FTTPoD Cardiff - Pontprennau Will FTTC or FTTP ever be available to me?

[#1]

I am very interested as are a number of my neighbours in getting FTTP/C. We currently get 2MBps (At very best) ADSL as we are at the end of the exchange line connected to Llanederyn cabinet 12. There are two roads, Cottingham Drive (My road) and Speedwell Close the next road over, which all suffer from this connection blackspot. The next street over can get Virgin and the one after that FTTC.
The cabinet is at the top of the road and serves all the houses in the estate, some 50-60 at a guess. I have spoken to Virgin who have told me that it would not be possible to install Cable to us, but I am holding out hope that the cabinet will be upgraded! Can anyone confirm this?
I don't live in rural countryside, I live about 5 miles from the centre of Cardiff in a densely populated area.
I e-mailed Openreach about 2 weeks ago with no response yet. Superfast Cymru have told us that we are not part of their programme for some unknown reason.
Can anyone shed any light?

[#2]

I was wrong, I counted based on Google maps there are 87 houses in the two roads (All part of a close and of the same development so have to be connected to the one cabinet, they all have to drive past the cabinet to leave the estate)

[#3]

Is this a new development?
Try your local council.
Also try to find an email for Steven Wigley-Jones at Openreach. I think he's responsible for NGA Deployment in Wales.

[#4]

Hi Joe,
Welcome to the forum. I'm in a similar position, my cab doesn't have fibre but every road and cab round me does.
I've just had a look at your postcode though and the news is slightly better than me, your cab is due to get FTTP, it's actually the only cab on the exchange that's down for FTTP. I don't have any dates for when it will be done unfortunately so the best I can say is look out for Openreach vans.

[#5]

A general question
What are the criteria for FTTP as opposed to FTTC and if a cab is FTTP enabled would this mean that the end user cost would be exorbitant
I only ask because looking at my area there are a whole lot of satellite cabs from one master cab (I know where it is approximately even though I haven't managed to find it) and that may make FTTP an option

[#6]

I think he means that all users connected to that cabinet will be able to order FTTP - rather than the cabinet itself being upgraded. There is no reason to do anything to the cabinets because FTTP is a direct connection to the exchange.
In theory - once everyone that is connected to that cabinet gets FTTP, the cabinet becomes redundant because you can receive both voice and data over FTTP. It doesn't quite work like this though because not everyone will take full FTTP voice/data and you will also have LLU users.
There are some weird scenarios I've seen in Cornwall where you can have three houses side-by-side, one can order FTTP, the next only FTTC and the final only ADSL. It's all dependent on the cabinet your connected to.

[#7]

Quote from: dave

Hi Joe, Welcome to the forum. I'm in a similar position, my cab doesn't have fibre but every road and cab round me does. I've just had a look at your postcode though and the news is slightly better than me, your cab is due to get FTTP, it's actually the only cab on the exchange that's down for FTTP. I don't have any dates for when it will be done unfortunately so the best I can say is look out for Openreach vans.

That is amazing news, does that mean that the cabinet will not be upgraded for FTTC or will both FTTP and FTTC be available? I assume none of the info for the cab rollouts is public?
I received an email from Openreach this morning saying that my exchange is now accepting orders (It has been for over a year) but could that mean my cabinet is soon to be upgraded or FTTP is coming?
P.S Sorry for the very late reply, that will teach me for not subscribing to my own threads lol

[#8]

Jim,
Openreach themselves don't appear to know what the criteria for FTTP are, I have asked a couple of people there and when pointing out contradictions between what they said and what the company are actually doing been greeted with silence, however the sub-connection points are not upgraded without extra funding. They are already considered as enabled for FTTC if the main cabinet is.
This cabinet will be being funded by the local BDUK scheme though.

[#9]

Quote from: Joe90k

That is amazing news, does that mean that the cabinet will not be upgraded for FTTC or will both FTTP and FTTC be available? I assume none of the info for the cab rollouts is public? I received an email from Openreach this morning saying that my exchange is now accepting orders (It has been for over a year) but could that mean my cabinet is soon to be upgraded or FTTP is coming?

