Anglesey in Limbo

I was wondering if someone could help me to get info on what is happening in Anglesey. Up until a couple of months ago the area in which I live LL65 4LN was a hive of Openreach activity with engineers working on a lot of the green cabinets along the road to my village, and cables (ie: the black and yellow stripe one) have been installed ready for the fibre wires. However, all work has stopped in the last two months and the date for installation which had been July, then December 2014 has now changed to the category of �under review�. I have tried to find out what is happening without success. I get the impression that Llanfaethlu (my exchange) has been placed in limbo and forgotten about.

At the same time the BT broadband service we have has been steadily getting worse; are they reducing maintenance due to the impending arrival of Fibre, I don�t know? When I first moved to Anglesey about 4 years ago I was getting 1.7Mbps to 1.9 Mbps which then dropped to 1.4Mbps to 1.7Mbps and now hovers around 1.0Mbps to 1.4Mbps. I know the differences in speed don�t sound much but they mean the difference between being able to stream TV programmes and not being able to. BT technical support cannot help me with this, stating we only promise 1.0 Mbps so will have to put up with it.

Does anyone know where I can get some info on this. What does �Under review� mean?
And how long will this review last?

My expectation is that you did not see any new FTTC stuff but just lots of fibre tubing and maybe bits like some of the stuff at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/fibre-milton-keynes/def...

Reason being is that I believe the cabinet you are connected to receive a FTTP based service.

The SuperFastCymru people are the ones who should be telling you about this sort of thing, its what they are paid to do.

What has probably happened is the team doing the core network deployment have moved on elsewhere to do lots of FTTC to ensure that milestones in terms of coverage are hit and will return to install the final fibre manifolds and then the order switch can be thrown. Under Review may simply mean that the schedule for the fibre teams is so busy they cannot be sure when you will be done.

In terms of dropped speeds the fibre kit will not add interference, but may have disturbed some wiring, seeing the full ADSL statistics from before and after might help us to decipher that, but beyond that old IPStream Max exchanges with just up to 8 Mbps services tend to suffer more congestion and as people do more online that is what you are seeing. The fibre roll-out will bring a lot more capacity to area as well as upgrading your access method.

I assume that the information has been obtained from the Openreach Where and when site which is not as up to date as the Superfast Cymru web site. The Llanfaethlu exchange is fibre enabled and if you enter your post code in the Where and when page it will give you further details of the exchange and cabinets.

From the post code it seems that you live in Llafairynghonwy which is on the outskirts of Llanfaethlu and as seems the case for Anglesey your exchange will be fibre enabled but frustratingly many cabinets in outlying areas are left to a much later date. Although promised for December 2013 roll out, my exchange (Brynsiencyn) has slipped to December 2014, however I live in Dwyran and there is very little prospect of Fibre in the foreseeable future.

You can contact Superfast Cymru by email ([email protected]) requesting information and from past experience they do reply and in your case the situation might be better than the "Under review" seems to indicate.