Disappearing Fibre?

WestonDave

Back in August when all the BT Sport hype was going on I checked our address etc on various providers with a view to getting fibre broadband. All of them came up with it being available.

At the time various other things were going on so we never got round to it. Topic came up again today due to internet connection dropping out so did another check and now its saying its not available to us.

Any ideas what is going on - database having a wobble or has it genuinely ceased to be available. I'm fairly sure one of the neighbours over the road has BT Infinity so I'm sure it was available!

Buzby

You're not on an exchange boundary are you? Of course, you never 'get fibre' it just gets a little bit closer - to a street cabinet. The way to spot it is if a new box is co-located to an existing one, OR if replacement doors (no longer flush, but with an additional 3" profile to allow additional equipment to be added.


If the box that serves your property in the street has not been modified, there's not a lot you can do until the work is completed, but the contractors can often pull the fibre through existing ducts meaning no road works, and only the street cabinet is the give away.

kwikbreaks

If it was showing available but isn't now there is the possibility that every connection in the fibre cabinet partnered with the phone cabinet that serves your house is in use. I've never heard of it happening though.

gt94sss2

kwikbreaks wrote: »

If it was showing available but isn't now there is the possibility that every connection in the fibre cabinet partnered with the phone cabinet that serves your house is in use. I've never heard of it happening though.

Depending on the size of the FTTC Cabinet installed, it can hold upto 288 connections. However, BT only put a limited number of line cards in and then add more depending on demand.

As such, its possible that more cards need to be added - this can take a few weeks - and ISPs are probably not allowed to place new orders until this has been done.

There have been a few cases where the entire cabinet has filled up and then BT will consider installing a 2nd or larger cabinet but that process would take months (and is unlikely to be the case).

WestonDave: I would use this as the best source to see if/when FTTC is available.

Regards
Sunil

pgregs1

We had the same situation , we moved house. In February still stayed in the same street , before we moved I checked if we could get infinity which we could and was available so when we had settled in new house I rang BT saying I would like infinity to which they said it wasn't available ! How is that when 2 others in street have it but they explained about the cabinets may only have a limited number of lines in them , then a month later was walking past the cabinets & 2 BT engineers working on them putting another 100 lines in them so I called BT a couple of weeks later & ordered infinity which had just been installed today , so fingers crossed for you keep checking online and keep an eye on the cabinet if any BT engineers are working on them !!

WestonDave

Thanks guys - waiting for BT to respond to messages but that checker from gt94sss2 suggests he is right - I know there is a brand new (well probably a year or more old now) green Fibre cabinet at the bottom of our road (say 400 metres away) but as his checker is saying 15th Jan 2014 for availability its probably needing another card as the original capacity has been used.

I'll obviously wait to see what BT say but it looks like checking again in the New Year may yield a different answer!

cajef

Buzby wrote: »

Of course, you never 'get fibre' it just gets a little bit closer - to a street cabinet.

You keep stating this, of course some people can get fibre, FTTP is available to all the properties in the small estate I live on and has been available for over six months, I have FTTP and the fibre cable comes directly from the exchange to my property.

iniltous

cajef wrote: »

You keep stating this, of course some people can get fibre, FTTP is available to all the properties in the small estate I live on and has been available for over six months, I have FTTP and the fibre cable comes directly from the exchange to my property.

And anyone with FTTC with deep enough pockets can pay to be upgraded to FTTP

kwikbreaks

With even deeper pockets you could not even have a phone line or telephone exchange within 10 miles and still pay for it.

But in the main the majority who can get anything other than ADSL get FTTC with the fibre stopping at the cabinet serving them. So although Buzby persists in playing the same old record for the most part it is correct.

WestonDave

Just to update, BT confirmed that the cabinet is undergoing an upgrade and should have more capacity by the end of January. Bit surprised that its hit capacity so quickly but maybe fibre is proving more popular than expected. It probably helps having a lot of rugby on BT sport as Bath is a bit of a rugby hot bed!

Buzby

cajef wrote: »

You keep stating this, of course some people can get fibre, FTTP is available to all the properties in the small estate I live on and has been available for over six months, I have FTTP and the fibre cable comes directly from the exchange to my property.

And for obvious reasons. Ask the OP, is he wanting FTTP ? Of course not - very few are prepared to pay for it. For some reason the 'fibre' mantra is being used by everyone to mis-describe their service delivery. Everyone has fibre to a greater or lesser extent, so unless you HAVE FTTP, you then have twisted pair or co-ax. I have the latter and have 120Mb service. Do I want fibre? Nope - My BB is fast enough.

So whilst you genuinely might 'have fibre' the bulk of populous will never, so why condone such a misdescription? Marketing of it is allowed - and is perverse, we can take this to stupid lengths too, since bog standard ADSL at least uses fibre part of the way - in much the same way as FTTC, so hardly ground-breaking. FTTP on the other hand, IS.

The record may be repetitive, but without correction it misleads and needs to be stated.

The distinction remains an important one.