Fiber availability issues - Advice needed

mxxx

Hi, I wanted to glean the collective knowledge of the MSE community to see if anyone has any good suggestions on a way forward.
I moved house to a new build on a new estate in a city (Exeter) last year and was told fiber was available, my home move request with Sky got rejected by Openreach as they said there were no available ports in the cabinet. Since then (now a year) i've been frequently checking various ISPs and Openreach's own site for updates but nothing is forthcoming. I have spoken to many others in the community and although some have fiber, those that don't are in the same boat. Our ISP keeps telling us that Openreach will upgrade capacity soon but I understand others who moved to the area before me have been waiting over 18 months and nothing is forthcoming.
The problem is ADSL speeds are woeful (I have 1.4Mbps but I understand others are as slow as 700Kbps) but there seems to be little we can do.

I was reading about the BDUK programme last night but that seems to be geared at rural areas, we aren't covered because we're in a city. Openreach also run their own community fiber partnership program but again this doesn't seem to apply as its about bringing fiber to areas that don't have it, we have it there just aren't enough ports for all the houses they are building.

As far as I see it Openreach just need to come and put more equipment in but as they don't deal directly with the public we seem to be unable to communicate with them to get any idea of if or when they will do this. If anyone has any experence, advice or suggestions i'd be keen to hear this as it will help not just me but our community

littleboo

If the cab is full, then its a case of installing a second cab, which requires a significant investment - if they believe that only a small percentage of the new cab would be utilised it may not cost in. A new cab also needs planning permission and power which can extend time scales or in extreme cases prevent the installation happening.

mxxx

Thanks for clairfying that, I had assumed they could just add capacity in the existing cabinet but if another cabinet is needed then that could explain the reluctance. There is a lot of interest from the community in getting this done however so they will get a lot of uptake once done. Any idea how I can find out if this is actually happening or not and/or get an idea of timescales from Openreach?

teddysmum

Our part of the city was listed to go fibre early this year. However, though the exchange has been set up , this particular area has been downgraded to a no fixed plans status.

littleboo

There is a contact form here you could try

Futuristic

teddysmum wrote: »

Our part of the city was listed to go fibre early this year. However, though the exchange has been set up , this particular area has been downgraded to a no fixed plans status.

There should be a local authority point of contact since it'll be most likely funded by them. You should google "superfast (yourcity/county)". Most councils will have posted a up to date list of active areas along with planned ones and a ETA / contact details.

teddysmum

Futuristic wrote: »

There should be a local authority point of contact since it'll be most likely funded by them. You should google "superfast (yourcity/county)". Most councils will have posted a up to date list of active areas along with planned ones and a ETA / contact details.

I only looked it up out of curiosity, as ADSL is fine for me.


I did get the information from an official site, but can't recall which one. (I've just checked again and BT reckon, possibly, March 2016, but we've been that close before, and ,as above, I don't need it).