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[z1ts]

I wonder if any of you experts on here may be able to help me with a wee problem?

My parents are looking to get FTTC and on both bt.com and plus.net they say that it is not available for their phone No. BUT on the superfast-openreach.co.uk website their exchange is listed as 'AO' (Accepting Orders) - why then won't it um er accept orders?!!!!!

[c6em]

For FTTC to be available both
1 the exchange must be fibre capable
2. The individual BT green street distribution cabinet feeding the group of nearby streets must have been upgraded to what is in layman's terms a mini-exchange - fully powered from an electric supply.

I'd guess that No 2 has not been done in your parent's case for their cabinet - though others have been.
Mostly this is because the size of the cabinet's distribution area is too small to make the £XXK spent to upgrade the cabinet economically viable.
There is another special case for those properties with no distribution cabinet called exchange only lines where FTTC is not available.

Yes - it is complicated.
The BT checker at will tell you which cabinet they are on or if none is stated - just the exchange then it is an exchange only line.
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

[z1ts]

Hmmmmmmmm!

Gets complicated!

Here's the screen-shot of the BT checker - excuse my ignorance, would you be able to interpret?

If No. 2 is the case, then is there a chance of it ever being upgraded to a 'mini-exchange'

[Ixel]

Hmmmmmmmm!

Gets complicated!

Here's the screen-shot of the BT checker - excuse my ignorance, would you be able to interpret?

If No. 2 is the case, then is there a chance of it ever being upgraded to a 'mini-exchange'

You appear to be connected to a cabinet, rather than directly to the exchange, but there's no mention of your cabinet supporting FTTC or planning to support FTTC at the moment. According to Samknows your exchange has FTTC support, all that remains to be done is getting your cabinet to support FTTC (which usually requires a second cabinet to be built next or close to your standard and current cabinet, as this contains the VDSL2 equipment). At least that's what I interpret from the screenshot.

[JamesK]

It looks like Cabinet 7 on that exchange hasn't yet been upgraded to offer FTTC. If it were available FTTC would be listed as one of the offerings. See the attached screenshot of what it would look like.

[waltergmw]

@z1ts,

It's clear from the screen shot that cabinet 7 is NOT yet ready for service.
It would be worth getting your parents to find cabinet 7 and see if there's any sign of a FTTC (Fibre cabinet) installed beside the original.

E.g. http://www.ewhurst-broadband.org.uk/?p=2112

where you can easily see the excavations to bury the ducts for the tie cables back to the PCP green cabinet  as well as the fibre quad tube direct from the road pit into the FTTC.

However there are the odd occasions where more sinister forces are at work and BT get awfully embarrassed at telling the truth.
I will PM you shortly with one such horrendous example.

Kind regards,
Walter

[z1ts]

Thanks for all the replies.

The Exchange is definitely FTTC 'enabled' as the screen-shot of the results for my No. below reveals - I'm just connected to Cab 11 of the same exchange.

@Ixel - I note your comment about 'planning to support FTTC.....' is there a way of finding out if Cab 7 will ever support FTTC? 

@waltergmw - thanks for the detailed explanation, await PM eagerly!!!!

Thanks again for quick responses and help from this awesome site!

[c6em]

Clearly Cab 7 has not been done under the BT commercially viable program as this has now finished.

This means it might be being done under the county council/gov funded BDUK program or is planned to be done at later stages up to 2016 or 2017 when the program is expected to finish.
There should be some detail on what areas are going to be upgraded such as a map. You need to be proactive and start asking your council, looking on broadband sections of councils websites etc.
However any such map may or may not be down to cabinet level. (Oxfordshire's is...near enough)
It will certainly not give out timescales of what areas are being done at what stage of the program - up to 2017.
Those areas not covered by any current program.....who knows

as to the future...... as an example I can only repeat my investigations on my cabinet as someone who "knows a bit" as the saying goes for all I can find out from anybody including FOI requests.
My cabinet and the next door one are not commercially viable. (to be honest i'd agree!)
They are also not planned to be done under the BDUK process so they are shown on the council map as "white" areas.
The area is above 2Mbps download so again there is no plans required to improve it above that min figure in the BDUK process. So in short nothing is going to happen.
It is possible that they might be done but only IF further Gov/BT/county or District Council funding is found from 'somewhere' after the end of the BDUK program.
So that means in reality maybe it might be upgraded in the region between 2017 to 2020.

hope this helps in your understanding if not in getting anything done!

[z1ts]

Thanks again!

I'm slowly grasping an idea of what's going on!

According to the council's website:-

"Over the next three years BT, in partnership with the council, will ensure that 94% of all premises are able to access superfast broadband (An access line speed of greater than 24Mbps.) by March 2015."

They also provide a map with purple areas indicating those covered under their 'partnership' with BT and my parents' house is in a teeny, teeny purple patch!!!!  Happy days - something will be done by 2015 anyway............  (Better than never I suppose!!)

Just waiting on a call back from the BB dept at the council to confirm when Cab 7 is gonna be 'enabled'.

(Just curious really: is there a way of finding the physical location of Cab 7 other than following the o'head cabling by foot to the relevant 'Green Box'?)

[waltergmw]

@ z1ts,

There are a couple of small additions to c6em's excellent advice .

1.  IF cabinet 7 is to be enabled in the next quarter it is likely to be shown on the BT Wholesale estimator with an anticipated estimate date. However that does not preclude a further postponement. It will be worth checking the estimator again after April 1st.

2.  If you local community is fed up with waiting for BT and has some very determined, influential and wealthy residents it's not impossible (but unlikely) that another provider such as Gigaclear might do the job properly with FTTH, if non-BT fibre is close enough. Occasionally that goads the behemoth into activity too, perhaps to attempt the other's demise.

Kind regards,
Walter

[c6em]

The only way of locating cabinets is to get out and start walking around.
The overhead cabling often only extends as far as a convenient joint box then it goes back to the cab underground.
Cab's are often on street corners where there is a road junction...obvious really as that is where the various sub-cables running down all the nearby streets are collected together before being run back to the exchange in some umpteen hundred pair mega cables.
If the cabinet serves just a long section of road (ribbon development in planning terminology) it will be near to but not at the end of the said road nearest to the exchange location end.

They should be numbered somewhere on them.
Here is an example page of the various types used over time (it the PCP cab' piccys you are looking for)
http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/street_cabinets_etc.html

[waltergmw]

The only way of locating cabinets is to get out and start walking around.

Unless of course you might find a friendly black sheep grazing nearby !

There is one other web site which can occasionally be of some use, but it's not always successful.

http://roadworks.org/

I entered a search up to 24 December for Winterbourne and only found one BT entry.
With such a low density perhaps the local BT planners are not as enthusiastic as they might be.

As another example I looked for roadworks in Blackheath near Chilworth Surrey as you'll see below.
It's not the first time I've discovered the BT Wholesale PR machine is grossly optimistic !

Kind regards,
Walter

[Black Sheep]

Ha ha, Walter. OK then …… PCP7 is opposite No.7 Hicks Common Rd, near entrance to Harcombe Farm. 

[Black Sheep]

My 'info' shows a fibre cable running up to and past PCP7, but doesn't as yet show a DSLAM (Fibre Cab) installed.

[HPsauce]

There is one other web site which can occasionally be of some use, but it's not always successful.

http://roadworks.org/

Very useful to me, though I didn't know of it until now.
That shows BT working at my specific cabinet (#1 on my exchange) from 30th Jan to 12th Feb with the comment "(PCP1) NGA related works" with a BT reference of BC005WP00100500128691800.
So what is NGA?