There's two deployments going on at the moment.

The commercial deployment is funded entirely by BT Openreach. This phase of deployment has almost finished, with the final work due to be completed by the end of May 2014. BT Openreach are targeting this deployment wherever they believe they will maximise their return on investment, and have complete discretion over where to cover and by what date. My understanding is that sjdean's cabinet is a commercial one.

The Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) projects, such as Connecting Cumbria, are part funded by public money. The BDUK contract binds the winning bidder to cover an agreed area by agreed deadlines. So far, BT Openreach have won the BDUK contract in every area, and they're the only organisation bidding for the remaining areas after Fujitsu dropped out.

Ah I see, in that case he'd be right, it'll be a lot more heavily based on profitable places to activate first.

In reply to a post by David_W:

The only way to find some problems is by attempting to install a new run through the duct..

I'll bear that in mind for the next contradiction....

In reply to a post by David_W:

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

You're just not geting it are you?

Im not bothered about the delay or target dates not being hit for problems. What I want to see though is a speedy resolution with appropriate prioritisation,

So the only way to see if there are ducting problems is to attempt to run the fibre (or perhaps run a camera or rod). Trouble is, that initial phase is taking longer than the estimated activation date - even for cabs without problems.

This either suggests BT is not allowing enough time for cabs that aren't even problematic, or BT aren't doing the cabs together sweeping across the region and they are just doing in dribs and drabs.

If they had tried to fibre earlier as part of the initial install, any issues could have been found and reported earlier.

In reply to a post by David_W:

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,

Bored now. Why am I constantly being misquoted? I didn't suggest any such thing. I was saying Im tired of people telling me what could be wrong with my cabinet based on what happens with theirs "it could be power, it could be this, it could be the cab is on a green field site from the 70's..." errr, no.... I know my area having lived here 35 years.

BT did the cabinet install differently for us, so when someone quotes power as being an issue, I realise the other person doesn't know what they're talking about.

So I know the majority of those things aren't the issue and can have a reasonable expectation as to what the issues are.

Based on other cabinets in the roll out, if they can fix a problem on Cab 16 within two weeks of install, why have they only just got around to trying the fibre to my particular cabinet? Why longer than two weeks? Forgetting my cabinet, why is it going to take two months longer to activate the cabinet half a mile down the road from Cabinet 14?

Because it's not a priority like those first ten were.

Im happy to accept that it's a priority based system, but don't pretend it's just a ducting issue which is going to take three months to resolve. It is a ducting issue, but they don't want to deal with it yet.

snip rest of stuff retorting the suggestion I didn't actually make.

Oh by the way, the other comment I had made from earlier, if the FTTC system was made in to some kind of tick box system about each stage and engineers could apply a line or two of generic comments about problems/issues/solutions/status on the problems per cabinet to be fed back on the FTTC dsl checker, they could cut out half the emails to OpenReach asking what's happening with their cabinet and people would get more information and a realistic idea of what's happening.

You've had a lot of patient explanation about why your views about prioritisation and resolution of problems likely differs from BT Openreach's approach. You've also had posters, some of whom are far better informed than I, trying to explain the issues - and yet you carry on with your clearly uninformed comments. I'd like to see you get a rod around a typical duct. The duct is very unlikely to be a perfectly straight piece of pipe, and even if it is, adding a potentially difficult to retrieve solid object to any existing blockage seems likely to makes any problem more intractable. How, precisely, are you planning to get a rod to the point of blockage anyway?

One of the vendors BT Openreach uses for the fibre network is Emtelle - there's confirmation on Emtelle's web site. I believe BT Openreach are using Emtelle's Direct Install system - traditional winch-based techniques to get the tubing into the ducts, then blow in the fibres. I have no idea whether Emtelle's is the only or even the predominant system that BT Openreach are using, but this will give you some sort of idea what is involved.


