Congestion was the reason for the new 164m of duct on mine too. But it seems like they can never schedule two things at once: they have to fix one problem to completion, before they even think about starting the second.

I'm interested where you got the £250 per permit cost from. Do you have a link with more info? If the permit expires without them touching anything and it gets rescheduled, do they still need to pay each time? Is this a national price, or does it vary between local authorities?

Current news is that I'm still waiting for Openreach to fix their 'apparent' system issue with being unable to commit an appointment date for some reason. I don't know if I honestly believe that reason however, I get the hunch there's something a bit more to it than that (e.g. no available trained engineer in this area for this type of job). Hopefully I won't be waiting much longer.

I also had one or two �Openreach system errors� during my install which are just internal Openreach ordering bugs/glitches. They got resolved fairly quickly and it was nothing majorly concerned to be about. I can understand your frustration but i would remain optimistic that you�re very close to going live

In reply to a post by candlerb:

But it seems like they can never schedule two things at once: they have to fix one problem to completion, before they even think about starting the second.

It's not that they can't. It's just that they don't, and to be honest at their scale it would probably be impossible.

Any delay to the first part, results in a rescheduling of the next part, which affects the resource allocation of that team, result is engineers with no work which is costly to us the consumer. The other option would be constantly rescheduling. At scale with 100,000s of jobs scheduled all over the country the re-scheduling everyday would take all day, and nothing would get done. Part of the issue is caused by the fact that they have so many little jobs to fix/maintain that finishing all scheduled jobs on a given day is unlikely, at least one will have problems. Thus delays to some projects are guaranteed.

So they don't even try to run a contingent schedule. Team completes Teams A's work, then it is passed to Team B. Team B schedule the work, and complete it, the first Team C know about it is when Team B have finished. Each team being silo'd for work streams.

Now if FTTPoD had its own resources then possibly because of the smaller number and larger size of the jobs a contingent schedule could be planned. But they don't have their own resources and they just have to grab general resource. Not ideal but it is what it is.

As I see it, there are two issues here.

1. They could have proved the entire route up front, and identified all the problems in one go.

Not doing so was a big waste of resource. They sent in the cabling crew who found that there was a blockage, so they went away, the blockage was eventually fixed, the cabling crew were sent in again, only to find another blockage further along... and so on.

2. When they do know about two jobs that need to be done, they could schedule the work for both. They don't need to be done at the same time - they could be scheduled for different weeks - but at least a problem in one would not delay the other.

Yeah, I know some point in the next couple of weeks it should surely be live so I'm just waiting and hoping. At least Cerberus are staying on top of the order progressing. I had an update this morning that Openreach need to send an engineer back to the exchange as the head end doesn't line up apparently. I guess this wasn't checked as part of the audit. Hopefully that won't take long .

Edited by Ixel (Tue 12-Mar-19 13:46:07)

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

I also had one or two �Openreach system errors� during my install which are just internal Openreach ordering bugs/glitches. They got resolved fairly quickly and it was nothing majorly concerned to be about. I can understand your frustration but i would remain optimistic that you�re very close to going live

Not as close as me though.

Engineer called this morning to say with us 9-ish, to fit modem. I let him know the ONT was already installed and on the wall. Arrived, made him a cup of tea whilst he spent 5 minutes to test the fibre signal. All good, commissioned ONT, and we then sat for circa 10-minutes waiting for connection to complete. A solid green light. Added details from Cerberus to router and plugged in.

First speed test - 15 Mbps ?? - Checked router settings and turned off smart queues set at 20Mbps limit
Second speed test - 150 Mbps better - Checked router settings and turned off IPS (that's about a USG-Pro-4s limit)
Third speed test - 288 Mbps - Bingo! Bear in mind I had made no attempt to turn off guest wifi, or disable any of the other network equipment on site (some 80+ devices)

Roughly 10-months from first contact with the Cerberus to deployment. I have not been able to fault communication throughout the 10-months process. Vruti has been awesome.

A big thanks to the team at Cerberus and today I will be mostly streaming or running speed tests!

I must say one of the big differences I noticed was an absolutely rock solid 15ms ping (google averages 12ms-15ms). Previously on our wrecked copper we would get 40-50ms but regularly in excess of 150ms. 15ms is awesome for rural North Yorkshire.


Edit: tidied up some other settings and stopped a couple of radio streams and re-ran test. Not bad for a 300/30 service.
https://i.imgur.com/tcbR4VL.png

Edited by F00tS0re (Tue 12-Mar-19 15:08:12)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

As I see it, there are two issues here.

1. They could have proved the entire route up front, and identified all the problems in one go.

Not doing so was a big waste of resource. They sent in the cabling crew who found that there was a blockage, so they went away, the blockage was eventually fixed, the cabling crew were sent in again, only to find another blockage further along... and so on.

2. When they do know about two jobs that need to be done, they could schedule the work for both. They don't need to be done at the same time - they could be scheduled for different weeks - but at least a problem in one would not delay the other.

It was my understanding that all routes were rodded and roped prior to cablers, mine certainly were. So if that wasn't done it would seem to be silly, and doesn't seem to fit the silo'd system they suggest they use. Agree that parallel planning would make sense as all physical works to enable ducts are parallel not sequential in planning terms.

It's the period when you are told you are waiting on somebody to assign the work that did my head in. You were waiting to find out how long you would wait!


(The only error on mine was cablers installing 3 separate pieces of fibre spanning three junction boxes when the plan said a single length along the length. So when jointers installed all joints they were left scratching their heads as to why it wasn't working! Had to get two more joint boxes and install them).

Congratulations!

Like I did, you'll probably spend the next 24 hrs continuously speed testing to make sure your eyes aren't deceiving you lol

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Congratulations!

Like I did, you'll probably spend the next 24 hrs continuously speed testing to make sure your eyes aren't deceiving you lol

And I can watch that without buffering

I have already spent too long running speed tests. After the success this morning it went down to no more than 15Mbps from my office. But eventually turned out it was my fault, I hadn't put a patch lead in properly when replacing the router and spent ages to diagnose the fault as the network connection was being re-routed via Sonos mesh! Sometimes Sonos, STP and the mesh do my head in.

Looking forward to seeing the site full of guests and everyone streaming and really putting it to the test. Might run a mock test on my own later to stress test install. Couple of smart TVs, SkyQs and a few laptops/tablets mean I can probably run a dozen streams of my own. A UHD download on sky will help. Next worry - rack temperatures!