Indeed, a fairly complex set of logistics for each and every cab really.

The roadworks for my cab started on Friday morning, we have the base, cab and the path between old and new cab was dug up and relaid on Saturday morning to connect the old and new cabs.

The description of the works on our councils website says;

Install 18m of 1 way poly duct in Footway,Install 4m of 1 way poly duct in Carriageway,Provide 1 Cabinet and base (NGA cabinets 1.5m x 0.5m)

Sounds like the power might (should?) go in this week, or do the power guys come later and use the duct in the carriageway laid now?

I am pretty sure our fibre is already there as there has been the big OR vans with the big reels knocking about our area on various days in the last three months.

In my experience, the power goes in weeks after the fibre has been laid. They dug up another load of pavement in a different direction to connect the power.

I'm pretty sure that the power will never go in before the cabinet - there won't be much desire for a live power cable sticking out of the ground!

I also suspect that BT wouldn't want to start the paperwork chase for the power installation until the cabinet is known to be in place and ready to accept it (ie it has the electronic kit installed too), just so the project-management don't have to re-apply for the roadworks after a problem. In fact, I really suspect that live power will always be the very last component to be added.

Combining that, plus the delays I mentioned, suggests that power will only be put in *at least* a month after the rest has been installed.

You might also find that the 2 poly ducts mentioned aren't for power either - they're more likely to be for the copper tie cable to the existing cabinet, and the fibre itself. I would have thought that the electricity contractors would want to be the ones responsible for the power ducting.

Makes sense to me too that the power would be done later and seperately, could just be the description of the works that's misleading but the 4m in the carriageway would suggest for the power as that is pretty much the distance to one of two power pickups I can see they could use and all the BT manholes and therefore I assume ducting is in the footway. The works are scheduled to be in operation for another week, so I'll keep an eye to see if they start a dig across the road for the power.

In reply to a post by Wizen:

Does anyone know roughly how often the "public" BT checker and PDF resources are updated? From what I can tell, the Openreach "When can I get it" PDF is updated around every month, but there are loads of other checkers and resources out there that seem much more out of date. The checker I'm most interested in is the BT Wholesale checker.

PDFs seem to be updated monthly. The "BT Wholesale" checker can see changes almost daily sometimes - I suspect it is tied in to a database that gets regular operational changes.

Other checkers may use the same data, but may adjust the results somewhat (like BT Infinity does). Marketing pages often end up way out-of-date.

I'm expecting my enablement date to change from Sep 30th to something sooner any day now, as all the cabinets that applied for planning are in, the black/yellow fibre has been installed in many of them and the ones that have fibre also have power as of 2 weeks ago (mine included). I'm willing to bet my cabinet is RFS, but all the checkers aren't updated yet, but I can't be sure.

It is easy to feel ("wish" may be a better term) that the checker is the only link missing. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have turned out that way so far.

Don't forget that both cabinets & exchange have to be live - and your exchange might be a child to some parent exchange that must also be ready (or at least ready for child exchanges)

Evidence also suggests that the set of "exchange+cabinets" won't go live until there are at least 10 cabinets ready.

Also don't forget that the "black/yellow fibre" isn't actually the fibre itself - I have a feeling it is the micro-ducting that the fibre will get blown down.

My cabinet has been sat there with power applied for a couple of months now. Well after the cab was first powered up I saw a couple of Openreach engineers there. Had a chat and found that they were putting in the links between the cabs. They told me that the fibre still hadn't been run to the cab so power was one of the earlier things to have been completed.

In reply to a post by rhino7:

My cabinet has been sat there with power applied for a couple of months now. Well after the cab was first powered up I saw a couple of Openreach engineers there. Had a chat and found that they were putting in the links between the cabs. They told me that the fibre still hadn't been run to the cab so power was one of the earlier things to have been completed.

I guess all we can glean from this is that they do this "as and when" - if power company can get their cable in quicker than OR can get their fibre in then that's what happens - and vice versa.

Huh

Its not always doom n gloom for cab dates etc. Our exchange was set for july this year. No cabs were in place and it was moved back to sept. In the past 21 days 11 of the 19 cabs have just been installed and 2 of these are now ready for service. We have already had orders successfully placed with us on the two said cabs. So that's a very quick turnaround to say no cabs where even in place 21 days ago.

However, the cabs in this exchange area are not being served by fibre from the local exchange, but from a larger exchange (oldham) which has had fttc for over 18mths already hence why as soon as the cab is powerrd it can be made live as no exchange upgrades are required. I gurss they are just extending the already laid fibre cables from the nearest cab from oldham

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Jul-11 23:44:58)

Well, all three cabinets went in last week and this morning they were digging across the road to lay the power ducting on one of them (power itself, who knows?). So, it looks like for our three cabs there's some reasonable co-ordination going on.

Lucky you. Theres no digging work or any signs of FTTC cabs being installed in, in my area, despite the adsl checker still saying it will be ready by 30th September.