Fibre deplyment

Can someone explain what happens from day one when BT start to roll out fibre to a town.
i know that they start with ducts and lots of times have to clear them, but what is next after that,
This is for FTTC not FTTP

From everything we can Glean.

For Cabs

1. Check economics for each Cab
2. Find and Mark a location for the FTTC cab for each cab approved in 1.
2a. Obtain permission in areas where it is required .
3. Provide Plinth, often same day as 4. (2 hours work!)
4. Provide Cab ( 2 hours work ) as factory assembled
5. Provide duct and tie cables between cabs
6. Provide Power
7. Provide Fibre backhaul
7a. Clear duct blockages if found during 6.
8. Commission and test
9 Provide customers as ISPs order. After Exchange step 6.

For 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7a: Roadworks need booking through local authority, if necessary. Can cause delays between 2 weeks & 3 months.


Exchange.

1. Plan Head end exchange to cover required exchanges.(if not already live)
2. Provide Head end equipment in Exchange 9 if not already live)
3. Connect fibres in conjunction with Cab step 6.
4. Commission and test..with Cab step 7.
5. Declare live date to ISPs
6. Connect Cable link to ISP backhaul when ordered.

Steps 1, 2, 5 and 6. are not required if the Head end is already live.

Dates for different ISPs may differ depending on when they order the Cable link.

Edited by kitcat (Thu 11-Oct-12 20:29:13)

For Cabs

Add duct work and tie cables between the 2 cabs.

For the cabs:

For 2a, there's an extra bit. Although many cabinets don't need planning permission as such, they do need to get comments back from (at least) the highways department - who can object to the location. I'm pretty sure that BT (or their contractors) are co-ordinating with the councils, even if it isn't strictly called "permission".

After 2a, some existing PCP need a re-shell too.

For 3, 4, 5, 6a: Roadworks need booking through local authority, if necessary. Can cause delays between 2 weeks & 3 months.

For 6: There might not be any ducts at present, so trenches might need to be dug.

For exchange:
Doesn't the exchange need to be connected to the 21CN fibre network?

Openreach themselves say this. There's no more detail, but they do show times.

WWombat ( & btbert)

Thanks for the added parts I have edited the post

I left off the reshell to keep it simple, as these are fairly rare and and may need doing without FTTC from the state of some cabs.

The cablelink connects to the fibre backhaul for each ISP, so up to them to obtain it either rented from BT or their own. The exchanges done for commercial rollout will all have BT fibre already and are likely to have connectivity for Talktalk & Sky as well. (each cover over 2000 exchanges from their last reports). I think Openreach talked about only 800-1000 Headend exchanges in total.

Each existing Cabinet will have duct to it already to carry the copper cable which is much bigger than the fibre. There may be some where the duct is full but I expect these to be taken out in step 1, unless the records are wrong when they will be the cabs that do not get completed as duct costs a fortune to lay whoever does it. (could mole plough in some places but unlikely untill BDUK kicks in)

ok that all seems good but a bt man that was laying cable with a few of his friends said to me that he was laying fibre right now and we dont get cabs until the 22nd of this month and i get my cab later on.
I tried to have a peek at how he was laying it and from what i could see the cable was on its side on some sort of drum and being fed into some sort of machine then into a hole.

How thick?

You can see some machines for blowing fibre here, from a manufacturer:
The fibre feeder
driven by compressor
fed by a spool of fibre

And from an end-user's diary of an FTTC install, you can see:
This section looks like the microducting
Fibre being "installed"

The author of that last link has labelled it as being "spliced", but i think the fibre is being blown at that point. Here's what I think I can see:
Blown-up version of photo, showing:
- On the right of the workbench is a large splitter. We can see a stack of splice trays.
- On top of the workbench is the fibre blowing head, coloured red. I think it is like this one here.
- The head is driven by air, fed through the blue tubes.
- The air comes from a compressor on the left side of the photo, labelled "Factair blown fibre compressor" (a giveaway, right?)
- The fibre itself is a yellow line, leading into the red blowing head.
- The fibre comes from a grey drum, which seems to have a shaped lid. I imagine the lid is shaped to reduce the likelihood of snagging, and possibly to reduce the effect of twisting.
- There is one white line (tube) leading from the workbench to the splitter. Is this the tube that the fibre is heading down?

There are also some photos on an old TBB news article

Not sure how thick it was but a could definitely see a mobile compressor in use at the BT man hole

Have some videos just might get them sorted out this weekend two years after they were took

That'd be good