Confused BT Infinity, Fiber and DSLAM installs

[old.user4556]

Anyone close to the telecoms industry that can shed a bit more light on what's going on here:

I understand that there are two key things to enable you to get fiber - the exchange needs upgraded, and your cabinet needs upgraded. Well, my exchange has been upgraded for some time, but the Infinity checker "says no" every time I check. BT keep sending me the invites for Infinity through the door (I've already registered interest), so I checked again last week with no joy. Frustrated, I reached out to BT who then spoke to Openreach on my behalf as to why my cabinet wasn't upgraded:

I've spoken to Openreach and they have advised me that the cabinet which you are connected to, cabinet 39 has been removed from the upgrade program, because Openreach were unable to find a physical position to place the fibre cabinet within the deployment criteria.
The criteria is ensuring that cabinets are located in accordance with all national and local planning laws, ensuring that the cabinet does not obstruct pedestrians or provide a danger to all road-users. We must ensure that the DSLAM is located within 100m of its associated telephony connection cabinet and that there is adequate access to power and existing telephony infrastructure. To further enable the location of the DSLAM, we must accurately survey for underground structure and obstacles etc.

This smells like bullshit / a standard response to me given that the cabinet about half a mile up the street (on the same private housing development!) does have a DSLAM installed. So, BT are only providing about one third of the estate with fiber and the rest of the estate are cut off? What a fucking crock.

On googling for this, it appears that I'm not alone in this cabinet upgrade lottery. So what's going on here? Do they use the "register your interest" tracker to see how many people would buy it before installing a DSLAM?

Edit: please excuse my fibre spelling mistake

 

[Poag]

Depending on the cab, they either upgrade the cab internally, or place a new cab next to it.

Some local councils have objected to new cabs next to old one..thus no upgrade 'within criteria'.


Or so I've heard. Was on the news a while ago. Could be something else tho aswell.

 

[ECA]

You can email openreach yourself, I did.
The email I got

Thank you for your email

Information about the commercial fibre project can be found on the rollout site :-
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

In your locality work is ongoing. Currently this is awaiting power (long date) and other work, and the estimated date for cabinet xxxxx enablement is close April 2013 assuming there are no issues. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate any engineering date quoted is at best an estimate and will be subject to change depending on local issues and conditions

Please register your interest on the website as this helps us assess local demand patterns

Many thanks

 

[old.user4556]

Yeah I've checked that in the past, doesn't really tell me anymore than I already now know which is that my cabinet is not being upgraded.

 

[soze]

We have spoken to BT about this, unofficially it comes down to potential user base. If they do not get enough interest that exchange goes to the back of the queue. Also it seems that the roll out is slowing down now they have to let everyone else resell it. So if Sky have more subscribers the money is not there for BT to bother. Several customers have been left in this position where they were scheduled for Infinity but then it got shit canned.

 

[Gups]

I guess you cannot have Virgin in your area ?
BT are a shocking company imo I deal with them everyday and everyday I have a new record of poor customer service that I think they cannot top and yet they do!

I'm not saying Virgin are perfect either as I had to wait 2 months for them to enable my phone line as their was a faulty leg on the connection from the cabinet to my house however they gave me compensation of free TV and broadband all the time i was out of service on the phone line..... and when you have cable broadband what do you need a phone line for ?

 

[old.user4556]

Well, I don't get it.

I've done some more digging into this.

Someone else on my estate has posted on my local community Facebook page with the same issue as me (wants fibre, can't get it for the reasons I've cited above). However, it turns out that someone who is about 5 doors up from me and, within spitting distance of my property, can get fibre. Furthermore, there is another property even further up the street that said person who has Sky Fibre churning out around 30 Mbps. Now, given these properties are about 60 yards and 100 or so yards away and almost certainly connected to the same cabinet, I don't understand why I cannot get it?! My mate also appears to be able to get it and he's 300 or so yards in the opposite direction. Here's a map:



The red dots can get fibre (the one on the far right is my mate's place), the blue dot is my property and the yellow dot is the cabinet marked P39.

I don't understand why I'm somehow "missed off" - I phoned Sky tonight to see if I can get Sky Fibre, but they say the same fucking thing: "you're not in a Fibre area" when I clearly fucking am. The Fibre checkers show that properties round about me are able to get it, but there appears to be a pocket of houses (mind included) that can't. I've emailed Openreach again with this information because their first response was clearly bollocks as people up and down the street from the cabinet can get Fibre.

