Community Fibre Partnerships

I want to get the cabinet upgraded. I have been quoted £4.7K to upgrade the cabinet via a community partnership.

The problem is how to raise funding, even £1000 and I�m thinking of covering the rest of the cost.

Have you talked to Parish Council?

How many people will get improved service availability? Some will take the option, others may not, but by getting the message out there you may find others will to help fund.

If you get 20 interested that is just £235 each ... which is not an excessive amount.

Birmingham doesn�t have the option of BDUK funding.
The cabinet will cover 346 homes. The area already has VM available and residents will be more incline to invest.

Raising funding is generally down to campaigning those that will benefit - unless you have an angel investor that would stump it up for no return. Do the 346 houses all have access to VM? If so then getting them to pay may be more difficult.

NB: You will also have to form a company / formal legal entity..
to sign the contract with BT Openreach... do not forget that bit.

You might also look to see how many rented properties there are in the catchment area (look for rented properties on Zoopla/RightMove) and/or talk to estate/ letting agents. Landlords may well want to increase the rental or at least ability to let, value of their property.

and ultimately, leaflet evey home - thats only 350 off leaflets through doors.. one weekend !
though I suggest taking out an email address specifically for this, and putting that on form (gmail has lots !)- to keep it separate from your personal stuff.

So lets say 200 want it - 25 pounds each
100 want it - 50 pounds that's only £5/mnth for the 1st year... extra
is it likely to get 30% take up , look for those Sky Dishes - they are pushing Sky-Q, and the delivery of catchup over internet... so good targets for wanting faster speeds.

Just warn them 9-12 months for the rollout..
(yep, been talking to open reach also)

I have now signed the contract. I will leaflet the area later on this week. Hopefully any one that contributes will be appreciated. Otherwise, I will have to pay up.

The cabinet that to be installed is to have capacity to support 288 end users.

> 288 users...
interesting, as the project I am involved with is for 287 properties
and I know at least 2 people who have 2 lines now and we were expecting to add another for 'site' monitoring purposes..
If they choose the same size... oops !
(esp as anyone wanting internet will take FTTC connections, given the choice is 2-4 Mb/s at best for most of the site, and not that stable)

I believe the Huawei 288 cabinet can support 64 port line cards. So that can provide max capacity of 384 end users.

> ....max capacity of 384 end users.

Thanks
and thank goodness for that then

Surely if you are doing this on your own cash you'd get a quote for FTTPoD and go with whatever is cheaper?

To get fttpod they�d need the fibre cabinet in the first place which is what the community partnership is for I assume.

Hi guys,

I've paid the 50% deposit. The openreach checker is still displaying the 'We're exploring solutions' will this change or stay like this?

Thanks,

I don't recall the checker changed from effectively "not available" when we signed our agreement in April 2015 until our community funded AIO cab became "available" in September 2016.

You really need to start leafleting the other residents. Make it plain to them that if they each contribute £50 they will then reap the benefits of faster service with minimal extra costs. Get into the local pub, the post office, &c and spread the word otherwise you will find that you raise nothing and they all just take service off the back of all your hard work.

I have done leafleting 3 roads (approx 40 homes) and had no response at all. I�m thinking of posting/mailing the leaflets via a postal service in batches.

Knocking on doors and speaking to people is also a good way to get responses. When we were looking at community fibre a majority of responses came through our already existing Facebook group where they could ask questions and raise concerns. It maybe worth setting up a quick website or something to get some online presence. I found that letters through post on their own either got lost, forgotten or probably classed as spam.

In reply to a post by max360:

I want to get the cabinet upgraded. I have been quoted £4.7K to upgrade the cabinet via a community partnership.

The problem is how to raise funding, even £1000 and I�m thinking of covering the rest of the cost.

What we did was printed out a letter saying: Are you interested in faster broadband? Then we laid out the idea with upgrading the cabinet etc. It was suggested to us to use a crowd funding page, examples
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/fibrebroadband (EDIT: hm... I see this is YOUR site)
https://about.spacehive.com/crowdfunding-fibre-helpi...

In my area people were very keen having �faster� broadband, and willling to chip in. But in our case we needed the support before we could go forward, and it seems in your case you have already committed (pretty brave!). Good luck

P.s. people in my area didn�t really understand the broadband �stuff� so we also had a session to inform them what is required. In that meeting we also asked who were willing to participate. I think you will be better of to find a community �partner� that is willing to help as well. We also had a mailing list for those who want to be updated on the progress (yes, we also had a website, but somehow email was the easiest way to reach them, they don�t tend to go to the website unless you link it in your email).

