You've probably read that BT (or rather, OR) got reprimanded for trying to put more realistic dates on cabs going live - that's why their own checker now gives the most conservative estimate possible. I personally (and a lot of people here) think that people shouldn't have made the complaints which resulted in that reprimand - OR were trying to give more realistic dates which they often hit, and often missed. But at least they were trying. Now they're forced to give extremely conservative estimates which often mean next to nothing, i.e. one cabinet in my area was not on that leaked spreadsheet, no roadworks were planned, and then it just got installed and went live; and the first time roadworks.org reported it was the morning they turned up.

So, given the above complications, the best thing anyone can do is Email the enquiries@NGA address about their specific line/cabinet and go from that advice. The various contractors turn up when they're told, then OR can cross-connect it as they're available... has anyone got any data indicating how many demands for cross-connecting a PCP to a newly-installed fibre cabinet are "raised" every week? It must be a lot.

I think everything has been said, hasn't it, just calm down and order your FTTC, it'll be good. You asked for it and now you've got it.

Edited by deleted (Sun 06-Oct-13 09:31:05)

In reply to a post by sjdean:

In reply to a post by David_W:

It's your choice what to do. As has been explained many times, the planning takes place over wide areas and can be affected by factors that are not readily apparent on the ground, such as wayleave and section 58 issues arising when ductwork problems are discovered.

Not this again. There's no wayleaves, no s58, no power issues, cabs are just idle waiting for someone to kick into gear to sort out the duct issues, survey, paint lines, post a roadworks notice, dig up and sort everything out. Why my cab is being left to being one of the last to resolve the issues with I don't know. I can only hope they at least know WHERE the problems are, otherwise it could be much much longer.

You can assert all you like - but, assuming the original commissioning date has passed, there is a delay for some reason, otherwise the cabinet would be accepting orders. Unless you know the network topology intimately and have access to all the engineering information, you have no basis on which to say "there are no issues".

For all you know, BT Openreach attempted to bring up the connection to this string of cabinets at the handover node and the port in the layer 2 switch there is defective, or there's a fibre break that would overload the remaining good links if the remaining six cabinets were enabled, or it's clear that an aggregation node is defective because the error rate in the fibre network is awful. Once you're dealing with a part-commissioned system, you can't just switch it off and pull it apart - you have to schedule the engineering work. At this point, if you're unlucky, you find another issue arises whilst planning the fix for the known one - maybe the tube you need to blow new fibre through is blocked or a duct has collapsed, so you need to bring back a team of engineers that have been redeployed to another area and are now tied up there, or you need to dig where there's a section 58 issue or council restrictions on roadworks.

I don't work for BT Openreach or their contractors, but I used to work for a networking company and I know the sort of surprises that commissioning can throw up, especially when there's several teams involved on different parts of the project.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

In reply to a post by David_W:

BT Openreach and their contractors will target their efforts to where it makes the most difference. This may mean a particular cabinet with issues sits for a while, but it doesn't mean a complete lack of progress. The six cabinets you mention may be affected by a common issue remote to the immediate area. You may not see any more paint on the road, because new roadworks may be unnecessary.

Eh? Lack of paint means roadworks are necessary? You realise you also contradicted yourself? If a cabinet is sitting with no action, how is that anything but a complete lack of progress? Sure, I do realise things happen in the background, but currently, very little progress is actually being made. It would be nice to see a few marks on the road indicating where to dig in preparation.

The one cab that they have worked on recently and should in theory be good to go, is not going to be enabled before mid-November.

The six cabinets are dotted around the area, no commonality as far as I can see, different locations, just individual issues affecting the rollout. More likely as others say they ran into problems and went onto other areas that weren't so problematic. Which is fair enough, but if they're working on other areas, then they aren't working on mine.

If you'd stop letting your own "I have my RIGHTS to my fibre NOOOOOOOW" approach (which is how it's coming across, even though I'm sure it's just your frustration boiling over) cloud your judgment, and read what we're all trying to tell you, it would help.


As has been said by another poster, I suggested that the issue relating to those six cabinets might be common to them all, and remote from the area. In that case, there'll be no new paint on the roads in your area, because the fix will not require roadworks in the immediate area. Openreach and their contractors don't spray paint on roads or dig holes for fun!

