Warwicknet (Glide) and BT Openreach

About 3 years ago our Cabinet got up graded to a brand new shiny Fibre cabinet, offering FTTC to my estate. Unfortunately this wasn't done by BT Openreach, but by a company called Warwicknet (who are now called Glide). They are a buisness only broadband provider. Now i have read previously that once someone takes over the cabinet, no one else can.

Therefore my question if anybody knows, is as per the above, if a company takes over the cabinet and upgrades it for Fibre, can someone else use it.

I ask because we had a company who said they were working for BT knock on our door yesterday as they were apparently doing measures on the line. Now i'm only getting all of this second hand from the wife, but it appeared to me that they were looking to install FTTP to all the properties as they literally went round to every house and were measuring the lines. I didnt think this was possible as someone else basically already had upgraded the cabinet?

This all sounds rather odd. You are saying the FTTC cabinet which is not Openreach only provides Business Broadband services, so why has it been built on a residential housing estate?

Anyway if BT or their contractors are surveying to install FTTP that is good news because FTTP is not supplied from a local cabinet even if it is an Openreach one. So the fact that there is a cabinet whoever operates it is completely irrelevant.

FTTP connections go back via an aggregation node in the fibre network to a head end exchange which may not be your local one.

FTTP (fibre to the premise) is completely independent from FTTC (fibre to the cabinet).

If Openreach decides to provide FTTP to you - which is great news by the way! - then the cables will use existing Openreach ducts or poles, but they will be brought back to an underground chamber called a "fibre aggregation node". Even if there is an FTTC cabinet serving your property, FTTP won't touch it. One day in the future, when everyone has FTTP and copper is no longer required, the FTTC cabinets will be removed.

The other point is, if Glide has installed a cabinet for their business services, it's almost certainly completely separate from Openreach's network rather than an "upgrade". You see the same with Virgin Media, Gigaclear etc.

Thank you for responding.

The existing cabinet also serves a commercial estate. From what i can tell cabinet didnt fall inside BT's upgrade plans, so the local MP put some pressure on the "better broadband for nottingham" scheme and we was added in at the last minute. I think BT Openreach allowed Warwicknet to come in and install their Fibre cabinet because after the survey they released it also served commercial properties as well as the residential estate.

Warwicknet will sell you broadband but you do have to pay buisness rates (ie about £75 a month for FTTC)

Ah thats interesting so FTTP is not supplied from the cabinet, its from the node. Therefore we may end up in a situation where we have FTTP and adsl through BT (or other providers like sky etc) and only FTTC through Warwicknet.

Openreach would get into lots of trouble if it had not allowed a sub LLU operator to install a cabinet.

Two VDSL2 cabinets can coexist, since this is what is happening as Openreach FTTC cabinets fill up, i.e. additional cabinets are added. What this does mean though is that vectoring (noise cancellation) cannot take place.

So nothing stopping Openreach adding their own FTTC service if they want to commercially.

Glide can do FTTP too, they install a VDSL2 cabinet as standard but business customers can pay extra for FTTP too.

Thank you for your reply and for explaining that FTTP is from the Node and not the cabinet.

Apparently Glide have their own network, but they definitely use the existing old cabinet. I'm pretty sure they must use the BT network as they definitely wasn't digging up half of Nottingham to bring their own network through like Diamond Cable did all those years ago for whats now Virgin.

The cabinet took about 3 days to install, and they put the new Fibre Cabinet around 50 yards away from the old cabinet, but dug a trench from the old cabinet to the new one (so i know they are connected).

Its been a bit of a pain, as most people have never heard of Warwicknet/Glide but i've seen them around a few places on industrial estates, i think they pick up the slack on area's that BT deemed not profitable (ie an industrial estate that might have 5 or 6 properties compared to a houseing estate that has 200-300)

Thank you for your response.

Thats very informative, i did read else where (granted a few years ago) that if someone installed a fibre cabinet off a normal cabinet, then no one else could install one, But this appears to be incorrect, Open reach can install a cabinet even after Glide have installed one as well, which is great news as it gives us some compeition as currently we can have 80mb with glide for £75 a month, or 2mp with sky/bt for their adsl services.