Any ideas?

 

[Poag]

Hmm, Cabinet is probably full then. The leaflets are to gauge if its worth them putting in extra capacity...?

 

[old.user4556]

Ahh balls. So the guy from BT is right.

There's no logic or layout to the cabinet you're connected to, all those red dots are connected to C15 which is away up the east side of the estate where there is definitely a DSLAM installed. My house on the other hand is connected to cabinet P39 which is directly across the street. I used the following link on the three addresses and it confirmed it:

http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.AddressOutput

My "blue dot":



The red dot on the far left:



Cabinet 15 is located away off to the right of the map, about half a mile up the street. So even though I'm closer to cabinet 15 than the dots off to the left, they wired my property to the cabinet directly opposite me which is not fibre enabled, and the newer houses to the old cabinet 15 at the start of the estate.

That makes no sense to me.

 

[GReaper]

Out of curiosity - what does the postcode checker say? (Not the specific address, just the postcode).

In a similar situation, addresses on the same road either side can get it, stuck in the middle and can't. The postcode checker gives an estimate of 31st March 2014, whilst the telephone/address checkers only shows what's available currently.

 

[soze]

Cabinet 15 is located away off to the right of the map, about half a mile up the street. So even though I'm closer to cabinet 15 than the dots off to the left, they wired my property to the cabinet directly opposite me which is not fibre enabled, and the newer houses to the old cabinet 15 at the start of the estate.

That makes no sense to me.

The distance might mean nothing. If your cabinet is full then new connections might go to cabinet 15. We have had new phone line orders delayed and declined in Central London due to the Cabinet being full. It might be worth asking the question, as a business we have never been able to specify a cabinet but if you speak to BT they might do it. Of course if Cabinet 15 is full hence you ended up on a different one you will be out of luck.

 

[BloodOmen]

I know to get ADSL enabled (at the time) in our area a large portion of the village had to sign an online form showing their interest, if there isn't enough people wanting it they won't activate it basically... prob the same for Fiber - think we needed like 3000 signatures for it or something like that and even then we had to wait like 6 months before they got around to installing ADSL.

 

[soze]

The other issue is if the Cabinet you are on is full which could be the case as close neighbors go to a different cabinet then the construction excuse could be correct. If there is not room to stand another green box next to the existing one because of dropped curbs water mains lamp posts ect then you will be fecked unless they move lines from that to another cabinet to make room for another upgrade but the costs are probably prohibitive.

 

[old.user4556]

BT retail were rather helpful when I took it up with them again yesterday morning. They phoned me to tell me that the root cause for the lack of a Fibre DSLAM for my cabinet was due to a lack of granting for planning permission by my local council to BT Openreach.

I wrote a letter to my local MPs yesterday evening and got a reply that night (wow...) and they're "very concerned" that an issue with planning permission could hold up Fibre roll-out to the estate that I live on. For info, my local council has pledged to have 99% of homes connected to Fibre by 2017, but this is clearly a waste of time if the council are knocking back DSLAM deployments. In addition, I live on an estate which is effectively a "village" of ~2000 new homes meant to bring people into the area and boost the local economy. My exchange was one of the early ones for Fibre upgrades, but the plan seems to have fallen flat regarding this cabinet faff.

My MP is going to speak to the head of planning on my behalf to understand a) why planning wasn't granted and b) what needs to be done to allow cabinets to be upgraded. He's committed to getting an answer by the end of Monday.

 

[old.user4556]

Out of curiosity - what does the postcode checker say? (Not the specific address, just the postcode).

In a similar situation, addresses on the same road either side can get it, stuck in the middle and can't. The postcode checker gives an estimate of 31st March 2014, whilst the telephone/address checkers only shows what's available currently.

It says "no fibre" purely based on postcode:


Available Products

Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Downstream Range(Mbps)

Availability Date

Featured Products

WBC ADSL 2+Up to 6--4 to 8Available
ADSL MaxUp to 5--3.5 to 7.5Available
WBC Fixed Rate2----Available
Fixed Rate2----Available

 

[soze]

BT retail were rather helpful when I took it up with them again yesterday morning. They phoned me to tell me that the root cause for the lack of a Fibre DSLAM for my cabinet was due to a lack of granting for planning permission by my local council to BT Openreach.