If any faulty ducts have already been repaired and all power hook-ups and tie cables are in, chances are that they won't be digging again in the local area. Any fibre issues are likely to be resolved by blowing additional fibres into the tubing that's already in the ground, or by running additional / replacement tubing into already repaired ducts. However, that's not to say something else won't arise that requires fresh roadworks. There could be a fibre break in a run of tubing with no spare capacity remaining in a run of ducting that is now also full. Other street works might have damaged a duct after the fibre system was initially installed, allowing water ingress to flood the system.


It's a failure of causality to say "it's all there, there's no obvious works going on and they've turned the rest of the area on, so they've walked off the job and can't be bothered". You have no access to the information that allows you to draw any sort of firm conclusion.

Fixing faults is a methodical and iterative process of dealing with known issues and testing again. Until the system passes all commissioning tests, even the commissioning engineer has no idea what surprises remain to be dealt with.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

In reply to a post by David_W:

We had cabinets sitting on the ground for over a year in this town before anything was enabled. I don't know why - but it's best simply to accept it's ready when it's accepting orders. What's best - ordering a service that has been tested and that BT Openreach are confident will work to specification, or having a service installed (potentially in place of a working ADSL connection) that is unreliable?

I can accept financial priorities elsewhere, again, it's just annoying the lack of progress even for the simplest of tasks. NGA say my cab is due for the start of 2014, so Im guessing my cab probably won't be upgraded much before February when originally scheduled for September.

Im not complaining about the delay, but quite clearly that original estimate (September 2013) was wrong and they were only prioritising a subset of cabinets in the area. Therefore it is fundamentally incorrect to advise September. While I accept ducting issues, if all the cabinets were prioritised, wouldn't they have known about the ducting issues back in August? If they knew about them back in August, much of the work would underway by now? Clearly not. There's not even a hint of any work roadworks notice, or paint on the ground. Therefore this cabinet is one of the last on the list and the planning process appears to be very disjointed.

If it takes six weeks just to activate a cabinet, Im not surprised a cabinet with issues would take at least four months from now! They got to survey, plan, get permission, there's probably two to three months, the work will probably only be a few days, then another six weeks for activation. January/February.

No, I I think the drawn out process is unacceptable given how fast they can work and I still only get the impression BT work on prioritising a subset of cabinets, activating 10 cabinets then fit in the rest as they can.

You are complaining about the delay - that's why you posted. You are assuming that the lack of obvious roadworks in the area means BT Openreach have given up on your area and unfairly (at least that's what I'm picking up) moved on to another area, despite there being a myriad of possible explanations for the delay and the fix quite possibly not requiring roadworks in your immediate area.

This is a complex national roll-out with a huge number of dependencies at local, regional and even national level (if a ship sinks with a bunch of cabinets on the way from the Huawei factory in China, there might be a sudden shortage of new equipment and spare parts might have to be used to build replacements for damaged cabinets, even though BT Openreach deliberately went for a two vendor policy). BT Openreach want return on sunk costs - they've done most of the work in your area, and they will want income from it, but they don't say "sjdean has had his deadline put back twice, so we're going to pull an install crew off a job 60 miles away to fix the fault on Monday knowing we will throw away the entire deployment strategy for the region for the next two months by doing so".

The issue won't be financial now. Funds for the deployment in your area have been committed, and will contain some contingency. It is possible a major unforeseen issue arises during any fault-finding that makes fixing that fault unviable, and the cabinets are removed, but this is extremely unlikely. However, just because there's a financial contingency doesn't mean there's spare engineering effort available on demand - there's many different teams involved in network deployment and commissioning, and you don't keep expensive resources sat idle merely as a contingency. There will be plenty of unforeseen work on a major project to absorb available resources, which means any remedial work in your area will have a lead time.



You have a choice as a consumer. If what BT Openreach has done has so wronged you, give up on FTTC and stick with what you've got, or order cable / wireless / 3G / 4G / satellite.

There are many communities fighting for FTTx deployment using BDUK money who have appalling ADSL speeds or no possibility of ADSL because of long lines, and who are likely too remote to benefit from any BDUK money. There are others on exchange only lines in served areas who are unlikely to get FTTC, because the necessary network rearrangement is not cost-effective. There are those who have been promised FTTP, but the huge delays in the FTTP deployment in many areas have led to a lot of areas designated to receive FTTP to get FTTC instead, with the consequent exclusion of those on exchange only lines and others receiving many times less than the expected FTTP speeds because of long or poor quality D side cables that would have been known to represent a significant issue in the area.


