I think it highly likely that when Openreach say an exchange is accepting orders it means Openreach customers can order.

Nothing to do with end users being able to order until one of those customers, i.e. BTW, Sky and TT, enable it.

Tommy

You have to look at the scale of the task.

Take Hereford as a nice defined area, with from city centre areas, through suburbs to rural outskirts.

From the Dec 11 file. there are 104 cabs of which 26 were not planned at that date.

Openreach wouldn't be able to install all 78 at once as the amount of resource would exceed the locally available, so they would do several batches.

Each batch would only be a size that the Openreach engineers could cope with likely orders over the first weeks of the go live period ( otherwise people would complain about the wait). Say 20 Cabs with 400 on at 10% would give 800 installs over 10 weeks is 80 per week at 4 per day per person is 20 people. They are unlikely to have this many free in the area but possible.

So the 2nd batch would follow 10-12 weeks after the first to spread out all the resource peaks. It takes 4 batches to do the planned cabs spread over a year!.

To wait until 50% are done would just lengthen the order to install time when go live happens, so they might as well start when the first couple are ready to spread the installs over a better profile in each area.

Are you going from a "private" copy of the hidden exchange/cabinet spreadsheets, or from the public information in the Openreach "where & when" website?

The reason I ask is that the public files now seem to include a lot of the North Yorkshire BDUK exchanges - some in the latest 'Coming Soon' list for March 2013, and the rest mixed between 2013 and 2014 in 'future exchanges'.

That makes around 120-130 exchanges that are publicly visible in those lists that haven't been officially announced yet.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I think it highly likely that when Openreach say an exchange is accepting orders it means Openreach customers can order.

Nothing to do with end users being able to order until one of those customers, i.e. BTW, Sky and TT, enable it.

Openreach customers don't enable exchanges they enable handover points. Exchanges going into an AO state is irrelevant to SPs and is purely for the benefit of Joe Public.

There's a fair whack of infill going on as well, cabinets not done in the first pass getting upgraded as they've had fibre brought closer to them with another cab being enabled and the maths then making sense.

In the areas I've been working with of 9 cabinets covering the area only 1 was enabled in the initial phase however another 3 have since been added due to the sums changing with hopefully a 4th being added to that list shortly.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Openreach customers don't enable exchanges they enable handover points.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I simplified. Logically, getting a GEA link installed enables the CP's MSAN to take FTTx feeds . Same thing in real English as opposed to technical jargon!

Maybe I should have written a book.

Exchanges going into an AO state is irrelevant to SPs and is purely for the benefit of Joe Public.

Really? Evidence please. Surely it is up to CPs to inform Joe Public when they are able to accept orders, not Openreach who does not accept orders from Joe Public.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Really? Evidence please. Surely it is up to CPs to inform Joe Public when they are able to accept orders, not Openreach who does not accept orders from Joe Public.

Easy - go find one of the examples where a cabinet was taking orders before the exchange was actually marked AO. There have been a few here and there. Cabinets going back to an existing L2S at an existing handover point. I think Chrysalis is one.

EDIT: Yep he is - http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4186181-re-...

Service providers take handovers from switches not exchanges, from their point of view the bit that matters is that the availability checker indicates availability, this is at a cabinet level.

Edited by deleted (Wed 12-Dec-12 10:07:14)

Falmouth exchange which houses an often visited by press fibre handover node if memory is working right, takes feeds from eight surrounding exchange areas.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Falmouth exchange which houses an often visited by press fibre handover node if memory is working right, takes feeds from eight surrounding exchange areas.

Indeed. This is one of the steps Openreach are taking towards closing exchanges and reducing their number from thousands to hundreds to dozens eventually.

yes that seems to be the case, I was live before my exchange even said AO.

The only check thats really relevant is what the cabinet status is. BTw had their systems ready for orders whilst my exchange was still CS.