Working now

I mentioned previously the last time I tried to use the Revive chargers at the Diamond Batch car park at Worle Station they didn’t work. I was unable to charge my Funky Cat and had to move to a “normal” space.

This time, when parking at the car park, I connected the Funky Cat to the charger, went to the app, and all worked fine.

The only downside is that North Somerset have raised the cost of parking at the car park by 20p and now charge 10p if you use the app. Still, as I was going to park there anyhow as I was catching the train to Bristol, it’s nice to be able to charge the car up as well at the same time.

I think the app was faulty

Decided to catch the train to Bristol, but left earlier to plug the Funky Cat into the Revive chargers at Worle Railway Station. When I arrived I saw there was another electric vehicle already plugged in. However after plugging in the Funky Cat, the app said there was a fault with the charger.

Looking at the other chargers (on the app) they were all at fault. However I think there was a fault with the app, as the other electric vehicle looked like it was charging.

I moved the car to a normal space, paid for my parking, and walked to catch my train.

Checking later the app was still saying Faulted.

So you know it doesn’t exist?

I wrote in a previous blog post about my experience with a non-working revive charger.

On my first use of the chargers, mine was the only electric vehicle using them. On my second visit to the chargers, quite a few of the chargers were in use and my car’s charging port is on the front nearside. There was one optimal space where I parked. I plugged the car in and then used the Revive (web) app to find the charger and start the charge. However the (web) app said no such charger existed. Which I thought was weird. As there wasn’t a suitable alternative space, I moved the car, parked in a normal space and caught my train to work.

I decided to email Revive and see if there was an issue with the non-working revive charger. I did get a response.

We are aware of the issues with this charger and our faults team are currently investigating.   Please be advised, that the charger RV01082 has been removed from our network until further notice. Once charger is available again, it will show on our live map.

I do think that they should at the very least turn off the faulty charger, or even put a sign on it…

I will wait until it appears on the map.

What do you mean it doesn’t exist?

I had seen a few months back they were preparing the Worle Station Diamond Batch car park for EV charging, well they had put in the space markings, but there were no chargers. The chargers are now installed and I have used them before and was pleased with their speed and cost. The Revive charger charges 55p per kWh. This is less than the 85p that MFG charge. Obviously, there is the £2.40 car parking charge as well. I said before:

I was actually quite impressed with the speed, taking just over three hours to charge from 25% to 100%. I would certainly use these chargers again.

They are Revive chargers, which I had also used before at Sand Bay. The chargers at Diamond Batch are 22 kWh chargers so are not “quick” compared to the rapid chargers you find elsewhere. However they are ideal for a station car parking, you park, plug in, catch the train, go to work, come back, your car is charged to 100%. It’s also great that there are no idle fees, this means you can set your car to charge and not worry about moving it once you have a 100% charge. This is ideal for this kind of car park, where you are likely to be parked for the whole day.

Now it hasn’t all been plain sailing. On my first use of the chargers, mine was the only electric vehicle using them. On my second visit to the chargers, quite a few of the chargers were in use and my car’s charging port is on the front nearside. There was one optimal space where I parked. I plugged the car in and then used the Revive (web) app to find the charger and start the charge. However the (web) app said no such charger existed. Which I thought was weird. As there wasn’t a suitable alternative space, I moved the car, parked in a normal space and caught my train to work.

Worle Railway Station

The following day I went to charge the car and used a different space with a different charger. This worked as it had the first time I had used these car chargers. All worked as expected. It took three hours and forty-three minutes to go from a 8% charge to 100%. At the end of it, there was a 152 mile predicted range, which is expected at this time of year.

Charging at Diamond Batch

I had seen a few months back they were preparing the Worle Station Diamond Batch car park for EV charging, well they had put in the space markings, but there were no chargers. I was on my way to Bristol I was catching the train to work. I wondered if the chargers were installed and saw that they were and decided I would try out the chargers.

They were Revive chargers, which I had used before elsewhere.

These are 22 kWh chargers so are not “quick” compared to the rapid chargers you find elsewhere. However they are ideal for a station car parking, you park, plug in, catch the train, go to work, come back, your car is charged to 100%. It’s also great that there are no idle fees, this means you can set your car to charge and not worry about moving it once you have a 100% charge. This is ideal for this kind of car park, where you are likely to be parked for the whole day.

