In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Did you include
Conservation area
Checks on objects to cabinet citing
Possible lack of space of pavement
Distance and cost of getting power to cabinet
A person with a campaign may have influenced things
Distance from cabinet to the existing fibre ducting
Distance of homes from the cabinet
Distance of new ducting needed between old and new cabinet

The key things are proximity to fibre, power, and number of homes passed. The rest don't get picked up until the cabinet goes into planning.

Well, the only advice I can think of is to rally local support, canvas all the properties and get signatures of people willing to switch to FTTC if it was available, then get the MP's and local papers involved. Produce graphical evidence of the areas covered/not covered using google maps.

Most of all don't give up.

Thanks for the information.
I have emailed the local papers and am trying to get in touch with the MP.
I have designed a leaflet that I will post through houses affected on the estate.
Lets see where that gets us!

You are doing a great job Paul.
Keep up the good work.

I think a petition would also be worthwhile, whilst collecting the signatures you could also point out how little it actually costs the end user to move over to fibre, you may get more people to sign then.

However, a significant amount of the decision rests on the cost to deploy - in particular the cost to supply a power connection, and the cost to feed fibre - which requires space in ducting going in the right direction, or new ducting.

That makes a lot of sense. I've now got examples of cabinets that literally have 30 houses connected to them in the middle of nowhere. The one cab I'm thinking of has had to have two sections of ducting added (I think about 120 meters) to get fibre to the cab.

However, your comment about those cabinets being viable for BDUK isn't my understanding. We had advice from a lawyer who specialises in the subject and he said if more than two principle providers (e.g. the area had cable on a large proportion of properties) then it wasn't possible for a subsidy to be applied for.

I also don't think the council could pay for the sub-station to be upgrade. In that example, the area becomes viable for FTTP rather than FTTC. BT will not talk about FTTP.


Regards,


Gareth

In addition, ask the people you are leafleting to contact/write your MP too. The more pressure applied to said MP the more he/she will be inclined to press BT. You could even provide a sample letter that could simply be signed and posted.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 12:32:27)

The council/local authority runs an Open Market Review, followed by a public consultation.

Check your authorities project to see what they have done.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5555-warwickshire... has an example of the sort of info that should become available.

An area with Virgin Media would be considered Grey for superfast, but if the cabinet is also serving streets that are white it might get service. So it is very much a case of checking Virgin Media coverage.

First let me say you are doing a good job. Don't get disheartened, because this effort will get rewarded in the end.

However, I don't think *any* of your actions will make BT change their mind over the commercial rollout - they will still look at the spreadsheet & use that to make a yes/no decision.

Why do I say it that bluntly? I believe that the BDUK process now binds BT in this way. To show that some places deserve BDUK funding, BT have to show the commercial reasoning - and then *act like they believe it* across the board. The knock-on effect is that there can no longer be any grey areas, and no extra human judgement ("gut feeling") - because to do so will invalidate *all* of the BDUK process. It also means that MP's can't override the spreadsheet by dint of persuasion, nor can media campaigns embarrass BT into changing tack.

Having said that, there are changes possible - as shown by Ronski. These changes can only come about because the spreadsheet contains mistakes that get fixed, or because one of the commercial assumptions gets refactored - perhaps the fibre spine changes route, or the power company reduces the charge for supply of a new connection. Certainly BT have come back and done some infill, so it isn't impossible. Conversely we have seen the opposite happen (though rarely) - where a cabinet proves to be no longer viable even after the box has been installed. Those cases prove that changes to the cost of power & fibre alone can make a significant difference to viability.

The only factor that I think you could cause to be changed, on a very local basis, is the take-up factor - which might mean a detailed survey of the residents - something a bit more than a simple petition.

I don't believe that the amount of Virgin competition is a factor that is going to cause a change. BT will know the facts that you do, and part of the commercial decision-making will be based on it. Whether you think it is sane or not, having Virgin present is not nearly a negative point, and having Virgin absent is not nearly a positive one.

That's my belief about the commercial rollout. Everything changes for the BDUK one.

There, it is humans in the council that make the decisions about the rollout, and they *can* be persuaded by MPs, media campaigns & petitions. Facts help further than the emotions, so a residents survey will help - and surveying those with Virgin available will help too (even if only in your own understanding of takeup).

Someone else brought up the point about whether BDUK would even apply. I'll reply to that separately.

For now, the obvious question I should ask is this: Have you asked BT/Openreach if there is anything that can be done at a local level to improve viability for that particular cabinet?

And if/when you get in touch with the BDUK contacts, the same questions will apply. Councils going for BDUK funding will normally have some wedbsite information, which invariable includes a survey. It *is* worth getting the residents to fill that survey in.

In reply to a post by garethr:

However, a significant amount of the decision rests on the cost to deploy - in particular the cost to supply a power connection, and the cost to feed fibre - which requires space in ducting going in the right direction, or new ducting.

That makes a lot of sense. I've now got examples of cabinets that literally have 30 houses connected to them in the middle of nowhere. The one cab I'm thinking of has had to have two sections of ducting added (I think about 120 meters) to get fibre to the cab.

When you say you've "now got examples of cabinets", do you mean just that these examples are viable? Or is there something else about them?

However, your comment about those cabinets being viable for BDUK isn't my understanding. We had advice from a lawyer who specialises in the subject and he said if more than two principle providers (e.g. the area had cable on a large proportion of properties) then it wasn't possible for a subsidy to be applied for.

Are you sure the lawyer is talking about cabinets, or areas?

Certainly the concept of being an NGA white area goes to a finer level of granularity than a cabinet's coverage area. As Mr Saffron posted, Warwickshire have coverage maps that appear to be based on postcodes (they're fascinating to zoom in on), and are asking the public to identify anomolies.

There, BDUK would certainly show the streets that have no Virgin presence as NGA white areas - and so be candidates for NGA subsidy.

But what does this mean when considered at a cabinet level?

My impression is that subsidising a cabinet is *not* an all-or-nothing affair. Rather the subsidy would apply to the proportion of customers that live in the white zones, but that the "bid winner" would have to use it's own money (and commercial criteria) for the remaining proportion.

Perhaps this is an issue that TBB can take up: What happens where a cabinet area has a mixture of NGA white & grey zones (or even black zones)?

After that, the decision then depends on who decides. If BT themselves would decide, I guess they get told the amount of subsidy available, and the decision will be based on whether the volume of subsidy available is enough to take the cabinet over the threshold into viability.

If the council decide, then I guess they just get told how much subsidy is required to make each cabinet viable. They then have to choose (on a subsidy-spent per person basis?) which cabinets get done, until their budget is used up.

I also don't think the council could pay for the sub-station to be upgrade. In that example, the area becomes viable for FTTP rather than FTTC. BT will not talk about FTTP.

Perhaps the council has other subtle ways to get the cost of supply spread over multiple parties (or years).

I guess you say that the area becomes viable for FTTP because that is unpowered equipment, right?

If so, I'd re-phrase that. I'd say that FTTP may become the only possible candidate, but it doesn't make it any more viable. Certainly the lack of FTTC makes FTTP-on-demand unlikely.

Another course is to just wait, until some other infrastructure change causes an upgrade to the electricity supply independently. Then the cabinet viability may swing the other way.