WSDRU Drumchapel PCP 11

Hi.

Does anyone know whether Openreach has plans for Ultrafast on this cabinet in the near future?

Neighbouring PCP's have now popped up with G.fast pods and seem to be being readied for service.

PCP 11 seems fairly busy and has even had an extension added for extra ties for the FTTC service, is it a candidate for FTTP instead of G.fast for ultrafast due to the distance of premises served on the overhead network?

Thanks
Pete

I�ve been told Openreach have completed the work their end and it�s waitinv on BTWholesale at the exchange which again I been told it to go live early 2019.

Probably the case for PCP12 as it has it's gfast pod. I don't think PCP 11 has one, it has an extension to the cabinet for cable ties. But then again the last time I had a visual look was christmas.

Pete

I thought PCP 12 and the rest were extensions not G.fast pods

PCP12 definitely has gfast pod, PCP11 has a cable tie extension

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/bt-op...

Check this pic, left of the PCP is a gfast pod and on the right is a cable tie extension. The wholesale checker for PCP12 is showing gfast on some of the report and the openreach when and where website is wrongly reporting PCP12 is ready for ultrafast service when it isn't quite ready yet.

I get the feeling that PCP 11 may get FTTP further down the line, the copper pairs in the PCP are shocking and I guess a small percentage would bear any kind of decent speeds on gfast. The distribution network is mostly overhead which should be slightly easier with regards to the last connection into a customers premise.

You appear to be correct, that pod has been there a while now.. I myself am on pcp12 and have been checking for a while.. Although I think I'm too far away to get any benifit at all

Edited by Hothead17 (Tue 15-Jan-19 09:20:14)

PCP11 is likely to get g.Fast added.

damn oh well... a bit of a waste the d side copper bundles from that PCP are horrible and poor quality.

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Jan-19 13:04:27)

In reply to a post by Hothead17:

You appear to be correct, that pod has been there a while now.. I myself am on pcp12 and have been checking for a while.. Although I think I'm too far away to get any benifit at all

As above Openreach have completed most if not all of the work and as far as their concerned the pods on the cabinets are live on their system, the hold up is with BT Wholesale.

Drumchapel exchange is now live for G.Fast. I�m on cabinet 4

My cab is live also I am just too far away it wont show any speeds for gfast haha!

This is what I get...


G.fast Range A (Clean) 264.9 233.6 39 17.8 195.6 Amber -- --
G.fast Range B (Impacted) 254.3 168.7 31.3 14 153.6 Amber -- --

In reply to a post by ansam:

This is what I get...


G.fast Range A (Clean) 264.9 233.6 39 17.8 195.6 Amber -- --
G.fast Range B (Impacted) 254.3 168.7 31.3 14 153.6 Amber -- --

Ive placed am order with BT to see what happens. The install date is Tuesday, no idea why its amber since all of the downloads are above the 100mb threshold limits. It could be uncertainty if the line is actually capable.

Amber can mean 101 different things at the BT Wholesale level, not just a result of the G.Fast estimate being under 100Mb.

Ah ok, I did have a search about to see what it meant and I could really only see those two things as being possible issues.... being under the 100mm threshold (which its not) or perhaps just uncertainty if the line can support it or not.

Guess we will see what happens on Tuesday.

Strange if I enter my address rather than phone number it says Available rather than amber as well but if understand phone number check is more accurate?

Edited by deleted (Sat 19-Jan-19 16:44:44)

So the engineer didn't turn up today so I contacted BT and they contacted their "suppliers". They have come back and said that G.fast isn't available due to capacity. That makes no sense as the cabinet only went live last week, and I can bet good money on my order being the first order for this street.

I have both a contact in BTW and OR and they can checking on it but its not sounding good although I am not sure this is a capacity issue. All very strange.

Capacity issue isn't limited to ports on the G.Fast pod.
It could be that necessary upgrades at the exchange aren't ready.

This can also be capacity issues only affecting BTWholesale so other suppliers could be able to progress orders.

Could also be an issue with pod itself.

It's all guessing until someone confirms the issue.

oh right but wouldn't that be reflected on the wholesale checker then? bit strange to set it as available to then only immediately say that there are capacity issues.

Your earlier post indicated the availability was showing as Amber, which is different to available and suggests anticipated issues.

OpenReach need to mark the cabinet as available when their work is done, so that non BT Wholesale ISP's can order even if BT Wholesale have issues specific to them.

No idea why your phone number would show Amber and the address Available but as I said in an earlier post Amber can be 101 different issues.

The BT Wholesale Broadband checker is NOT actually designed/intended for public use.

I agree the system isn't the best buy it is what it is.

Edited by j0hn83 (Tue 22-Jan-19 15:13:48)

OR have had this cabinet available for quite a few months, confirmed by them that the line was ready for GFast but the hold up was the cable link at the exchange by BTW which is what got completed a week or so ago that then linked the checker live.

When I ordered it was available and only showed amber a day or so later with the address still showing as available.

Let�s see what my BTW and OR contacts come back with because right now they seem to be blaming each other.

Oh and just to add the checker on the openreach page for my phone number says Ultrafast accepting orders.