There will be delays once the cabinet is enabled, as it can take several weeks to get an installation appointment. I'd be very surprised if you're not on FTTC within six months, assuming you don't give up on it. It may well be sooner than that, but getting petulant over a few weeks of delay at this stage does nothing to help your situation and might upset the people who are trying to help.


It was complaints over missed FTTx target dates that led to the adverse ASA decision against BT earlier this year, and to BT Openreach changing the majority of the remaining commercial roll-out target dates to March or May 2014. Any target date is just that - the date by which there is an aim to provide service, assuming nothing unforeseen arises.

The public has choice. Either we accept that unforeseen issues arise, causing targets to be missed, or we lose access to the information we have. If people use the information that is made available relating to commercial roll-out against BT Openreach and other parties, all queries will be answered with vague responses like "engineering work is ongoing in your area, but I am unable to provide any further information", "at this stage, we have no information on whether your address will be served" or "we have no information relating to your area".

The situation is slightly different with BDUK supported roll-out, where the use of public money and the contract with a public-sector body means the Freedom of Information Act applies, but even in these cases a lot of information is exempt from the Act.



You have no choice but to let BT Openreach and their contractors get on with the job. If you ask them nicely, you might get some information - but it will not be a definite commitment to provide service from a specific date.

Whether you contact BT Openreach or not, I suggest you accept that it is overwhelmingly likely that best efforts are being made, but the need to target resources for best effect means that sometimes portions of an area are left for a while, to allow a later planned return with all resources needed to complete the known work.

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

In reply to a post by David_W:

It's your choice what to do. As has been explained many times, the planning takes place over wide areas and can be affected by factors that are not readily apparent on the ground, such as wayleave and section 58 issues arising when ductwork problems are discovered.

Not this again. There's no wayleaves, no s58, no power issues, cabs are just idle waiting for someone to kick into gear to sort out the duct issues, survey, paint lines, post a roadworks notice, dig up and sort everything out. Why my cab is being left to being one of the last to resolve the issues with I don't know. I can only hope they at least know WHERE the problems are, otherwise it could be much much longer.

You can assert all you like - but, assuming the original commissioning date has passed, there is a delay for some reason, otherwise the cabinet would be accepting orders. Unless you know the network topology intimately and have access to all the engineering information, you have no basis on which to say "there are no issues".

Whoah. Back up. I know there are ducting issues, my problem is how long they're taking, and Im asserting that when BT want to move they can move, they dug up Cabinet 16 within two weeks of it being installed to fix a ducting issue. So they're dragging their heels on it.

There is no reason that they cannot get man power on it right now apart from a) they have no man power, b) they aren't working on it, c) their priorities are elsewhere.

In reply to a post by David_W:

For all you know, BT Openreach attempted to bring up the connection to this string of cabinets at the handover node and the port in the layer 2 switch there is defective, or there's a fibre break that would overload the remaining good links if the remaining six cabinets were enabled, or it's clear that an aggregation node is defective because the error rate in the fibre network is awful. Once you're dealing with a part-commissioned system, you can't just switch it off and pull it apart - you have to schedule the engineering work. At this point, if you're unlucky, you find another issue arises whilst planning the fix for the known one - maybe the tube you need to blow new fibre through is blocked or a duct has collapsed, so you need to bring back a team of engineers that have been redeployed to another area and are now tied up there, or you need to dig where there's a section 58 issue or council restrictions on roadworks.

They said a problem routing the cable. Which is fine though, that isn't the problem, and I don'd mind them working elsewhere quite frankly. Im just aggrieved that they can "estimate" 30th September, and, even if everything went well, they wouldn't be ready for 30th September. The cab has been in the ground gathering dust for two months (I realise Im lucky compared to others waiting two years), but again, no Section58 issue, no power issue, no conservation issue, just collapsed ducting. Now I now when they were enabling the first ten cabinets, if they wanted to dig up a cabinet, it was up in two weeks and the trunking sorted.

The thing there is, it doesn't have to take a long time.

In this case it is. It's somewhat unfair to blame trunking issues (although that is a problem), when it's fairer to say that the delay has been caused by trunking, but the length of the delay is caused by engineers being elsewhere.

I would say if they had attempting to check connectivity to each cabinet BEFORE each switch on, they COULD have been working on the issues sooner. As it is those engineers are elsewhere because they DIDN'T check sooner.

In reply to a post by David_W:

If you'd stop letting your own "I have my RIGHTS to my fibre NOOOOOOOW" approach (which is how it's coming across, even though I'm sure it's just your frustration boiling over) cloud your judgment, and read what we're all trying to tell you, it would help.

