Hi Ribble,

Thank you for your post / advice:

just at matter of when

My point entirely -it would be so helpful to know, so that I can plan a route forwards for that business unit.

Just confirmation of the problem and a realistic date from Openreach / ISP and I can work-around with other solutions. Cost is not a big issue, connectivity and reliability is,.....

In reply to a post by Mendip:

Just to be clear, when the orders for Fibre were placed they were accepted by ISP, a week later Openreach have come back saying 'No spare ports at the DSLAM'. I didn't have any real chance of ordering it earlier, as I hadn't taken ownership of the location. I am still surprised that an order can be accepted by the ISP and Openreach and then a week later rejected. It would be really helpful if Openreach could tell the ISP roughly how long a resolution would be.....

Yes, I was being flippant - hence the smiley

I am also surprised your ISP were able to accept an order and then have it rejected a week later - most ISPs will have an automated ordering system which I imagine would place the order with Openreach within seconds if done online - and at that point Openreach should reserve a port at the Cabinet for you/update capacity for future orders.. so is it possible your ISP delayed placing your order?

Generally speaking, if you place an order against a line (even for something like call waiting),the wholesale checker updates within hours to say there is an open order against that telephone number.

If there was no capacity and the ISP are not using the new waiting system, I would have expected them to be unable to place an order.

As I say, Openreach tend to update the wholesale checker with the date they plan to fit more line cards once scheduled - someone who works for Openreach may be able to comment on average timescales but its a simple job - it usually just depends on them allocating the task + spare linecards to an engineer/contractor to do

If a newly commissioned Cabinet its very unlikely to be another issue unless they have found a fault with the equipment already installed and that should have been picked up during pre-commissioning testing..

Mendip

OR would normally fit 1 card with 96 ports and a 100 pair cable ( actually 2 one in each direction) between the cabinets.

As all 96 ports were ordered in two weeks they will have to fit another card with 96 ports but will also have to fit another 100 pair cable. The card should be easy just a simpler slide in but the extra cable may take longer, they need to open up both cabinets and pull in the new cable and terminate it so could be a little while. ( Getting new cabs in will be a priority to hit the BDUK targets first, otherwise other areas will complian they are not covered at all, but they will come back to it when they an fit it in the programme. )

As the cabinet is a major cost OR will always find it economic to provide the cards up to the cabinet capacity, but it can take time to run the cables and there is a slight risk if the copper cabinet does not have enough space to terminate the additional cables in.

From Ribble's half full we can deduce that this is a small FTTC cab with only 192 capacity. Once that is full it will be a much longer wait for a second cab!. ( If economic!!)

I would have expected your area to have had poor Broadband before FTTC arrived that has driven the large demend at the point FTTC was provided, hopefully you haven't got many more than 200 premises served from it or some people are going to be disappointed.

It just seems strange, the way Openreach communicate or rather don't. If I ran my business, ran out of stock and told companies that's it for now, no further information, I wouldn't expect to hear from them again. As previously said I understand that Openreach is a huge machine, and as such cannot communicate to Bloggs and Jones, but surely the ISPs could be told as they are losing revenue in this process.....

Having had, in the past, the same lack of info on their plans for an area from Openreach, I think you have summed up quite eloquently why a fair number of people think Openreach needs to be hived off from BT. Maybe write a letter to your MP. It won't help your current situation but it does give some comfort knowing you are helping to drive another nail in by bringing such lack of business acumen to the attention of the powers that be i.e. how poor Openreach communications really are. When I wrote, I didn't just get a reply from my MP but found my letter had been pushed upstairs. Who knows, you might even wake up the likes of Cameron etc.

As for the plans for your area, sadly you will stay in the dark. Sometimes though, it does pay to go visit roadworks.org. Such things like 'BT duct work' will bring far more light on things than you'll ever get from OR. Unfortunately the onus is on you to keep on checking, rather than on OR to give out what should be freely available information. It is after all, from the sounds of it, a capacity issue. And as you quite rightly say, it affects directly the business of not only the ISP's but yours as well.

Post deleted by Nightglow

Edited by Nightglow (Sun 01-Nov-15 10:11:13)

Just looked on roadwork.org and noticed that BT are doing some work just up the road from my cab

Description is "Locate and excavate 2 subsequent blockage in existing duct"

In reply to a post by Mendip:

It just seems strange, the way Openreach communicate or rather don't. If I ran my business, ran out of stock and told companies that's it for now, no further information, I wouldn't expect to hear from them again. As previously said I understand that Openreach is a huge machine, and as such cannot communicate to Bloggs and Jones, but surely the ISPs could be told as they are losing revenue in this process.....

Its quite possible that the ISPs are are more understanding - after all they are interested in more customers overall and know that any delays in installing new capacity at existing locations is likely to be more than compensated for by new cabinets being fitted elsewhere.

Also, timing is not always in the gift of Openreach- it can depend on 3rd party suppliers, electricity companies, council planning permission etc. for which they may not have accurate timing for

You may know that Openreach used to publicly give much more accurate timescales of when work would be done/cabinets go live - a small minority complained that this wasn't accurate enough and the ASA effectively made them issue much vaguer timescales as a result... - which were much less use to everyone.

Good to hear you have some info. You'll get far more (reliable) info and dare I say 'comfort' going on that website (I certainly did). At least you now know why and a time scale for a possible resolution and more importantly, that things are in hand. There really is nothing worse than being left wandering around aimlessly in the dark. The info there could just as easily be put out on the OR site at the same time. Why it isn't is beyond me.

Openreach will continue adding cards and then additional cabinets.

I doubt the work is related to the (what i assume) capacity issue at my cab. Not sure what kind of work is going on but seems there is some blockage of some sort that BT are fixing, not adding capacity to my cab. Location of it isnt quite right either