Joe,
You will not have the option of FTTC, only FTTP (the pain!)
The email about your exchange accepting orders is irrelevant to when your cabinet will be done. It is obviously planned and on its way though!

[#10]

Good news for yo Jo, I couldn't get BT to do anything with 187 properties and I spoke the guy who is in charge of the FTTC rollout in the UK
So good result for you as FTTP is so much better than FTTC.

[#11]

Quote from: Joe90k

could that mean my cabinet is soon to be upgraded or FTTP is coming?

Unfortunately I've got no visibility of when any area is going to be done just whether or not it's in the plan or not. So it could be weeks or months and may not even be this year unfortunately. What we've seen in the past is that when an area gets FTTP there will be a flurry of Openreach (or people working on their behalf) in the area either digging roads or running fibre overhead and underground. Once they've finished everything gets connected up and the BT availability checker will be updated to say FTTP is available. You can keep on eye on the checker here:
http://dslchecker.bt.com/
Melancholie - as far as I know there are multiple criteria for FTTP and they won't always be the same in one area to another which is probably why you've seen contradictions. My parents with in a county that's had BDUK funding, their cab has been done for FTTC but some of their friends on an exchange only line are going to get FTTP through the BDUK funding, they're in the centre of a small town almost next door to the exchange so the fibre run for them and the other people around them is probably cheaper than going to the trouble of getting a new cab built and then the FTTC cab on top.

[#12]

Quote from: petecov44

Good news for yo Jo, I couldn't get BT to do anything with 187 properties and I spoke the guy who is in charge of the FTTC rollout in the UK

Not really surprising
Round me we have block of 400+ houses fed from a couple of cabinets all not being upgraded under BDUK.
There is from the councils map of BDUK intervention areas and private local forum discussion an area of around 600 properties within the county also not being done under BDUK.

[#13]

Quote from: dave

Melancholie - as far as I know there are multiple criteria for FTTP and they won't always be the same in one area to another which is probably why you've seen contradictions. My parents with in a county that's had BDUK funding, their cab has been done for FTTC but some of their friends on an exchange only line are going to get FTTP through the BDUK funding, they're in the centre of a small town almost next door to the exchange so the fibre run for them and the other people around them is probably cheaper than going to the trouble of getting a new cab built and then the FTTC cab on top.

Hi Dave,
The main criteria appears to be that someone else pays part of the bill. I was given various stuff about take up rates, etc, in the commercial deployment however FTTP was taken out of the plans and it was decided that FTTC would be good enough a while ago, regardless of how much sense commercially FTTP may make.
This is however another discussion entirely! One that would be interesting to read.

[#14]

Dave, as this thread slightly digressed I think this may put the point of view in better focus by working on a specific example.
Not sure how the infrastructure could be better suited - map.
Either the criteria are a mess or the manner in which those criteria are applied is, however given this cab was originally omitted from the commercial rollout as unviable I'll run with a combo of both, however after the first phases commercial deployment of FTTP essentially stopped and, indeed, some areas were rolled back from FTTP to FTTC, which is why there are less than 100,000 properties in the entire country passed by Openreach FTTP, of which 2/3rds were subsidised by the taxpayer and a further proportion greenfield. Actual commercially funded brownfield FTTP I guesstimate at no more than 20-25,000 premises passed at very most, or which 1/3rd is in Milton Keynes.
It's actually pretty funny when you look at it that way, Kingston Communications who serve Hull and a few bits of East Yorkshire have deployed a similar if not larger amount of commercial brownfield FTTP than the entire BT Group.
There's something to be proud of. Looks like coming back to bite fairly quickly too going by things I'm hearing about problems going forward, not least the competitiveness gap referred to in my letter. You know your product sucks when the competition would rather spend 8 figures investigating building their own than 5 or 6 using yours.

[#15]

Still no change or any Openreach activity on the road...
Can anyone confirm this is still in the pipeline for our road/cabinet?