But I patently don't want my fibre now. But I am thinking BT could work a bit more effectively. Seems absoutely insane to do a couple of cabs here and a couple of cabs there, and wait six weeks for the next installment, when they could work methodically and logically within the confinses of an area working through the issues before ploughing onto the next Exchange. It's why things take so stupidly long to resolve. To me it just seems BT are only interested in number of cabinets and their "Race to Infinity" - which is exactly all it is. The availability checker is load of nonsense, no one knows their plan and to sit on their hands for several weeks not doing anything is insane. If they told me next year, or I wouldn't be getting it ever, fine. But to say, you can have it by the end of September, maybe, but actually are estimates aren't even valid for when there's no issue... now we've failed the estimate and will put it back three months, actually it will be four, maybe, but we're not going to do anything for a couple of months, when we work on it for a couple of days, you can have it two months after that. Maybe. If there's someone in the area. But you probably still won't get it then because of our BDUK commitments.

Im sorry but the whole thing is a flaming shambles.

In reply to a post by David_W:

As has been said by another poster, I suggested that the issue relating to those six cabinets might be common to them all, and remote from the area. In that case, there'll be no new paint on the roads in your area, because the fix will not require roadworks in the immediate area. Openreach and their contractors don't spray paint on roads or dig holes for fun!

I do know in my situation, they've said it's a problem routing from the exchange to the cab, and I can only presume it's due to the bigger trees and the tiny street it has to come down. As I say though, I do know that when the engineers start working on it, they're amazing. The work they're doing is absolutely incredible. It's frustrating not seeing any action when they could have it fixed in a week, and it really is nothing other than trunking, no difficult council, no Section 58, no power issue, and I think if they came in another way, it would be even easier.

In reply to a post by David_W:

If any faulty ducts have already been repaired and all power hook-ups and tie cables are in, chances are that they won't be digging again in the local area. Any fibre issues are likely to be resolved by blowing additional fibres into the tubing that's already in the ground, or by running additional / replacement tubing into already repaired ducts. However, that's not to say something else won't arise that requires fresh roadworks. There could be a fibre break in a run of tubing with no spare capacity remaining in a run of ducting that is now also full. Other street works might have damaged a duct after the fibre system was initially installed, allowing water ingress to flood the system.

CMSPR was only enabled a couple of months ago, not that many cabinets all things considering, haven't seen any road works to impact on anything recently, in fact, we'd be the first fibre run in this direction from the Exchange.

In reply to a post by David_W:

It's a failure of causality to say "it's all there, there's no obvious works going on and they've turned the rest of the area on, so they've walked off the job and can't be bothered". You have no access to the information that allows you to draw any sort of firm conclusion.

Well they can't be bothered "yet", NGA said problems routing cable. That is all. 99% certain it's not caused by anything else other than loads of blocked ducts, and if other areas are anything to go by, I might suspect they will have to run a load of new trunking down the road to compensate.

No easy feat... But... the sooner they start, the sooner they end. Which is why I do think as well, if they had started earlier in the process....

In reply to a post by David_W:

You are complaining about the delay - that's why you posted. You are assuming that the lack of obvious roadworks in the area means BT Openreach have given up on your area and unfairly (at least that's what I'm picking up) moved on to another area, despite there being a myriad of possible explanations for the delay and the fix quite possibly not requiring roadworks in your immediate area.

Apart from NGA saying it is a problem routing the cable? And it fundamentally isn't the delay Im complaining about, because problems occur, but it's how effective they are in solving those issues that Im taking stock with, and the lack of transparency in their rollout. Who knows, maybe I'll eat my words again and we'll see some work scheduled for the start of November or something and the cab go live in December. However NGA did say start of 2014 for activation while availability checker still says December 2013.

To simply blame trunkning is unfair and only one of the issues. The rest is planning, manpower, scheduling...

In reply to a post by David_W:

This is a complex national roll-out with a huge number of dependencies at local, regional and even national level (if a ship sinks with a bunch of cabinets on the way from the Huawei factory in China, there might be a sudden shortage of new equipment and spare parts might have to be used to build replacements for damaged cabinets, even though BT Openreach deliberately went for a two vendor policy). BT Openreach want return on sunk costs - they've done most of the work in your area, and they will want income from it, but they don't say "sjdean has had his deadline put back twice, so we're going to pull an install crew off a job 60 miles away to fix the fault on Monday knowing we will throw away the entire deployment strategy for the region for the next two months by doing so"

Right, and that is fairer and more accurate statement. The missing part of the puzzle. They have a roll out strategy, and so not going to pull people off the install job 60 miles away to sort out my cabinet. So think about this then.... They have "abandoned" the cabinet, until they can get around it. They can't be bothered with it until a team is free. They don't focus on area and all the cabinets like they do with the first ten, they concentrate on the first few then move on to the next area to meet their roll out strategy enabling the rest as and when.
.