Makes it all the more strange that 3 years ago just before the fibre cabinet wasinstalled we went from being "inside scope" and quickly went to "on site survey" on the BT tracker, then back down to "outside scope", 3 months later a Warwicknet cabinet turned up on the estate.

A lot will depend on whether the two VDSL2 band plans can be made to work together, so technically possible but might be messy if no one co-operates.

The OP was asking if FTTP could be possible even though it is not an Openreach cabinet as it looked like a survey for OR FTTP was happening. I don't think an additional FTTC cabinet was mentioned and that is very unlikely now that Openreach are concentrating on FTTP. I know what I would prefer and it wouldn't be FTTC.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The other point is, if Glide has installed a cabinet for their business services, it's almost certainly completely separate from Openreach's network rather than an "upgrade". You see the same with Virgin Media, Gigaclear etc.

All of Warwicknet's FTTC cabinets are connected to an OpenReach PCP.
It wouldn't make any sense to use a FTTC deployment in the UK without access to the copper pairs which serve houses.
It would make even less sense to install those copper pairs yourself as part of an FTTC deployment.

Warwicknet (now known as Glide apparently) do VDSL2 right.
Packages are up to 100Mb with Vectoring and G.INP.

Edited by j0hn83 (Tue 12-May-20 14:33:25)

the only think that they can provide is FTTP they cannot provide FTTC if the cabinet has been unbundled

I believe you are saying that Openreach can only offer FTTP (assuming they go ahead with installing the infrastructure). I agree with that statement. Unbundled FTTC cabs must be quite rare.

Edited by Realalemadrid (Tue 12-May-20 14:41:55)

openreach cannot provide FTTC where a SLU (sub loop unbundled) cab is already present - it could only provide FTTP there if it chose to do so

curious about what company that would be as the only people doing that work would be openreach unless this is some else trying to do something else -- I ask because we had a company who said they were working for BT knock on our door yesterday as they were apparently doing measures on the line.

Openreach would not need to do any of the above - sounds very fishy and odd

any idea what company it was

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

I believe you are saying that Openreach can only offer FTTP (assuming they go ahead with installing the infrastructure). I agree with that statement. Unbundled FTTC cabs must be quite rare.

Glide seem to have quite a few, they are mapped here:
https://glidegroup.co.uk/fibre-leased-lines-voip/fttc

Sorry unfortunately not, i was at Work and it was the wife who spoke to them as she was trying to take 2 small kids on their daily exercise.

Agree, very odd i had assumed since Warwicknet (Glide) had now installed a cabinet we were stuck with them (they do offer FTTC & FTTP though so its not too bad, its just expensive)

I can only assume it was BT looking to install FTTP as i think they get alot of calls from our estate as the ADSL is pitiful here, and the BT tracker constantly shows that nothing is in the plan for future developments.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A lot will depend on whether the two VDSL2 band plans can be made to work together, so technically possible but might be messy if no one co-operates.

I’m not sure why the poster’s question isn’t been answered in very simple terms.

There’s nothing to see here. Andrew you will be well aware that Warwicknet have been putting up their own fibre cabinets for donkeys years next to Openreach PCPs. This in no way stops Openreach putting their own ones there also and I’m sure they have.

Any talk of FTTP could be from Openreach, Warwicknet or someone else!

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-May-20 08:42:06)

My FTTC service in Gloucestershire is supplied by Glide in the same manner as the OP's. Glide use the Sub Loop Unbundling (SLU) option from Openreach to intercept the copper loop at the PCP or SCP to deliver FTTC. In our case there is a business estate adjacent to a residential estate and that has allowed Glide to achieve the economies of scale to make it economically feasible to deliver FTTC to a group of some 30 houses on the outskirts of the village. The village itself has FTTP from Gigaclear delivered under the Fastershire funding arrangement. Glide are currently investigating installing FTTP to our estate but that is proving harder to justify economically. Glide are not just a business broadband provider, they provide broadband to University residential blocks and large residential flat buildings.

What’s your point? I know all that.

Thank you Peter, some of us didn't know that and that's why I enjoy browsing forums like this.