3 month increments - 3rd change without much conviction

FTTP availability for my cabinet was initially given as March 2023, then that turned into June 2023, which became September 2023 and has now been moved to December 2023.

For the 8th time, work programmed on one.network and bidb.uk for doing something with dangling fibre cables on 2 telephone poles in the village with CBTs fitted has been changed to a different date. There has been no work done at all on them in ages, not seen an OR van nearby in months.

The housing area and the village each side of us on the same exchange have FTTP service and bidb.uk shows multiple FTTP installations active in each.

What do we have to do to get that last duck in the row?

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

FTTP availability for my cabinet was initially given as March 2023, then that turned into June 2023, which became September 2023 and has now been moved to December 2023.

That seems normal. There could be many reasons why its been delayed

What do we have to do to get that last duck in the row?


It probably not the last 🦆! Seriously though just because the cbt is there, doesn't mean the spine cabling has been done, any of the splitters etc. The work at the headend exchange may not have been or theres a delay in provisioning the olt .

In my road they installed the CBTs before the splitter had been installed in the footway box at the end of the road. Fortunately that work was done 3 weeks later and was able to order a couple of months after that.

I appreciate that it's more complicated than it seems, I expected that given that service is available from cabinets both nearer and further from the exchange (yes I know FTTP doesn't route the same way as the copper) that it would be fairly straightforward.

One of the poles with dangling cables has another slot booked on one.network in 3 day's time so maybe something will happen then.

It is unlikely you will see openreach vans as they are using a lot of contractors mainly MJ QUINN

but it could be an contractor doing work

If you See BT EE people knocking on doors thats a fair bet your area is due to go live and they are trying to get customers early

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

It is unlikely you will see openreach vans as they are using a lot of contractors mainly MJ QUINN

It varies massively from area to area, they have never used MJ Quinn for FTTP in my area.

Round my way Openreach used Fibre Network Solutions for the fibre work.

And indeed something has started to happen, and a fairly large part of the village (but not properties on the main A-road passing through, except for the pub) is now able to order FTTP. Everywhere that can is either on the local village road where Cabinet 5 is located or on roads that branch off it directly. bidb.uk shows at least one customer active, I can see 2 CBT connections (one is to the pub) on separate telephone poles so clearly people know about it.

Opposite my road entrance there is a telephone pole with dangling fibre cable coils, and now just south of the pole two sets of underground chambers in the footpath about 12m apart have had a trench cut between them and it seems either a new duct install or a repair of an existing duct is being effected. A bit odd given that the whole road and footpath was totally rebuilt about 5 years ago. This pole, and all of the next 4 heading north along the A-road, have small yellow signs attached reading "Caution - Overhead Fibre".

At least some evidence of local OR-related activity has appeared, which does reassure me that the whole plan hasn't been dropped for some obscure reason.

Finally the BT checker is showing FTTP availability at my address, a week ago an OR contractor was working across the road with an underground chamber open and a 12 port CBT on display. I asked him what was happening, apparently there had been some sort of power problem and the CBT in the chamber had been installed in March but only powered up and tested recently after some other works related to fibre connections had been done. Interestingly there are still some other houses on the A-road through the south end of the village that are not yet enabled, not sure what is preventing that.

Now to see how rapidly I can get an upgrade from my provider, I don't yet know if they can see the newly updated FTTP status of my house.

Yay. Good luck with the install

In reply to a post by Taras:

Yay. Good luck with the install

1st December is the date.

Not sure how it will go, the place I'd like the ONT is on the lounge wall (shared with the garage on the side of the house) right where the VDSL modem lives now with power fed from my UPS.

I don't know how the internal fibre cable can be routed there as the landline duct pops up right near the downstairs toilet on the front of the house but the internal wiring was put in during the house build in 1995 and the master socket is the other side of the lounge, the wiring to it is not visible at all with the exception of the data extension cable across to the VDSL modem.

I shall have to discuss this with the installer on the day and see what options are possible.

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

I asked him what was happening, apparently there had been some sort of power problem and the CBT in the chamber had been installed in March but only powered up and tested recently after some other works related to fibre connections had been done.

Just a FYI.... CBT's can't be powered up as such. They are completely passive with no power of any kind in the Openreach underground chamber.
If there was a power problem delaying FTTP it was a power problem in the exchange.

Don't take what all OR engineers or their contractors say as gospel. Many will dumb down responses for the general public, some will flat out lie, and some simply don't have a clue how it all works (they don't actually need to know how it works, just how to do their own particular role).

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

I asked him what was happening, apparently there had been some sort of power problem and the CBT in the chamber had been installed in March but only powered up and tested recently after some other works related to fibre connections had been done.

Just a FYI.... CBT's can't be powered up as such. They are completely passive with no power of any kind in the Openreach underground chamber.
If there was a power problem delaying FTTP it was a power problem in the exchange.

Don't take what all OR engineers or their contractors say as gospel. Many will dumb down responses for the general public, some will flat out lie, and some simply don't have a clue how it all works (they don't actually need to know how it works, just how to do their own particular role).

My mistake, he didn't actually say that the CBT couldn't be powered up, he simply said that there had been "a power problem" that meant that the final testing couldn't be done earlier until the necessary fixes had been done.

It's not clear to me exactly how the fibres are routed or where the local aggregation is done. The exchange itself is about 4km away and I'm reasonably sure that the fibres to our local PCP come in from a different direction as I saw them installed back in 2014/15 but I don't know if the fibres for the FTTC cabinet are the same as those supplying FTTP.