In reply to a post by David_W:

The issue won't be financial now.

Ahh you miss my point. From a business point of view, it makes sens to focus on higher capacity areas that could sign up more people, in other words, what is financially more rewarding.

In reply to a post by David_W:

There will be delays once the cabinet is enabled, as it can take several weeks to get an installation appointment. I'd be very surprised if you're not on FTTC within six months, assuming you don't give up on it. It may well be sooner than that, but getting petulant over a few weeks of delay at this stage does nothing to help your situation and might upset the people who are trying to help.

Well it's actually a few months, but hey ho. At least I haven't waited a few years.

In reply to a post by David_W:

It was complaints over missed FTTx target dates that led to the adverse ASA decision against BT earlier this year, and to BT Openreach changing the majority of the remaining commercial roll-out target dates to March or May 2014. Any target date is just that - the date by which there is an aim to provide service, assuming nothing unforeseen arises.

Is it really too much just to get OpenReach to divulge some status updates against each cabinet (without being overly specific). Would cut half the grumbles overnight.

In reply to a post by David_W:

You have no choice but to let BT Openreach and their contractors get on with the job. If you ask them nicely, you might get some information - but it will not be a definite commitment to provide service from a specific date.

I've asked NGA if they could let me know the scope of the problems. But I guess the fact it takes them two to three weeks to reply, Im not surprised they're taking that long to schedule an engineering team.

In reply to a post by David_W:

Whether you contact BT Openreach or not, I suggest you accept that it is overwhelmingly likely that best efforts are being made, but the need to target resources for best effect means that sometimes portions of an area are left for a while, to allow a later planned return with all resources needed to complete the known work.

I thiunk the best efforts giving the resources available are being made. Whether those resources and plan could be utilised better, which instead of just a "Race to Infity" we had more like a gentle jog ensuring that each area was sorted comprehensively before moving on (as I say, if Cab 16 could be dug up within 2 weeks of first being installed, Im mildly surprised it takes several months for the rest). Im sure they could work more effectively by retaining the engineers in the area to go through the catalogue and back log of issues recalling the fibre engineers to do the cable when necessary road works are complete.

Ironically, I'd probably have to wait til next year while those who have been waiting for two years are sorted.

And depends on your terminology of best effect. If best effect is statistics and numbers, showing that they have enabled X exchanges with cabs passing X houses fair enough. But my best effect is to get the whole area upgraded comprehensively. At the moment it just feels very disjointed and leads to people waiting two years!

In reply to a post by zom22:

When you moan about your treatment/schedule and get it sorted you do realise I suppose that YOUR problem gets sorted at the expense of someone else getting their schedule messed up? Or that maybe their need might have been greater than yours?

Whoa. I didn't demand preferrential treatment, and there were emergencies at the hospital. But I fundamentally did not want to be escalated above anybody else. When my operation was cancelled three times, all I wanted was essentially to be on the top of the next list (well - at my fair place in the list of routine surgery) rather than be bumped to the back.

In reply to a post by zom22:

There is no longer any free/slack available these days, so they just muck up someone else's schedule to keep you happy - so yes you are asking for preferential treatment.

Im sorry? Getting scheduled surgery is preferential treatment? Asking to be treated in order is preferential treatment? Disagreeing to others and myself having preferential treatment is asking for preferrential treatment?

So when someone else gets preferrential treatment and mucks me up so I have to take three days off work for surgery that gets cancelled is fine, but me asking just to have people there to cover the scheduled surgery and take my rightful place in the queue is wrong?

In reply to a post by zom22:

Frankly I think BT should never have put out any schedules at all they should simply say we will do it when it gets done, we will do the easy one first and the difficult ones last and we might have finished by 2020. But I suspect they were pressurised into it so simply invented some numbers off the top of their heads.

I think they should focus on each area and get a comprehensive roll out instead of darting between others and having to wait several weeks before anything happening to make sure there's a team in the area. If they worked closer together in the roll out, they could work comprehensively. Instead it seems more a case of numbers.

