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Well according to the Roadworks website, it looks like BT Openreach will be working on Cabinet 25 upgrading it for FTTC service. It had looked like nothing was happening for a while…
Looking at the detail you can see the roadworks refer to cabinet 25.
The roadworks website outlines what companies are undertaking roadworks.
Once this is done then we are at the next stage of the fiber journey.
As I have mentioned previously, according to the BT Openreach Fibre site they are in the build phase for cabinet 25 in Weston Village.
Over the weekend I ventured down to the cabinet to see what was happening and see how far BT Openreach had got with putting in the new fibre cabinet, as I had heard that BT Openreach vans were sighted in the area!
Well as I could have guessed there was nothing there, nothing had changed.
Now I know that BT Openreach could potentially site the new cabinet somewhere else, but if you look at other upgraded cabinets the new ones are quite close to the existing cabinet.
Here is cabinet 24 in Weston village, the old cabinet is on the right, the new fibre cabinet is on the left.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see, actually that’s a lie I was expecting there to be nothing there…
Well, BT Openreach did say the end of June, I will believe it when I see it.
I recently posted we were in the “build” phase of the fibre journey for cabinet 25 in Weston Village.
Well according to a recent Facebook posting (hearsay evidence) BT Openreach vans were sighted next to the cabinet on Moor Lane.
I did check roadworks.org however as Moor Lane is no longer a road and the site of the cabinet is off the lane, the work wasn’t seen on that site.
The roadworks.org website is a useful site to see what is happening with roadworks and BT Openreach to log their work on this site. It was also where I found out that Virgin Media were laying down cable on the other side of the village.
Sometimes Apple technology impresses me with it’s reliability and stability and then sometimes it doesn’t…
I have a 2006 Intel iMac, one of their early Intel models and the 250GB HDD is working well today as it did when I first got it. My experiences with other iMacs that I have used at work have been equally impressive. I once did though experience hard drive failure on one of my PowerBooks, but that was because I dropped it….
However when it comes to my home 27” iMacs I have been less lucky.
My original 2009 27” iMac hard drive failed and was replaced by Applecare, only to fail again a few years later. With this failure I ignored the drive and replaced it with an external drive. Eventually the whole system failed.
My new 27” iMac which I got in late 2014 came with a 3TB Fusion Drive. Fusion Drive is Apple’s name for a hybrid drive, which combines a hard disk drive with a NAND flash storage (solid-state drive of 24 GB or more) and presents it as a single Core Storage managed logical volume with the space of both drives combined.
Last month I came to my iMac I found the prohibitory symbol.
When you see a circle with a slash symbol instead of the Apple logo, it means your Mac couldn’t find a valid System Folder to start up from.
I did try reinstalling OS X by using OS X Recovery, but that failed…
Checking my backups I realised that there were some files missing from the back up disks, so using target disk mode (and another Mac) I attempted to recover the files from the failing hard drive. I managed to get some, but unfortunately I couldn’t get them all.
I was thinking of using DiskWarrior (which had helped with my previous iMac hard drive problems, however version 4 which I have is not compatible with OS Sierra. After a while though it became impossible to mount the drive using target disk mode. Disk Utility also failed to do anything except spin the beachball.
The other symptom I saw was the separation of the SSD from the Fusion Drive, this was not good news.
Taking the iMac to the Genius Bar, they were unable to enter diagnostic mode and using a network startup drive, were able to check that the iMac was working fine, and that the problem was with the Fusion Drive.
I had considered using a data recovery firm, but in the end with the majority of the data in my backups I let the Genius Bar attempt to re-build the Fusion Drive, which didn’t work, so they had to replace the drive with a new one.
The next step is to re-build the iMac from scratch, which is nice to do now and again, but is a bit if pain if you have really slow broadband. Really looking forward to getting fibre back in the next two months!
I know I have some missing data, but I think I have the important stuff. One thing I am now considering is getting some cloud based backup which has got a lot cheaper since I last checked it out.
I am slightly disappointed that the Fusion Drive failed after just over two years. For a variety of reasons I didn’t have AppleCare with this iMac, and it is something I will certainly consider for future iMac purchases.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was complaining again about the slow progress of enabling cabinet 25 in Weston Village for fibre. When I checked this morning it was still at the Field Survey stage, however since this morning we have progressed along the fibre journey and are now at the Build stage.
We’re installing the new fibre cabinet and laying the fibre cables to serve your home or business.
You can get more detail on the fibre journey page.
At this point we’re ready to start the physical work in your community. We’ll be installing the new equipment and bringing fibre cables from your local telephone exchange to your area. You might see our teams working in the footway boxes along your street as they bring the fibre cable through the underground ducts or overhead on telephone poles. Putting our equipment in position might cause a bit of disruption with traffic diversions and closed pavements and we’ll do our best to reduce this. Throughout the build phase we continue to work closely with the power companies and local authorities to reduce delays and keep disruption to a minimum.