The Revive charger was charging 55p per kWh. This is less than the 85p that MFG charge. Obviously, there is the £2.40 car parking charge as well.

I was actually quite impressed with the speed, taking just over three hours to charge from 25% to 100%. I would certainly use these chargers again.

It’s both the end and the beginning

fibre
Image by Daniel Dino-Slofer from Pixabay

I have placed an order for fibre to the premises FTTP with estimated speeds of 900Mb/s down and 110Mb/s up. Should be up and running in the next couple of weeks.

A few months back our local area was awash with BT Openreach vans.

I did wonder if they were installing full fibre connections, or fibre to the premises FTTP. I remember at the time doing a search, but no news on any kind of upgrade to either cabinet 25 or the Worle Exchange.

Bizarrely enough it was an advert on Instagram that caught my attention back on the 1st October. Almost for a joke I decided to see if I could get faster fibre, I wasn’t expecting to, but was quite surprised to see that I could in fact have FTTP! 

Having suffered poor ADSL speeds for many years, I was really pleased, in September 2017 when BT Openreach finally finished the upgrade to cabinet 25 and we could have FTTC fibre.

With roughly 30Mb/s download and 9Mb/s upload speed I felt I was back, in terms of internet speeds, where I was in 2012 at our old house before we moved. Eight years ago I blogged about how I lost my FTTC connection having moved house (literally just moved down the same road).

It took over five years for BT Openreach to upgrade Cabinet 25 so we could have FTTC.

One of the reasons I didn’t place an order straight away was that, if I ordered BT Full Fibre I would have to close my current internet account with my ISP. Now I have been with my ISP since 1998, they were my first ISP, well the first I paid for after a free trial with AOL. I had seen an advert in a computing magazine, they were called Force9 and were based in Sheffield.

I had a dial-up internet account with them initially where I paid a monthly fee for internet access as well as any telephone charges.

Stayed with them when I moved house. In June 2000, the Force9 brand was changed to Plusnet. This coincided with the introduction of the Surftime dialup internet products, the first real 24/7 unmetered dial-up service in the UK. This worked really well with the Airport Extreme base station I had with integrated modem. I could use my Mac to enable the connection and then use the wifi across the home to use the internet wherever I was in the house.

When ADSL was enabled in February 2003, I upgraded to this new faster internet. The always on nature of ADSL changed how I used the internet, and in some ways how the internet used me. 

Plusnet was sold to BT in 2007 and I think it lost a little of its soul that day, but I stuck with them.

On this day in 2010 I upgraded to FTTC and this was a real revelation. With 40Mb down and 10Mb up this is significantly faster than the 1.3 down and 0.6 up I had before.

I was so disappointed when we moved house two years later and lost it and went back to the slow speeds of ADSL.

Five years later, cabinet 25 was upgraded and we had fibre back.

new fibre cabinet 25

All that time I was with Force9 or Plusnet as they like to be called.

When I found out I could have FTTP from BT, I did think I should be able to get FTTP from Plusnet as I recalled they were doing FTTP trials a few years back. Alas it was apparent that they don’t do FTTP products. So it was with a little sadness (don’t know why) that I ordered the BT Full Fibre product and this automatically activated the cancellation of my account with Plusnet.

It’s the end of one era and the start of another.

Tech Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

Over the last twelve months I have published 26 posts, many of these were about my return to fibre. So it is nice to see that the tenth most popular post on the blog this year was from nearly a year ago.  We will have fibre in “12 months”!  I said back then that according to BT Openreach we would have fibre within twelve months, I was slightly sceptical, but nine months after publishing that post I did get fibre.

new fibre cabinet 25

The ninth post was about when my iMac Fusion Drive Failed and had to have it replaced.

The post at number eight was another post about my fibre journey, Still checking… was when the cabinet was activated, but alas wasn’t accepting orders.

The seventh post was from 2012 when my HP Photosmart printer died. My printer is dead! was a sorry tale about how replacing the ink cartridges on the HP B110a resulted it in destroying the print head.

The post at six was about  Dusting off the Pogo my old Polaroid Bluetooth pocket printer. Still going strong.

