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Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

Whiskerpuss
Grafter
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Registered: ‎24-06-2008

Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

I live in Cornwall, Mid Cornwall, and for the last 2yrs, since these bungalows were built, we've been asking Openreach and our ISP's to connect us to Fibre, because when these bungalows (32 of them) were built in 2014, Openreach installed a new fibre ready cabinet (no.7) here for the 32 properties. The exchange at Roche is fibre enabled, as is our green cabinet no.7.

Everytime on of us asks to be connected to fibre we're told no, bcause we missed the deadline of Sept 2016, because the bungalows weren't built when the order went in.

Someone from Plusnet made a few enquiries to Open Reach and Cornwall Council as to why we couldn't be connected to our cabinet, and was told that it's because when the bungalows were built in 2014 they did not have fibre from the properties to the cabinet.

Openreach have told us that they have no plans in the future to connect us to our cabinet until we, the residents, pay for a survey to determine if we have fibre from the properties to the cabinet. If we don't we would then have to pay Openreach to  dig up the roads etc and supply fibre to each property, then we could all be connected to our cabinet.

This is total rubbish!!  To get fibre broadband all Openreach need to to is connect our current copper wires to the cabinet, as the cabinet is already activated for fibre, as is our telephone exchange just up the road.

I now have my MP Steve Double onto this and he's being told the same rubbish too.

I have several friends and acquaintances you live in 300yr old cottages, with copper wire that's been in them since God knows when, and BT have connected them to fibre with no problem so how come they don't have to pay for a survey and then have fibre put in to replace their copper wire?

The following snippet is from BroadBandChoices web site https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/how-does-fibre-optic-broadband-work which confirms exactly what I've just written, yet Openreach are telling us the complete opposite

[Quote]

Fibre-to-the-cabinet

The most common setup for fibre broadband is fibre-to-the-cabinet, or FTTC. It involves fibre optic cables running from the BT exchange to the cabinet on your street, which then connects to your home via the ol' copper phone line.

That means data can zoom from the exchange to your street super quickly, but it's a little slower from the street to your home. Luckily, the distance from the street to your home is way, way shorter than the distance from the exchange to the street - so for most tasks you'll hardly notice the difference.

Still, if the distance between the cabinet and your home - also known as "the last mile" - is quite far, expect your broadband speeds to be slower. This is especially likely in rural areas where properties are far apart.

Providers that offer FTTC connections include BT (bt.com), Sky (www.sky.com), TalkTalk (www.talktalk.co.uk), Plusnet (www.plus.net), and EE (ee.co.uk).[/quote]

Openreach did say they were unable to connect us offering FTTC and could only connect us via FTTH (where we pay to have fibre connected to our properties). Why? If we could be connected via FTTC? Why refuse FTTC when it's already available? Why make us pay for FTTH? Doesn't make sense.

How on earth do we get round this because obviously someone doesnt know what they're talking about telling us to pay for fibre to be connected to each property here.

How hard can it be for an Outreach engineer to just switch us over to fibre in our cabinet?

Not having fibre, means we're stuck with broadband speeds from 3mb to 8mb if we're lucky.

It means we can't reliably use online banking, online shopping, watch video's on youTube, and as for Amazon Prime or any site where we could download a movie, that's out of the question, it's impossible. So for the ones who have a SMART TV which is practically all of us these days, we can't use them, because we don't have fast broadband.

And if we need to update our computers, we have to take them to a computer shop that has high speed broadband to do so and pay. I recently had to pay Apple £50 to update my Macbook to Sierra OS, which would have been free to do at home had I had fibre broadband. Last year I tried to update my Macbook to Yosemite OS and the download took 4 days and was corrupted when it finally tried to install, leading me to take the laptop to Apple and pay almost £100 to get it sorted out.

So if anyone from Plusnet reads these forums, then I'd be very grateful if you could contact Openreach and kick them up the backsides to get 32 residents here connected to our cabinet properly. And don't get fobbed off with being told the properties need to pay to have fibre installed because that doesn't wash anymore!

10 REPLIES 10
Oldjim
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Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

I may be able to clarify things - a bit

As far as I know a cabinet for FTTP is totally different to an FTTC cabinet

An FTTP cabinet is connected directly to the exchange whereas an FTTC cabiner is connected to an adjacent standard phone/ADSL cabinet

If what you have is an FTTP cabinet you are probably in the state you describe

Have you checked where your phone line is connected (which cabinet) and does that cabinet have an FTTC cab next to it.

