Gentlefolk,
We believe the situation has now nearly** returned to normality. Those VDSL enabled cabinets still with capacity now correctly report availability again but we have one cabinet installed as an ECI 128 that has been unavailable since mid July despite BT installing the nearly full capacity of 250 pairs of tie cables. We assume that BT have hit some sort of snag whilst attempting the upgrade to 256 services. (We also note that all the new Huawei cabinets being installed under the Surrey CC contract are now fully equipped with either 192 or 288 capacities but stupidly with only a single duct and one set of 100 pr tie cables.)
There has also been another subtle change with the estimator in that the very worst VDSL performers, right down to preposterous sync speeds of 0.75 Mbps, now don't report any VDSL estimates despite a service being installed ! We assume that might prevent those users from changing ISPs if they wished to.
EDIT ** It appears that I am being too optimistic ! I have just tried to place a VDSL order for the seemingly newly enabled cabinet 1 off the Abinger Sutton exchange with Zen internet. Both the BT wholesale checker and Zen say VDSL IS available but the secondary Zen check rejects the application. Zen report that they have "had words" with BT who are aware of their failings but have not yet provided any explanation suitable for end users. The advice I have been given is to try again tomorrow. Given that cabinet 6 close-by remains unavailable until December 31 2013 I fear the worst !
Kind regards,
Walter