FTTC - New cabinet installed much closer than my connection

[#1]

Hi Everyone,

Can anybody tell me how you might go about requesting a connection move from one cabinet to another ?

The reason I ask is that some of my neighbours are connected to a newly installed cabinet only a short distance away whereas I am connected to a older cabinet about twice the distance away. The net effect is that they receive speeds about three times faster than myself. I have witnessed their speed test results on BT Wholesale.

We are a group of nine properties and share a common overhead line to the road which then continues underground. About half the properties are connected to the new cabinet and half to the old one. I suspect that when FTTC was first rolled out the later subscribers were connected to the new cabinet due to capacity issues. I believe it is possible to connect pairs from the same line to different cabinets ?

I use a lot of networked applications for my work and as I only achieve about 10 Mbps I spend quite a lot of time waiting for things.

An Openreach engineer has told me that it would most likely be possible for me to connect to the new cabinet and that there is spare capacity there. However he said that this type of request could only be raised through my provider. PN helpdesk have already told me this is out of their control.

As a business customer I had hoped that there would be a process to request this type of change but apparently not.

Any advice on how I could escalate this would be gratefully received, tripling my speed would really help with my work.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#2]

Hi there.

I'm sorry for the delayed response and that you're experiencing slow fibre speeds. Unfortunately we've no process with our suppliers to request a line is moved from one cabinet to another whether it's a residential or business line.

It's not uncommon for Openreach to do what's known as a live to live migration moving lines in bulk between cabinets, but it's not something we'd be able to specifically request.

However I'd recommend filling out this formwize to query this further with Openreach to see if there are any plans. 

I'd also try the steps Here to try to maximise your speeds by ruling out any internal wiring. Failing that, it may be worth reporting a fault to us at http://faults.plus.net so we can raise this to our suppliers and arrange an engineer, because while your speeds are within expectations your line appears to be in bad shape. It's also not uncommon for engineers to recommend moving a line from one cabinet to another and if the engineer requests it on their notes, our suppliers will oblige.

Hope this helps and let us know how it goes.

[#3]

Hi Gandalf,

Thanks for your reply.

You say that my line appears to be in bad shape, this is consistent with previous speeds circa 10Mbps and currently circa 7 Mbps which is right at the bottom of the estimate.

I struggled with 10 but as a business running networked applications I am now suffering call drop-outs with my customers and trying to screen-share over Skype is very patchy indeed.

I could reluctantly accept these speeds if I thought that my neighbours were also at a similar sync, but as I know they are achieving speeds above 30 Mbps I find this unpalatable.

There are two cabinets in our local area, cabinet 5 and cabinet 17. Cabinet 17 is at the end of my access road and cabinet 5 more than twice the distance away.

We are all connected to the same pole which has a single aerial line running to the end of our access road and then under the road to cabinet 17. I think that our pairs are possibly routed from cabinet 17 to cabinet 5 and then to the exchange.

I was the earliest adopter of fibre and at the time only cabinet 5 was enabled so this was where my fibre connection was made. Cabinet 17 was upgraded later on I believe and subsequent fibre connections made from there.

So while I appreciate that OR will not look to optimise or reconfigure working fibre connections without good reason I hope you can understand my frustration about this. In my view it should not require any significant infrastructure changes to connect my fibre to cab 17 instead of cab 5.

I sent the form to OR as you suggested but really as a customer of Plusnet my business relationship is with yourselves and in this instance I am disappointed that you are not willing to investigate this matter directly with OR, at the very least to ascertain the costs involved and the work involved. Anything is possible if the will is there.

So, I wait and see if Plusnet can come up with anything (I have raised a fault as you suggested), otherwise I may have to consider cancelling my contract, having the line disconnected and paying for a new line and number to be put in, possibly from an LLU provider with more flexibility over the infrastructure.

Best regards,

Tim

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Hi Tim.

I understand what you've said but I'm afraid we can't request your line to be moved to another cabinet, our request would likely simply be ignored unless an engineer requests it in their notes as our suppliers would always look to oblige on this.

I don't believe that any other provider has more sway over Openreach even if they do use their own equipment at the exchange, because moving your line would start from the cabinet and the equipment there isn't LLU.

Installing a new line and having a new telephone number also likely won't solve anything as the engineer who goes out may simply re-use the same pair or a different pair connected to the cabinet you're on. The number itself won't have any effect.

I've updated your fault ticket 186937650, once you've replied with the requested information I'll get the fault progressed with our suppliers and a broadband engineer booked out for you.

[#5]

Following OR Engineer visit and to improve line stability we have now been migrated to the nearer cabinet. Speeds are now much more usable and good communications between Plusnet and OR to work towards this sensible solution. Thanks Gandalf, I am very pleased with this outcome and it really helps me workwise.

[#6]

Cheers for getting back to me, I’m really glad that this was successful!
To be honest I was expecting it’d take a lot longer as we’re usually asked to do a cease and reprovide to migrate a fibre service to another cabinet, but it sounds like the engineers sorted this out for you themselves. let me know if you need any further assistance at all.