Edited by deleted (Fri 16-Feb-18 12:05:23)

Hi all,
Just an update. I funded the cabinet myself and I didn't have the time to leaflet more homes etc...
The build work has now started. You can see the pictures/updates at: http://www.stechford.online/
Last week, had one of the openreach guy�s doing survey up and down the road. I asked him, he said it�s for the FTTP. The next days two plain white vans turned up, they lifted the BT manhole covers and ran the yellow rodding tube and pulled through the blue draw ropes.

This means, the area would now have the option of FTTC and FTTP?

Thanks,
Max360

I would discount the notion of FTTP, since you would know about from the community fibre scheme, and they don't usually do FTTP and FTTC at the same time in the same area

In reply to a post by max360:

This means, the area would now have the option of FTTC and FTTP?

Those pictures are for the installation of a DSLAM, which is FTTC. As has been said, also supplying native FTTP would be unusual but has happened in the past.

How far is it from the PCP24 on Wyndhurst to the DSLAM marked at the junction of Glebe Farm Road and Bushbury Road? They don't like to go above 80 metres cable run, with a maximum of 100 metres.

They put the DLSAM one metre away from the PCP. I'm about 110 meters away from the PCP.


I'm still getting the following message from the openreach checker:

Your area is currently in our plans to be upgraded with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), however we follow a different design and build process for FTTP so you won�t see updates at each stage. Once the engineering work is completed there is a commissioning period of up to eight weeks before an order can be placed. When you are able to place an order you will see the Accepting Orders message.�

When I asked the openrech survey guy, he had the map of the area and was stating that my house would be getting OH feed and the couple of houses down the road would be getting the UG feed.

The Stechford (CMSTE) does not have any G.fast pods on any of the cabinets.

FTTP is part of the fibre first scheme and not part of the community partnership

The community partnership manager stated, just before the survey of FTTP.

Openreach and the local authority are still currently reviewing the area and haven�ft made a firm decision and so we will continue as agreed in the contract.

Edited by max360 (Wed 18-Jul-18 20:20:14)

This is all very odd. It makes no sense for OR to provide your FTTC cabinet to an area that is also getting native FTTP. Is your current copper line overhead or underground?

I ask because if your current line is underground, an overhead supply would only be FTTP. FTTC comes through the existing phone line.

Note that FTTP does not have cabinets and is not connected to a PCP.

My line is overhead (OH).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

This is all very odd. It makes no sense for OR to provide your FTTC cabinet to an area that is also getting native FTTP. Is your current copper line overhead or underground?

It would depend on if everyone in that area can order FTTP.

In my area they installed FTTC for those in my area that cannot order FTTP, so now several neighbours and myself (on our phone pole) have a choice of FTTP or FTTC, where as everyone else only have FTTC.

They originally installed FTTP back in 2011 - 2012 (but didn't flick the switch) and then end of last year (I think) they installed FTTC even though the FTTP hardware is in place now that is odd.

Paul

Today Openreach contractors installed the CBT on the pole for FTTP.

Image at: https://preview.ibb.co/hfXj2z/cbt_fttp.jpg
https://preview.ibb.co/fk9dvK/cbt_fttp2.jpg

In the past couple of weeks, the work has been on going around my local area, lifting manhole covers and installing the CBT on the poles and pulling new cables...

Edited by max360 (Fri 31-Aug-18 19:57:25)

In reply to a post by max360:

Today Openreach contractors installed the CBT on the pole for FTTP.

Image at: https://preview.ibb.co/hfXj2z/cbt_fttp.jpg
https://preview.ibb.co/fk9dvK/cbt_fttp2.jpg

In the past couple of weeks, the work has been on going around my local area, lifting manhole covers and installing the CBT on the poles and pulling new cables...

Nice, so not long now then

Paul

So skim re-reading this, am I right that they've:

- installed a VDSL2 DSLAM that you've part paid-for through the community fibre partnership scheme, but it's not yet live

- proceeded to install FTTP that would serve your property and the others covered by the partnership, but it's also still work in progress/not yet live?

If so, I'd ask for your money back!!

Yes that's right. I contacted the CEO office for the past 4 years, all they said was there no foreseeable plans to install FTTC in the area.
Hence the reason, I choose to fund the cabinet upgrade in partnership with Openreach.

Just after the installation of the cabinet (not yet live, pending fibre), they started installing FTTP (part of the fibre first program). The FTTP they installed covers number of other cabinet (FTTC) areas, it's not cabinet specific.

The FTTP is not live yet, the work is still ongoing in the area.

Edited by max360 (Sat 01-Sep-18 13:28:09)

I'm now connected to the FTTC service at 80Mb down and 20Mb up. I went with PlusNet. FTTP work is still ongoing in the area.

Speed test. http://www.speedtest.net/result/i/2889457999.png