Houston! We have detected the green shoots of a fibre cabinate upgrade!
Jesse Pinkman
Posts: 5,794 Forum Member
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Just popped out to top up my mobile and the BT cabinet that serves my house, and that I have checked every day since last October, now has plastic barriers around it!!!!!
The tarmac has been cracked and some grey plastic pipes about 3-4 inches in diameter lay on the ground.
The work is subcontracted to Morrison Utility Services and has two extremely long works numbers on the sign. (BC00SMU1WNGA001****************)
Is there anywhere I can enter those numbers and get any info?
Anyway, about 'kin time! this area might be about to be dragged screaming and kicking into the fibre age.
The tarmac has been cracked and some grey plastic pipes about 3-4 inches in diameter lay on the ground.
The work is subcontracted to Morrison Utility Services and has two extremely long works numbers on the sign. (BC00SMU1WNGA001****************)
Is there anywhere I can enter those numbers and get any info?
Anyway, about 'kin time! this area might be about to be dragged screaming and kicking into the fibre age.
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Comments
BINGO!
Many thanks!
Yes it has two works orders listed in the right place and the numbers match up. (Passers by thought I was a very strange weirdo taking flash pictures of a sign just as it was getting dark this evening.
Works from 4th - 17th Feb., for a concrete plinth and ducting to get power to a (PCP3) street cabinet.
"Delays possible" - They mean BT as it's on a pavement at the end of a very little used cul-de-sac.
Many thanks for tracking that down as I have been searching the council's planning and getting nowhere.
Of course I shall be out tomorrow annoying men around a hole that know nothing.
I'll run a bloody extension lead over there myself!
And yes it did have the Openreach name and logo on it. Morrison's are obviously sub-contracted to them to dig holes etc.
Or Cab was upgraded in Oct 2011 and Fibre was not available to order until April 2012.
No between Feb and March it says on the BT site so that must be true!
Well as true as the Oct,-Nov.-Dec that they had up last year that came and went!
But seriously, I look at it as without a new cabinet, there never will be any fibre, so this is at least a step in the right direction. This step had to take place or we would be guaranteed never to have fibre.
Besides, as soon as the van leaves on the last day, I will melt the phone lines to BT customer services until I get an answer or a court injunction.
That's because BT don't generally need planning permission.
If they're only just putting the cabinet in there's little chance you'll have it in Feb or March. If predict end of April. Are they replacing your cabinet with a bigger one or are they actually fitting an additional cabinet?
I think the problem was that I was searching my local Shepway District Council's web site and the problem with that is that roads/highways/street lighting/etc comes under Kent County Council control.
I thought they would put it next to the old cabinet, but it looks like, by the holes/concrete that it will be sited the other side of a very small, road to nowhere, cul-de-sac. However the position looks strange as it looks like it's going on the edge of the kerb and not against wall, so if that is the place, it will stick out a bit. You will have: Building wall - Pavement - cabinet perched on kerb - then road. But it's only day 3 of a 10 day job so the holes so far might just be the prep work and a new hole for the cabinet may appear soon.
A new deep hole has appeared today exposing a big fat black cable that they are obviously going to tap into. It has a bigger bulge section in it. Looks like a power cable but could equally be telecommunications.
I would expect that after all roadworks are complete and all conduit is left with pull ropes in them, a team of Openreach bods will arrive to pull cables through and connect it all up.
Stretham was due to be upgraded as part of the Connecting Cambridgeshire initiative, aimimg to get 98% of Cambridgeshire covered by fibre-based internet.
Interestinly, the Connecting Cambridgeshire websites lists June - September 2014 as our availablity date. So could he BT Openreach site suggest they are ahead of schedule? Or is there's a time between go live date and consumer availability?
Thanks for the tip...
I managed to find something interesting on their.
BT have scheduled work further up the A10 for "Safe access to underground structures for box cleaning and cabling for NGA BDUK Fibre Network..." on 17-21 February 2014 (Ref: BC005CC8W0000EA1KFX6601F).
Here's a dumb question though...the location of this work is slightly further than our local telephone exchange. There are a number of instances where BT will be doing work in the area, but this one is the closest. Can anyone explain this to someone relatively new to FTTC?
Also watching with glee, i'm on the same exchange! Fed up with ADSL lol
Same here...
Glad to finally see progress. When we moved to the area in 2007, BT had said 21CN (which afaik brings "upto 20Mb/s speeds) was due ot be available by 2010. That never happened, so very pleased to see progress on fibre (8Mb in an age of many connected devices is not good).
I now just hope our home can be connected? according to SamKnows we're just 622 metres away from the exchange (as the crow flies) so am hoping we aren't connected directly to it. (although, the BT Openrach list of "Coming Soon" areas lists Stretham as both FTTC and FTTP)
You may find you're connected to the cabinet right outside the exchange, as far as i'm aware there are no exchange only lines on Stretham.
Try your phone number in https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html and see what it says
ready for service
It doesnt say anything about exactly how my line is connected (direct to exchange or via cabinet) unfotunately.
Or is there something else I'm looking for?
So the work is not between you and the exchange but actually beyond the exchange? If so, that'd make sense as the fibre cabinets are probably not connected to your exchange. They are likely to be connected to a larger exchange, the headend a few miles away.
The people who pull the cables through could be Openreach or could be contractors. After they took on a lot of staff last year it is more likely to be Openreach themselves.
Sounds like the fibre cabinet will be in the middle of the pavement, they often do that rather than put it against a wall and I've no idea why. It must be to do with the power cables as all of the normal copper cabinets are against walls.
Should be the very top line, long the lines (no pun intended) of "Telephone number xxxxxx is connected to exchange STRETHAM..." with the associated cabinet number after that, if your line is connected to one.
Unusual to see workmen doing anything on a Friday afternoon especially with the Olympic opening at 3:30pm.
Unfortunately, there is no cabinet number listed...
I've tested with another telephone number which i know is further from it's exchange, and that DOES list the cab number. mrMick, does it list a cabinet for you?
So i guess I'm connected directly to the exchange
Speaking of which, I asked Connecting Cambridgeshire which date is correct, March 2014 as listed on BT Openreach, or Jun - Sep which they quote, and they're sticking by their date...
Still, slow progress is far better than them saying "Nope! You ain't going to get it ever!"
Yessum, i'm on cabinet 2, which is a fair distance from me so i'm not expecting massively fast speeds.
The same thing happened here and then it took another 3 months before it became live, where my mate live, it took over 6 months for it to become live.
so it could still be while.