I wrote a letter to my local MPs yesterday evening and got a reply that night (wow...) and they're "very concerned" that an issue with planning permission could hold up Fibre roll-out to the estate that I live on. For info, my local council has pledged to have 99% of homes connected to Fibre by 2017, but this is clearly a waste of time if the council are knocking back DSLAM deployments. In addition, I live on an estate which is effectively a "village" of ~2000 new homes meant to bring people into the area and boost the local economy. My exchange was one of the early ones for Fibre upgrades, but the plan seems to have fallen flat regarding this cabinet faff.

My MP is going to speak to the head of planning on my behalf to understand a) why planning wasn't granted and b) what needs to be done to allow cabinets to be upgraded. He's committed to getting an answer by the end of Monday.

Nice one. Sounds like they do need the second box then. I will keep my fingers crossed. Have you looked at the cabinet to see if there is room next to it?

 

[old.user4556]

Yeah, plenty room, I'll take a pic. BRB.

Edit:

 

[soze]

Yeah there is no reason the council should block a third box there.

 

[old.user4556]

Yeah there is no reason the council should block a third box there.

What I'm partially worried about is that BT Openreach are feeding me a line of shite and the real reason for not putting a DSLAM there is nothing to do with council rejection and its actually some other reason (such as, not enough interest). I'll know more on Monday, but at least if my MP comes back and says "the Council never blocked it" then I can go back to Openreach or get my MP to write to Openreach to get the box installation expedited.

 

[Shagrat]

Hope you get something sorted G...

Cabinets near me have just been upgraded to fibre. I'm on a normal BT connection that we don't seem to have any problems with anyway, even with me playing online, my son playing online and my daughter watching streamed stuff so I don't really know if I'm going to bother upgrading at the moment, I'm not sure I'll actually notice any difference?

 

[soze]

You are lucky I live to close to the Exchange to get FTTC. I need to wait for them to release FTTP which I have no doubt will cost considerably more and the date it is available keeps drifting into the future.

 

[soze]

Hope you get something sorted G...

Cabinets near me have just been upgraded to fibre. I'm on a normal BT connection that we don't seem to have any problems with anyway, even with me playing online, my son playing online and my daughter watching streamed stuff so I don't really know if I'm going to bother upgrading at the moment, I'm not sure I'll actually notice any difference?

If you do not notice buffering now then it is unlikely that you will. If you were a big fan of 1080p content on Netflix and the like an upgrade could be worth it. 4 1080p streams in could start causing issues.

 

[Embattle]

DSLAM cabinets are generally bigger than those two cabinets already there, so the residents might of got annoyed with the idea of a third even bigger cabinet.

 

[old.user4556]

Agreed, but it depends on the cabinet (there's a few) that they choose to put there I guess. The one at the start of the street is the smaller one which I would expect would be the candidate for my cabinet.

 

[MYstIC G]

Agreed, but it depends on the cabinet (there's a few) that they choose to put there I guess. The one at the start of the street is the smaller one which I would expect would be the candidate for my cabinet.

how high is that fence? if the cabinet is taller the council might have used that as an excuse. Check the planning register for BT's application?

 

[old.user4556]

Unsure, will need to measure, it's a good shout though.

 

[old.user4556]

Here's the DSLAM for cabinet 15 at the start of the estate, right next to a speed limit sign - can't say that's particularly pedestrian friendly if Openreach genuinely give a shit about impeding the movements of pedestrians:



Here's it is in relation to the cabinet:

 

[MYstIC G]

Here's the DSLAM for cabinet 15 at the start of the estate, right next to a speed limit sign - can't say that's particularly pedestrian friendly if Openreach genuinely give a shit about impeding the movements of pedestrians:

Here's it is in relation to the cabinet:

Meets all the necessary though. Away from existing, not in front of anyone's property, etc.

It's a shot mate but my guess is stupid planning has blocked your box and frankly BT aren't going to fight it as it a) saves them a job and b) they know eventually the numbers game of "pissed off users shouting at council" will solve this for them.

 

[old.user4556]

The law must be different in England regarding this, because:

http://birkdalefocus.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/monstrosity-bt-cabinets-spreading.html

Seems that BT just do what they fancy in other places?

 

[Embattle]

It tends to be down to the council's I believe - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18277561