As you might imagine I will be taking a look round to see if they have actually started work…
I’ve noticed that GWR (who were First Great Western) have started to limit their customers’ use of wifi. Three years after free wifi was introduced on their high speed trains, they’ve realised that it’s very popular and have implemented restrictions.
Back in 2007 I wrote an article, This is the age of the train… talking about the refurbishment by FGW, then I said
Do you think I should point out to First Great Western that some train operators provide free wireless on their trains, or do you think that would be pushing it?”
After seven years in 2014, it looked as though they finally listened and added wifi to their carriages on their high speed services from Bristol to London. Back then when trying it out I discovered.
The speed, as you might expect travelling at 125mph is inconsistent, but having done a speed test I was hanging to get between 5-9 Mbps which is more than reasonable. I was also able to stream video using YouTube and iPlayer.
I also asked the question:
Will the travelling public use the wifi, what with 4G and 3G so much more commonplace than back in 2007?
Well it certainly looks like they have been using it, hence the restrictions that GWR have put in place.
It’s nice that they also let you know how it is being used and how much bandwidth is available.
It isn’t surprising that they need to do this, as technically I can’t see them being able to increase the bandwidth easily, so it make sense to restrict usage.
Having said that 15MB is not very much, not in this day of HTML e-mail messages, attachments, Twitter, Facebook and so on…
Well at least it’s still free. Hey Cross Country are you listening?
Me, well I still using my own 4G connection, it’s faster and unlimited data is greater than 15MB.
Well the fibre journey continues…
Back in January I wrote about how on the fibre journey, cabinet 25 in Weston Village had moved to the Design stage having spent years in the “we are exploring solutions” phase, which I actually believe means “it’s at the bottom of the pile of a large number of ‘solutions’ and we will get to it once we have had enough bad press, someone else starts laying cable or we have nothing better to do….”
Well as of the beginning of April we have moved along that fibre journey. We have entered the Field Survey.
We’ll now take the blueprints from the design stage to your community, and check that what looks good on paper works in the real world. Our surveyor needs to check that there’s enough space alongside all the existing utilities underground for our new cables, and whether there’s enough space to accommodate our equipment. We’ll also need to determine whether we’ll need to close any roads to install fibre and, if so, apply to the local authority for road traffic management, traffic lights etc… We’ll work closely with your local authority to make sure fibre is installed safely and with the minimum of disruption to local people.
This says we should have fibre in the next nine months which does make me wonder if BT are still hoping to have everything done by the end of June?
Nothing beats having a field survey of my own, and looking around that part of Weston Village where cabinet 25 lives, there doesn’t appear to be anything happening. No BT Openreach vans, no roadworks or cabinet installations. When other cabinets were upgraded, a new FTTC cabinet was put in place, usually just a few feet away.
So the story continues…
So I recently contacted BT Openreach about Cabinet 25 in Weston Village and asked for an explanation of why it hadn’t being upgraded to fibre and why the original date of March 2017 was now delayed? I specifically asked them for an explanation.
Their reply was
In response to your query regarding delay in providing fibre we would like to inform you that the cabinet is not fibre enabled yet, however, a project is ongoing to provide fibre to the cabinet.
The project is expected to be completed by the End of June, 2017, however, this date is subject to change as per the amount of work left.
Please keep an eye on our website from the End of June, 2017 for an update. It’s where we publish the very latest fibre coverage information and we update it daily. This is when we would estimate that you should be able to place your order, all being well.
They are saying the end of June 2017…
Really…
Somehow, and for some obscure practical reason I think, it will be delayed a they say themselves
this date is subject to change as per the amount of work left.
As you can also see there was no explanation as requested.
Hopefully not too long now….
I do wonder if the concept of a mobile phone would ever catch on….
From 13th September 1979…
Michael Rodd makes a call with an experimental cordless mobile phone.
It’s 1979 and time for the telephone to go mobile. In this report from a longer programme, Michael Rodd examines a British prototype for a cordless telephone that allows the user to make calls from anywhere. Also included at the end of this item is a rather nice out-take as Rodd also experiences the first mobile wrong number.
I do recall watching this when it was broadcast.
Of course we don’t really use our phones as phones these days, the mini computer we have in our pockets is now used for way more than just making calls.
Back in July I posted about my new(ish) printer, in which I wrote:
…by posting this post I hope to have some kind of record of how long the cartridges last.
Well I now need to replace one of the replacement cartridges.
The first setup cartridge to run out was the double sized black cartridge which is used for black and white output. This lasted from the end of March to the beginning of July, just over three months.
The replacement XL version lasted from July to January and is still going, so lasted over six months.
I have replaced all the cartridges over the last six months and it looks like the XL cartridges are on target to last as long as the XL black cartridge.