So here is what my contact from BTW has said....

i�ve checked the status of this site, and sometimes (with it being so newly open � i.e. Thursday last week) it can take a few days to open all the child sites associated with the head end to be opened for accepting orders. This *may* be whats causing the amber flag. I have chased the team to open all the sites this afternoon, and I have in parallel asked Openreach if they have a capacity issue.
I will check BBAC again tomorrow and see if this resolves the issue of the amber flag.

Don't know if we where hopeful this would have sorted the amber status or if 24 hours wasn't long enough to allow the checker to update but its still amber today spoke to an engineer at the cabinet today and he said that its not a capacity issue at the cabinet but couldn't say anything about exchange side.

So no one is quite sure what the amber status is on my line but OR have advised BT/BTW that it shouldn't affect the order. They also got someone to go to the cabinet and check the line length which is 242m.

It seems that since I ordered the same day the exchange went live and despite the availability checker showing Available at the time that the site didn't go live until the next day on the BTW side, so OR checked and said that the order was actually cancelled on their side 3 minutes after I placed it and BTW said the same but the BT system didn't pick up on that and it showed as though the order was progressing.

So the order has been placed again and seems to have gone through correctly this time and an OR engineer should set this live Tuesday, although the guy in OR is trying to bring this forward to Monday if possible.

Installation underway. The Engineer was at the cabinet 20 minutes ago and then disappeared, still have internet so lets see what happens.

Edit: Looks like he is back at the cabinet.

Edited by deleted (Tue 29-Jan-19 10:16:10)

Hope you get some decent speeds, I am hoping PCP11 is delayed for g.fast and is a candidate for FTTP through fibre first in the future.

Looks like Openreach are doing loads of work along Drumchapel road, probably initially for the EO lines within Colquhoun park area of Bearsden.

In reply to a post by sheppy:

Hope you get some decent speeds, I am hoping PCP11 is delayed for g.fast and is a candidate for FTTP through fibre first in the future.

Looks like Openreach are doing loads of work along Drumchapel road, probably initially for the EO lines within Colquhoun park area of Bearsden.

Bearsden is currently under planning for FTTP (Of Course but with the "Greater Glasgow" announcement yesterday you might be a candidate for FTTP, I think the problem with my location in Blairdardie is the trainline and may have been the reason they decided against FTTP up here initially.

The guy showed the line doing around 160 down and 30 up, said that line looked healthy and it may be able to support faster speeds and that BT may be capping it with the IPProfile. So I might give BT a call see if we can get the profile changed as I did signup for Ultrafast Fibre 2.

BT website was showing "Minimum Speed: 170Mb" and "Download Speed: 205Mb-234Mb".

It's more for the reliability of a physical fibre cable over the copper used up there, to be honest.

Not a pressing need, it is the connection I use when I am up visiting family. Though interestingly enough there is loads of Openreach activity on Drumchapel Road, Canniesburn Road, Pendicle Road and Station Road between the Bearsden and Drumchapel exchanges, which leads me to believe they are hooking the two exchanges up for extra backhaul reasons.

BT have �upgraded� my speed today however not seeing any faster speeds yet, does it take some time to go through?

First step is what speed is the Smart Hub saying you are connected at?

A move from VDSL2 to g.Fast should give immediate improvements in sync speed and throughput

Sorry should have specified move from Ultrafast Fibre 1 to Ultrfast Fibre 2, so just a speed upgrade. I�ve not got the hub connected, connected via MT992 but will connect the smart hub tomorrow see what it says.

Does G.Fast have the same G.INP effects as normal VDSL2? If so it could well be the DLM reset from changing OR product has removed any gain for a couple of days? (I ask in ignorance of how G.Fast works wrt this).

In which case the sync speed will not change, but knowing the sync speed is worth knowing, e.g. if it was below ultrafast fibre 2 speeds already then there was no point in upgrading

Will plug in the hub see what I get on sync speed, certainly the DSL checker seems to think Ultrafast Fire 2 speeds are possible.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/x6wH3qD/6-E63-BA93-344-D-4-D25-84-A...[/img]

It doesn't have the same effect, no.
G.INP (ITU-T G.998.4) is only available on ADSL2, ADSL2+ and VDSL2.

There is no "G.INP" on G.Fast.
It's called Retransmission (RTX)

Retransmission is part of the G.Fast spec (ITU-T G.9701) so is on by default at all times.

Some limited live/historic G.Fast stats if anyone wants a look
http://browni.co.uk/dslstats/Webserver/fullstats.htm

The images are taken from DslStats which isn't quite setup for G.Fast so many graphs don't show correctly.

In reply to a post by ansam:

Will plug in the hub see what I get on sync speed, certainly the DSL checker seems to think Ultrafast Fire 2 speeds are possible.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/x6wH3qD/6-E63-BA93-344-D-4-D25-84-A...[/img]

Will plugin the Smart Hub this morning, the OR guy said he felt the line was being capped at 160 as he said he was also getting that at the cabinet (no idea if that�s significant) but said he felt the line should be capable of much more.

Looks like the speed change has taken effect now.

The Hub was showing:

249.187Mbps Downstream
34.74Mbps Upstream

When I plugged the OR modem back in getting around 220Mbps.

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Feb-19 09:43:37)

If you're getting 220M of measured HTTP throughput then your sync speed is higher than this - probably about 235M.

did the g.fast pod get added yet?