Browni
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

MauriceC
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

I'm inclined to believe @Oldjim proposition as a description of what has happened.  As the properties are fairly new it may be prudent to check the property sales details and the legal bits of the sale.  Highly probable that the builders didn't know about the Fibre cab and only provided a standard copper connection.  A tricky one.  Sad

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

ejs
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

I thought Openreach tried to do a lot of FTTP in parts of Cornwall. If things were built properly, the existing copper telephone cables should be in ducts (basically plastic tubes), so it ought to be possible for Openreach to pull fibre optic cables through those ducts, without digging up the roads. I'm not sure why you're being asked to pay now, but I expect it'll be because the builders didn't do things properly.

The other possibility is that there is FTTC at the cabinet, but you are too far away from the cabinet to be able to order FTTC. And the costs being described are related to FTTPoD.

You ought to be able to do online banking and online shopping perfectly adequately with ADSL broadband though.

Whiskerpuss
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Registered: ‎24-06-2008

Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

The checker is on the first box. So I assume it's saying the cabinet isn't enabled.

 

The builders did install the telephone cables correctly in the required pipes. And the cabinet was put on our close so the furthest bungalow from the cabinet is about 150m from the cabinet. The close is a horseshoe design. 

 

The broadband speed here has never been above 8mb and is usually much slower but it's not impossible to do online banking but it's not ideal waiting for the page to load when carrying out important transactions.

 

And as for computer updates or downloading software, movies or trying to stream music or watch videos that's practically impossible.

 

I will not be renewing my contract next June with Plusnet, I'll be switching over to EE for mobile broadband and ditching the landline. Thankfully I can get double 4G here, and EE are talking about being able to get triple 4G.

ejs
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

Personally, I update my computer and download software just fine with a 3Mb ADSL connection. Streaming audio, is, err, like 0.256Mb/s. Have you checked that your slow and varying speed isn't a problem with the wireless?

Whiskerpuss
Grafter
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Registered: ‎24-06-2008

Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

Have you got a Mac? If not you won't know how long downloading the operating system takes. It's not software updates like a Windows machine, it's a totally new operating system every year from Apple  (free of charge) And the operating system itself rarely has updates apart from software such as Adobe or third party software applications. Those third party updates are manageable with the slow speed. 

 

I don't download music with my laptop, or my tv. I was referring to video/movies. Even catchup tv takes forever to download so I don't bother.

I can't use catchup, Amazon video, Sky movies that download, or anything like that, bcause it just takes too long and keeps buffering. So my smart tv was a total waste of money, apart from using it to watch standard hd tv and 3D DVD's.

 

 

I've lost count of the times I've asked Plusnet to check my broadband speed because of the slowness, and everytime they've said there's nothing wrong with it and suggested I connect my laptop via a cable to the router. Which is not an option as the master socket is in a spare room as the living room is at the back of the house, and if I'd wanted to connect to the router with a cable, I'd have a desktop not a laptop. So I have to connect via Wi-Fi.

 

It's ok I'll leave Plusnet next year at the end of my contract and move over to a 32G EE triple 4G mobile plan.  I can tether my laptop to my iPhone and use that. I won't need to pay line rental or need a landline.

 

I hadnt tethered the laptop to download the operating system as I don't have a large data package with EE at present. Just wish I'd gone straight to EE the last time my contract was up for renewal with Plusnet, but I was hoping the fibre broadband issue would have been sorted by then (2yrs ago).

ejs
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

As it happens I use Linux, and always update to the latest version of Fedora, which means a whole new operating system twice a year. I can download at about 1GB per hour, you ought to be able to do more than double that.

A better wireless router or even powerline network adapters would have been other options. Even if you did have FTTC, the master socket would be in the same place, so you might have the same problem (if it is indeed mostly a wireless problem), although the Hub One probably has better wireless than the Hub Zero.

Edit: It says macOS Sierra is 4.88GB

RobPN
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us


@Oldjim wrote:

I may be able to clarify things - a bit

As far as I know a cabinet for FTTP is totally different to an FTTC cabinet

An FTTP cabinet is connected directly to the exchange whereas an FTTC cabiner is connected to an adjacent standard phone/ADSL cabinet

If what you have is an FTTP cabinet you are probably in the state you describe

Have you checked where your phone line is connected (which cabinet) and does that cabinet have an FTTC cab next to it.


Actually there's no such thing as an FTTP cabinet, not in the BT scheme of things anyway.  The fibre involved in FTTP is not routed to or through the cabinet and is completely independent of it, although it may be adjacent to the cabinet in an underground chamber.

More accurately, when checking the DSL checker to see if FTTP is available, it is the area served by a particular cabinet which is able to get FTTP, and as stated above not the cabinet.  Wink

ejs
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Re: Cabinet Fibre Ready Openreach won't connect us

https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm for exchange Roche, cabinet 7, gives:

FTTP from 20th December 2012, FTTP on Demand

I still think half of Whiskerpuss's problem is poor wireless, which perhaps they haven't sorted out due to focussing on the lack of FTTP.