The actual engineers on the ground are amazing. As I say when Cab 16 was dug up two weeks after install, it seems to me if they had tried to activate the next cabinet (half a mile away) at the same time/day later, they could have found the issues and dug that up the same time as Cab 16 and resolved the issues. Being two months later now for an activation, suggests it wasn't done at the same time. which does suggest it is a numbers game and the time that engieners are scheduled in the area are woefuly inadequate. and only good enough for doing ten cabinets during the initial roll out.

If the issue is indeed with routing back to the exchange, there's still many potential issues that explanation could cover. Unless you know what they've already tried, at what point they found an issue, what the issue was and what work they've done to identify other issues, you can do no more than speculate anyway.

The problem could be a full duct (unlikely that they didn't know about it in advance, but could have happened unexpectedly if the records are wrong), a blocked duct (tree roots?), a collapsed duct, difficulty gaining access to a third party site where the route passes using a wayleave - or something else entirely. Are you absolutely sure of the route the ducts take back to the exchange, and that they're heading to your local exchange rather than somewhere else? Sometimes the NGA-FTTx handover node is at a neighbouring exchange. This is why I suggested the work may not necessarily take place where you expect, and may have some sort of external dependency to be resolved.

You cannot be sure the issue is lack of field engineering resources, or that it can be resolved by immediate allocation of field engineering resources. It may need specialist back room staff (planners etc.) or a specialist sub-contractor to be brought on to the job.


The end quarter dates were only best-guess estimates that gave some sort of indication of when and where work would take place. There has never been a mad rush at the end of the quarter to hit these dates - near the end of the quarter, the date for individual cabinets and whole exchanges are slipped, sometimes by more than three months and maybe not for the first time. I think my exchange slipped around a year and maybe approaching 18 months, with one of the slips being six months in one go. It was certainly over a year from the original estimate passing to service becoming available. (If anyone has any records, what was the original estimate for SMFK? Actual RFS was end November 2012).


I can't see how it's possible to provide and verify connectivity to each cabinet in advance without risking delays elsewhere. Implicitly, that says that until the fibre network is in place, no other works should take place. In reality, some delays were caused by installation of the cabinet itself (including planning / conservation area issues), by the power connection or by installation of the tie cable to the PCP (which may require the PCP to be reshelled, and requires the installation of a duct between the FTTC cabinet and the PCP before the tie cable itself is installed). Are you seriously suggesting that none of this other work, which can lead to unexpected delays, should start until the fibre network is complete?

On a project of this size, you deal with what you can during the initial programme in an area, then return to deal with anything outstanding later once you have gained the best possible understanding of the outstanding work and can commit all the resources necessary for each remaining stage before you start it. If you need two different resources on site at once, there's no point sending just one of these resources because the other is unavailable.


Your suggested 'finish each area and move on' is laudable in theory, but it means some combination of holding back a lot of resources as a contingency for the current area rather than putting them to work where you can, holding up all work in subsequent areas when problems arise in a current work area, and building in vast amounts of recovery time. None of these are practical - you put the resources you're paying for to work in any sensible way, and you move resources on to the next area once their work is complete rather than standing them down (whilst quite possibly continuing to pay for them) just to wait until an arbitrary start date.


Your desire for more information to be made available is laudable but, again, unfeasible. Plans can change rapidly. The engineering teams would have to waste resources responding to requests for information. Members of the public (and their MPs) may try to hold BT Openreach to a plan that subsequently fails to make sense - indeed, that is what you're doing, by saying, in essence that the issue is merely getting the fibre back to the exchange, so why is nothing visible happening on what you understand to be the route.


Ultimately, the answer is, as you have been repeatedly told, "when it's ready". Unless BDUK money is involved, in which case there are specific contractual commitments relating to areas and dates, it's up to BT Openreach whether and when they enable these cabinets. If the issue with the fibre network is too difficult or impractical to resolve, they have the right to abandon commercial deployment and recover the cabinets.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I just want to be scheduled at a normal time and not have my appointment cancelled again. I would just like to be scheduled properly.

I have to ask, do you have the slightest clue about the massive amount of work involved in both scheduling and installing NGA throughout the UK? From your repeated posts which seem to simply one moan after another be I suspect not.