There is an unavoidable link between target dates, resource allocation and resolution of problems - but BT Openreach are wrestling with these issues not on a cabinet by cabinet basis, so much as on a whole project basis across a multi-year, multi-billion pound project. Roll-out issues affecting a handful of cabinets are but a tiny blip in the overall scheme.

BT Openreach's preferred strategy for the commercial roll-out seems to be to persevere with the programme in an area up to a point, then slip any unfinished cabinets down the programme to allow time to plan and subsequently deliver the necessary remedial works. This is interpreted by you and by others as Openreach walking off a part-completed job, but in terms of keeping expensive resources fully utilised and maximising overall progress, it's likely to be a good strategy. Ploughing on in the face of difficulties may well be less efficient at getting the remaining work done than planning the job over again in the light of the known problems.


You're continuing to make comments along the lines of (and I paraphrase) "this cabinet's issues were resolved in 2 weeks, so this nearby one taking 2 months means it's not a priority". The truth is that all you can do is speculate about the reasons, because you have, at best, a small amount of information you've gleaned about the sort of issues that arose during the works to date. Without a comprehensive insight into the problems found, the status and routing of the local network ducts, and the strategies that have been tried already and that are planned, you have no way of forming any sort of informed judgment about the reasonableness or otherwise of the decisions that have been made.

I cannot see how you've concluded that delays to two different cabinets that seemingly lacked a single common cause (otherwise resolving that problem would have allowed both cabinets to proceed) means ten completed cabinets were a priority and the others aren't. Are you suggesting that certain cabinets are 'throw all available resources at these, they matter' and others are 'am I bovvered?'. (Forgive me, but I'm stuck with a mental image of the bad cabinets being sent to the naughty step for a while). Priority in a project of this magnitude and complexity seems likely to be finely grained, and linked to planning factors such as efficient use of available resources and controlling overspend.

You can continue to try micro-managing Openreach's project here for them if you like, but I can't see what it achieves.


If your cabinet is indeed in the commercial roll-out, it's up to Openreach when and if they finish it. You have no leverage over them as a potential customer, via an ISP, for a single port (for which BT Openreach will charge the ISP £119.40 ex VAT per year for the wholesale 80/20 FTTC product).


I'm going to leave it there, other than to endorse the final paragraph of MCM's recent post.

Edited by deleted (Tue 08-Oct-13 02:42:43)

BT had completed installed FTTC cabinet last week. Can hear the fan. But why is taking so long to wait until end of March 2014.

http://postimg.org/image/mkfp3rcf7/

You could read one of the other 3,000 posts on here that mention this kind of situation. Would be a great place to start.

There's every chance you'll get it sooner. Ours said 31st December but we just got it installed today.

Incidentally the engineer said we managed to be the first in our town (pop 12000) to get connected

In reply to a post by LakesGeek:

There's every chance you'll get it sooner. Ours said 31st December but we just got it installed today.

As I explained earlier in the thread, most if not all of the remaining commercial deployment dates were set to the end of the commercial deployment following the upheld Advertising Standards Agency complaint. Unfortunately, the inability of some people to accept the dates were not a promise but a 'best effort' indication subject to change means BT Openreach and their customers are now very conservative on the dates they quote.

If you are waiting for a cabinet to be enabled, you can get a nice surprise when it is enabled earlier than expected. BT Openreach don't wait for an arbitrary date - if a deployed cabinet has completed its commissioning tests, they start accepting orders fairly quickly.

Oh I know and I saw, I've been keeping track of it all. In a way it's nice that they offer conservative estimates as it makes a refreshing change from the optimism most companies go with for everything. "Up to 8MB", "Unlimited", Apple's infamous "Available by Fall" (meaning the last day before Winter), hard drive capacity stated in unformatted base-10 gigabytes to inflate the numbers, etc etc. It's quite pleasant to be told "up to 59" and find you're getting a constant 62, and "by 31st December" and see it go live in the first half of October. As long as people don't always expect "sooner and faster than predicted".

Did someone from Openreach tell you it was completed?