conservative. The problems arise when no one has ordered from a DP, or a new build happens, or that a new fttp node or fttc cab goes live and not all records are migrated properly.

Good isps and Andrew(Mr saff) do a good job in prodding the OR staff to look at the incorrect records.