Remember that no-one is forcing you to use a BT product. You're completely free to contact another supplier and have your very own connection installed. Of course that will cost you infinitely more than you might expect to pay BT to use their FTTC network. In our case BT are happy to provide us with FTTC, there's just the small question of the £30K they require to start the job. - and that's for 75 properties in central London.

I would be surprised if it wasn't a serious case of tree roots given the location of the BT boxes to the trees, and with cable tv being installed many years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of trunking issues.

That's fine though, that's not the point, Im appreciative there are issues.

And Im not suggesting the fibre teams wait around in an area until the blockages have been cleared.

But it would be nice if BT would schedule enough time to fibre upgrade the entire area, then the Cabinets that do have problems can be located and the issues passed to whoever it needs to be passed to earlier and road work teams scheduled much earlier.

People do keep saying delays are caused by power, delays are caused by tie cables etc... But around here, they dug the trenches and the hole, laid a concrete base, installed the power, the cab, the trunking and ocvered with concrete. So everything else is up and running, barring tie cable ducts and routing back to the exchange.

Around here BT use several contractors, so it may well be them holding things up, but given how the estimates keep slipping, roll out going behind, the anecdotal comments from a vast number of people where BT just keep making excuses and pushing cabinets back and not telling the whole truth (see Urban Haze for an example), it seems clear that they don't have enough teams and there is actually a back log of work to complete, which a few extra teams could actually complete quicker. I really doubt that they'd be waiting around when there is actually work to do.

Simon

Location : (PCP37) 368686,304152 368688,304172 SIDE OF ** CANONBIE LEA ON GLENDINNING WAY, TELFORD, SHROPSHIRE, *** ***
Description : Install 16m of 1 way poly duct in Footway,Install 4m of 1 way poly duct in Verge,Provide 1 Provide/Recover 1 NGA Cab and base (1.5m x 0.5m)

^^ this work had been completed today, nice new Huawei FTTC cab - 288 max

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I would be surprised if it wasn't a serious case of tree roots given the location of the BT boxes to the trees, and with cable tv being installed many years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of trunking issues.

That's fine though, that's not the point, Im appreciative there are issues.

And Im not suggesting the fibre teams wait around in an area until the blockages have been cleared.

Duct damage can occur for many reasons. The area where I live was a green field development in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The BT ducts were installed when the estate was built. Since then, Virgin (and their predecessor companies CableTel and ntl: ) have deployed a cable network and Anglian Water (and their contractors) have retrofitted water meters. I'm sure these major programmes of work and routine minor works by the various utilities have damaged some of the BT ducts, though I have no inside knowledge of the problems that BT Openreach and their contractors found during the FTTC deployment. Ground heave may well be an additional problem in this area - we're on clay that shrinks considerably when dry. As you say, tree roots are always a risk to any sort of underground pipe or duct.

The only way to find some problems is by attempting to install a new run through the duct. You hope to succeed first time, but there's a myriad of reasons why you might not. Any duct blockage or collapse could be easily remedied, might be in a nightmare location under a road surrounded by other pipes and cables, or somewhere that is even more of a nightmare (along a live railway, underground where access has become impossible and a new route must be found, through Ministry of Defence property, etc.).


It may well be that the best approach is to build a small amount of contingency for easily remedied faults into your initial programme, but leave any more intractable issues for subsequent targeted work. Using this approach, you have no idea what will be in the follow-up programme until the initial programme starts throwing up problems, then there's likely to be a lead time before follow-up activities commence. Though I have no inside knowledge, this seems to be the approach BT Openreach are using for the FTTC deployment.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

But it would be nice if BT would schedule enough time to fibre upgrade the entire area, then the Cabinets that do have problems can be located and the issues passed to whoever it needs to be passed to earlier and road work teams scheduled much earlier.

People do keep saying delays are caused by power, delays are caused by tie cables etc... But around here, they dug the trenches and the hole, laid a concrete base, installed the power, the cab, the trunking and ocvered with concrete. So everything else is up and running, barring tie cable ducts and routing back to the exchange.

You're just not getting it, are you?

If BT Openreach did all the fibre network work first, you'd know there were no further delays there. However, this would do nothing to change the delay you are currently facing, because a realistic date was set, and it turned out to be unachievable due to unforeseen issues.

The only way Openreach could have hit the target date despite unforeseen problems is to pad the target date (and all other target dates). This slows down the overall project and creates the risk of teams standing idle because they've finished the planned work without needing all the contingency time, and their next planned job doesn't start for a while.


Padding the target dates as you suggest wouldn't help you. The delay you're complaining about would have been incorporated into the original target date in this scenario.

