Activate

So when is three months only two weeks? When you are upgrading cabinet 25 in Weston Village to FTTC.

Well we have reached the next stage of the Fibre Journey, moving from Connect to Activate.

We're performing our final quality checks and making sure everything is ready for your fibre order.

We’re performing our final quality checks and making sure everything is ready for your fibre order.

At the previous stage, which was on the 6th July, it said:

You can’t order a fibre service today but typically it’ll be available to your premises within the next four months.

Well here we are two weeks later at the Activate stage and the site says:

You can’t order a fibre service today but typically it’ll be available to your premises within the next month.

So I am anticipating that this may take less than a month.

However the process is moving faster than it says on the website, it’s one of the reasons I am blogging about it, so I can see if we are on target or slower than the website says. The build phase (which should be a “month”) was just a week and at the end of that we had a new cabinet.

new fibre cabinet 25

So I should be able to place an order very soon….

Making a connection

After seeing BT Openreach vans and engineers around the cabinet, the connecting website shows Cabinet 25 has moved into the Connect phase.

We’re connecting power to the new fibre cabinet and joining the new fibre lines to the existing copper network.

Now there is a caveat that…

You can’t order a fibre service today but typically it’ll be available to your premises within the next four months.

However the process is moving faster than it says on the website, it’s one of the reasons I am blogging about it, so I can see if we are on target or slower than the website says. The build phase (which should be a “month” was just a week!

Now the building work is done, BT Openreach need to connect the cabinets and connect power to the new cabinet.

For a Fibre to the Cabinet connection this stage is about connecting the power and fibre cables to the cabinet in your area. The existing and new cabinets are now connected to each other by underground copper cables. The physical build is now completed and there shouldn’t need to be any further works in your area.

After this has happened then BT Openreach can activate the cabinet, inform service providers and then I can place an order.

We have a new cabinet…

new fibre cabinet 25

Well the building work has finished and there is now a new fibre cabinet next to cabinet 25.

It’s in the corner just a few feet away from the original cabinet 25 (which in the photograph above is hidden by the larger green cabinet).

new fibre cabinet 25

Now they have finished the “build” phase the next stage is the “connect” phase.

For a Fibre to the Cabinet connection this stage is about connecting the power and fibre cables to the cabinet in your area. The existing and new cabinets are now connected to each other by underground copper cables. The physical build is now completed and there shouldn’t need to be any further works in your area.

After that they can activate the cabinet and ISPs can start taking orders…

They’re building, they’re building…

After mentioning last time that BT Openreach had registered their “roadworks” it was nice to see today that they had been doing some work around cabinet 25.

They're building, they're building...

Though in this picture you can’t actually see cabinet 25, it’s behind the green cabinet in the middle of the picture. They appear to be digging up channels to lay cables between the old cabinet and the new one. I believe that the new cabinet is then connected direct to the exchange with fibre, hence FTTC Fibre To The Cabinet. The last stretch of cable from the cabinet to the house is still old copper cable.

So will BT Openreach achieve their end of June deadline? Remember this was an extension from their original end of March deadline.

No.

According to a Facebook thread, it appears BT Openreach have pushed their deadline to the end of August 2017.

As you might imagine, disappointed.

We have roadworks…

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.

Build Phase, what Build Phase?

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.

Cabinet 24 in Weston Village

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.

Openreach vans “sighted”

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.

And then we move along again…

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…

…and so it continues…

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.

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…

Will there be fibre?

Weston Village

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….