Failed Install - TPON or Copper?

I had a young and helpful Openreach engineer visit today to attempt a FTTC install for BT infinity.

When he plugged in his test equipment he immediately said their was a line fault as he was getting 80mb showing at the new green cabinet 3 to 400 yards up the road and only 7mb showing in the house.

He went back to the cabinet and then returned saying their was an issue with TPON, and he did not think it would work. He did say he would send the job back for someone with more experience as he freely admitted he had never encountered TPON before.

The house is on a TPON estate and we at first could not get broadband due to TPON. However we have had broadband since 2003 at least and I remember the original BT engineer stating that we were getting broadband over a copper line.

The BT wholesale checker shows that we are on the ABERDEEN KINGSWELLS excahnge, served by Cabinet 18 and shows FTTC as available at up to 65mb down and 19 mb up.

It also shows ADSL speeds as up to 5.5mb which is about what we get currently.

Their is a grey cabinet across the road from the house which I assume is TPON although I have not seen any BT employees their in a long time.

Is there any way to find out if we are on TPON or copper or are we likely to have the same issue with the next engineer?

You must be on copper to get ADSL

In reply to a post by Ribble:

You must be on copper to get ADSL

I know the area well, although not been there for a few months. You are on copper, at least from the cabinet to the house.

The area is unique in that the ADSL DSLAMs are actually at the road side as a way of getting round the TPON E side connections.

I presume they have now plonked the VDSL cabinets alongside their ADSL counterparts, in which case it should work.

Thanks for the replies, did think we were copper.

Any ideas why the speed should drop so far from cabinet to house?

I think you had a sub-contract installer on his first job. He didn't know what he was doing, so made his excuses and left.

Your link back to the exchange from the cabinet has probably always been fibre but you were on connected to an ADSL DSLAM next to the existing cabinet.

It's all irrelevant anyway as when VDSL FTTC becomes available they just route you through that. The TPON becomes irrelevant and can be left there.

I'm wondering if the engineer connected you properly at all. Was the 7Mb he was seeing actually an ADSL signal being provided by the ADSL street cabinet rather than the new VDSL cabinet?

Edited by deleted (Wed 02-Jul-14 13:25:46)

Don't know what he was seeing, but 7MB could well have been the ADSL at the master, we usually get about 5.5 to 6MB at the router using an extension.

Have another appointment scheduled for Monday so can only hope for a better result

You need an Openreach engineer I think. The contractors won't have any kind of training on the roadside ADSL cabinets you have in your area. I'd also expect they wouldn't know much of anything about TPON.

Had another engineer visit today and same problem could find no dial tone at cabinet and no fibre connection to the home.

Went back to the cabinet and a while later phoned to say that he had traced the line all the way back to the exchange.

So despite all Openreach's records saying we were connected to the roadside cabinet we have a direct line to the exchange so no fibre broadband install today.

The helpful engineer did say that were a very small number of random houses in the estate that were direct to the exchange but all other had been moved off TPON onto the cabinets as we should have been.

He did say that a pair move and some tracing of the line would make a fibre install easy, but what is the chances of that?

Am I stuck on ADSL or is there someway to request a cabinet connection or pair move.

I work from home so being stuck on ADSL when neighbours all around are on FTTC is going to be less than useful

If you were to order a new line with a BT infinity package - would that get round all this and then request a cease on the current line?