Ah - that might make sense:

[snip]
RFS 24 ALTON THATN
RFS 27 ALTON THATN
[/snip]

ALTON GU34 2PP
THATN p26
% Lines 90.47
Uplift 2.38

For some reason I thought the p meant page in another document. Perhaps it refers to the cab number.

Which would explain why that postcode can't have the service despite it having potentially high availability and not being a lot of effort to do - if it's cab 26 then it must have a cabinet and not be fed directly from the exchange (unless cab 26 is the exchange which seems unlikely)

FTTC - nothing to see here, move along.

Great find!

Here's my understanding from looking at the large spreadsheet in the ZIP file:

a) There are 800,000 rows because it covers every combination of postcode & cabinet. So if one postcode is covered by 3 cabinets, there are 3 rows.

Edit: I think this is every postcode covered by the currently planned exchanges, and every cabinet on those exchanges.

I've seen, in some other document on the first trials of VDSL, that BT has 80,000 PCPs.

b) Column D gives the exchange code and the cabinet number. You can compare with surrounding postcodes, and see who else shares the same cabinet.

c) Column F is a percentage. It seems to give the percentage of lines in the postcode that are on that cabinet.

For example, one local postcode shows 2 different cabinets. One has a value of 88.88%, and the other has 11.11%.

Not every postcode has combinations that add up to 100%. Perhaps they go across
exchange boundaries.

d) Column I is the "Deployed" column, which has this Key:
'Deployed' Key
�YES� = Part of scheduled deployment
�NO� = Removed or Deferred from Scheduled Deployment
�Blanks� = Not part of a phase / untargeted cabinet

So empty means it has no plan for either FTTC or FTTP.

From looking in my area (where the exchange was done in phase 4b, the bits marked "No" have also been marked in phase 6. I guess they are delayed a little longer...

e) The uplift figure does seem to be a multiplier of (ADSL2 speed) vs (Fibre speed).
For our postcode, the BTwholesale checker reports:
ADSL2: Average 11Mbps
Fibre range 30-36
Uplift: 3.63
And... 3.63*11 = 39.9.

I expect it is for marketing purposes, rather than technical ones.

The other mainland Spreadsheet seems to show which cabinets have gone into service (marked RFS "Ready For Service"); there's a column for new ones.

Edited by deleted (Thu 05-May-11 04:04:58)

Yes, the large XLS shows GU34 2PP to be serviced by cabinet 26 (the "{p26}").

The last 2 columns are blank, which shows (according to the key at the top) that no fibre service is planned in the schedule.

In the smaller XLS, you can see that cabinets 24 and 27 are RFC (ready for service).

Edit: 26->27. Embarrasing mistake that might have the OP's hopes rising...

Edited by deleted (Thu 05-May-11 04:28:54)

Almost.

I think the 100% means that 100% of lines in that postcode are on that cabinet.

I guess it helps marketing people to confirm just how likely someone is to get fibre service.

Makes sense - I didn't spot the 2nd row but after your excellent analysis I looked again:

GU342PP {THATN}{p26} 0 90.47 2.38
GU342PP {THATN}{p32} 0 9.52 2.16

So 100% of lines at that postcode - a major business park and serviced offices - are stuck with 3G / ADSL for the forseeable future

I can see two ways it could go...

a) That BT will find that cabinet uneconomic to upgrade, because so many businesses are already using leased lines.

The "uneconomic" part could be because no-one orders FTTC because they already have LL, or (more likely) they'd cancel the lucrative leased line, and swap to cheaper FTTC.

or

b) BT expect that business parks will go FTTP, so are being left out of FTTC plans entirely at the moment.

Perhaps they're confident that business with leased lines have different requirements from DSL products, and won't swap so easily.

And BT *have* announced that FTTC and FTTP will be mutually exclusive.

I personally haven't made my mind up yet. Am I happy that I'm relatively early on the list for FTTC? Or sad that I know this precludes FTTP?

Revisiting my list of the business areas in Alton which have offices to lease:

GU34 3AQ - not planned
GU34 2PP - not planned
GU34 5PZ - not even in the spreadsheet, checker says no

None of the central area (offices above shops) can have it either.

So that's Alton stuffed, then.

But the spreadsheet should enable me to find somewhere in another town, assuming BT haven't got a deliberate policy of avoiding businesses for the reasons you state, which were my suspicions too (leased lines present).

opens fine in notepad...

then you just CTRL+F and type in your postcode and it'll find the row if it exists.

What does phase 5a means then?

Can someone decode this for me

SMLT,LUTON,LU2 9QF,{SMLT}{p65},0,100,,6a,No,FTTC
SMLT,LUTON,LU2 0PP,{SMLT}{p65},0,48.14,,6a,No,FTTC
SMLT,LUTON,LU2 0PR,{SMLT}{p65},0,44,,6a,No,FTTC
SMLT,LUTON,LU2 0PU,{SMLT}{p65},0,75,,6a,No,FTTC
SMLT,LUTON,LU2 0PW,{SMLT}{p65},0,100,,6a,No,FTTC
SMLT,LUTON,LU2 0TG,{SMLT}{p65},0,37.14,,6a,No,FTTC

Some of the postcodes served by my pcp listed there are others

No = not planned to be done but 6a = phase 6a?

Edited by GaryPower (Thu 05-May-11 10:12:58)