An alternative would be to continue setting reasonable target dates internally, but adding a huge amount of padding to public dates. This is, in effect, what has now happened. People wanted information, so BT Openreach made it available. Some people complained when these best effort dates were missed, so they were all padded out to the end of commercial deployment. People then complained their cabinet / exchange had been delayed. The internal programme remained unchanged, but it was now too risky to publicise accurate information.


By holding back all the other work (foundations for the cabinet, putting the cabinet in place, providing power, installing duct for the tie cable, any necessary remedial work to the PCP, installing the tie cable) until the fibre network is complete and working, as you suggest, means any delays that arose from any of those steps would be added to any fibre network delays. In other words, the delays will be consecutive and therefore cumulative, rather than overlapping to some extent.

By overlapping the work to the greatest possible extent, you minimise the overall delay. If you don't believe me, sketch out some Gantt charts and add in delay to one or more steps in different dependency scenarios. Imposing the constraint that no other work takes place until the fibre network is complete can never reduce the overall delay, but can only increase it.


Moreover, without doing all the other works, how are you going to prove the fibre network is functional? If you don't have the cabinet base installed and the duct to the aggregation node in place, you'll have to go back later, open up the fibre manifold that contains the aggregation node, and fuse the fibres to the cabinet to the aggregation node fibres. Until you've done this (which involves a tiny but non-zero risk of damaging the work you've already done) and connected a device to the cabinet fibres, you can't be certain all is working.

The fusion splicer gives an indication of the quality of the splice, but you can always be unlucky enough to damage the fibre after splicing, or it may already have been damaged elsewhere. If you find B4RN's YouTube video about their broken fibre, you'll see a graphic example of the sort of weird fibre fault that happens sometimes. That fault could just as easily have happened in an urban location.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

Around here BT use several contractors, so it may well be them holding things up, but given how the estimates keep slipping, roll out going behind, the anecdotal comments from a vast number of people where BT just keep making excuses and pushing cabinets back and not telling the whole truth (see Urban Haze for an example), it seems clear that they don't have enough teams and there is actually a back log of work to complete, which a few extra teams could actually complete quicker. I really doubt that they'd be waiting around when there is actually work to do.

You can always throw more resources at a project, but whether it's cost-effective to do so is another question entirely.

BT Openreach can't afford to have teams sat around doing nothing just in case a problem arises. Both Openreach and their contractors can't find and stand down teams at will - you are making a considerable commitment to bring a team together, train and equip them.

Obviously, there is some degree of flexibility, as BT Openreach will be able to bring in some resources from contractors on a short term basis. The use of well-managed contractors helps rather than hinders a complex project, as it gives you additional flexibility.


The premium you pay for engaging contractors on a short term basis is often not worthwhile, especially for edge of network problems. The brutal commercial reality is that it's likely much cheaper to slip a string of six cabinets for 3-6 months until a planned return can be made than to throw spot hired resources at it. Commercial deployment is 'best effort' work, with no penalty for missing or slipping a deadline other than the relatively small loss of not opening for business earlier. I believe BT Openreach are working on a 15 year payback for GEA-FTTx, so losing the rental on a relatively small number of ports for a few months is fairly small change overall.

The economics would be rather different if you'd lost a backbone link to a fibre break, but in that case, Openreach would probably move resources from lower priority work.


It's a matter of opinion how transparent you believe Openreach to have been about the commercial deployment and any delays. Typically, they have been far more candid and open than I would have expected, though there have undoubtedly been exceptions. I expect the degree of openness depends in no small part on the local managers.

Now that Openreach's candour has been used against them and their ISP customers via the ASA decision, it would be no surprise if Openreach clammed up completely about the remaining commercial deployment.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

From a business point of view, it makes sens to focus on higher capacity areas that could sign up more people, in other words, what is financially more rewarding.

Normally yeah, but I don't think OR are doing that in this instance, with it being externally funded (with whatever requirements and contract details are agreed as part of that).

Otherwise our area probably wouldn't have been done at all, let alone having ended up one of the first of the Connecting Cumbria scheme - most people around here still think that a "broad band" is something to do with female musicians, and even half of the technically minded people I've spoken to have questioned whether they're bothered seeing as ADSL is fast enough for what they do already. I consider us very fortunate and if it was entirely commercially driven with emphasis on the highest revenue generating areas and none of the pressure from local government, councils and businesses, we probably would be looking to 2020 or beyond.