Polaroid Pogo printer

The fifth post was how I don’t like BT FON which was originally published in 2011.

The post at number four was wondering Where are my Comic Life Styles? I found them.

The third most popular post was about the free wifi (or lack of) on my holiday, Haven no wifi

The post at number two was Comic Book Fonts which was about the amazing comic book fonts from Comic Book Fonts.

So the most popular post on the blog was my post about QR codes on chocolate bars,  Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling was published in 2015 and was one of many posts I published on the use of QR codes back then.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

Finally…

network cable

Well if you have been following my sorry saga of Cabinet 25 in Weston Village and it’s journey to fibre, you will be pleased, sorry relieved, that I finally have fibre. Five years after moving house my broadband is now FTTC and much faster than the 1.4Mb/s ADSL speeds I have had over that time. It’s being seven years since the Worle Exchange was upgraded for FTTC, but as with any FTTC enabled Exchange, you can only upgrade to fibre (FTTC) once the cabinet has been enabled.

I had been given an activation date of the 19th September. I had seen BT Openreach vans there that morning (they had been there the day before) so had reasonable expectations that the activation date wouldn’t be missed.

The only timing I had been given was that it would be completed by midnight, but I did wonder if it would be finished earlier, I just couldn’t see BT Openreach being there in the dark.

Mid afternoon my ADSL connection stopped. I did restart the router/modem but no connection. An hour later the modem went blue, I had a fibre connection.

It takes time for the connection to settle down, but I am pleased with a 25Mb/s download speed and it was nice to see how a 1GB software update which would have taken up to eight hours, take just eight minutes! The upload speed is slower than I would like at 2Mb/s but that’s still five times faster than what I had before.

Later it was nice to be able to be downloading an iOS update whilst streaming BBC iPlayer at the same time and browsing the web.

So I now have fibre.

Still waiting…

BT Openreach Faceplate

Okay so maybe being a little impatient, but I am still waiting on my fibre connection to be enabled.

BT Openreach finally enabled the cabinet on the 30th August and I placed my order with Plusnet the next day.

In my initial correspondence with Plusnet they seemed to imply that my connection would be upgraded on the 7th September.

However as with others I have since found out that my connection would be enabled on the 19th September. No actual time, but sometime during the day.

What I was confused with, was when I got FTTC at my old place, we had to have a visit from a BT Engineer who fitted a new faceplate to the master socket. So I was expecting to have some kind of appointment to have a faceplate installed. Talking to Plusnet customer service I have realised that as the predicted speed is low then I won’t need to have a new faceplate and “filters will work just fine”.

It was back in 2014 when BT decided that for up to 38MBps fibre connections that this could be a self-install option and therefore no faceplate needed to be fitted.

However some sites are recommending that you fit a faceplate anyhow.

We urge anyone considering or opting for a self-install fibre broadband service to install a faceplate filter. These are inexpensive and will generally deliver significant improvements in broadband speeds.

So I have been thinking that once I have the upgraded connection to fit my own faceplate. You can get them quite cheaply on Amazon.

So not long now and really fast speeds…

Well maybe just fast speeds…

Well faster than 1Mb/s at least!

The cabinet is enabled…

Originally BT Openreach said they would upgrade Cabinet 25 in Weston Village by the end of March, this deadline was quickly moved to the end of August. If you have been following my saga you will know that the final phase has been dragging.

Today, the 30th August, one day before the BT Openreach deadline, they have finished the process and are accepting orders for FTTC connections.

The cabinet is enabled...

I had checked earlier today and as for most of the last month the websites were saying, still checking stuff and no you can’t order a fibre connection today. This evening that has all changed and I could now place an order for a FTTC connection.

The speeds compared to my previous fibre connection are not as good.

The cabinet is enabled...

Back in 2010 I was getting 40Mb down and 10Mb up. According to the above information I can expect roughly 25Mb down and 4Mb up.

So the next step is to place an order…

I did try and upgrade my Plus.Net account, but their website failed with an error.

Probably down to the age of my old account, so I need to phone them…. and the phone lines are closed.

So tomorrow I may be able to order fibre, then there is a ten day wait.

I have been waiting five years, I think I can wait ten days.