Sunday 18 November 2012

Overall Exchange Status


This is the latest news from BT. To track "history" please see the December 2011 thread. As previously advised all properties in the Capel exchange area will be served by either:

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP)

* Approximately 160Mbps
* Most properties in the exchange area will get FTTP
* Only properties in Capel and Beare Green will get FTTP

Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC)

* Performance will depend on length of copper run from cabinet to property
Some remote properties (about 40) will see little or no uplift
Some remote properties (about 80) will see uplift (up to 14.9Mbps) but will not get Infinity (15Mbps+)
* Some properties in Capel and Beare Green will get FTTC
* Areas served by FTTC include:
** North Capel and parts of Beare Green - live
** North Ockley - live
** Leith Hill (from Anstie Lane) – delayed pending wayleaves - now resolved
** Leith Hill (from additional cabinet in central Coldharbour) – planned

Deployment Issues

The vast majority of fibre feeding the FTTC cabinets and "PON Area" splitters has been laid.

Fibre has been installed for the new Anstie Lane cabinet.  When this cabinet is commissioned most properties connected to it will see an immediate uplift - and those "within range" will be able to get Infinity (15Mbps+). Deployment of the additional cabinet in central Coldharbour has been approved by BT and this is working its way through engineering planning processes. Commissioning of the additional cabinet is not dependent on commissioning of the Anstie Lane cabinet. Some "re-parenting" of copper runs on Leith Hill will take place to exploit the additional cabinet.

FTTP will be delivered using a Passive Optical Network (PON) - see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network.

This architecture uses optical splitters to reduce the number of fibres required (c.f. an Active Optical Network) and does not require electrical power. The FTTP network will be commissioned “PON area by PON Area”  - where a PON area is equivalent to an area served by a cabinet.

Timescales

BT anticipates (subject to the usual "Health Warnings"):
  1. The first "PON Area" in the Capel exchange to be commissioned will be in the Markham Road area hopefully within the next three weeks or so – there are ducts that need de-silting and the timescales assume that BT can get access and that it goes well. There are 5 PON Areas in total and these will be commissioned sequentially. No timescales WRT subsequent PON Areas are available at present.
  2. BT expects that the Anstie Lane cabinet should be commissioned before the end of the year.
  3. The central Coldharbour cabinet should be commissioned during Q1 2013 – any copper “re-parenting” should take place concurrently. 
BT Speedchecker

The BT speed checker is at:

www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25633.

BT tells me "The speed checker will only provide data on those premises it knows are connected to appropriate cabinets / PON areas  – until the cabinet / PON area has a firm release date, or has been released, no new speeds will show". I think the problem here is that the two Leith Hill FTTC cabinets and all of the PON Areas do not yet have firm release dates in the speed checker database. I have pointed out to BT that its speed checker is "less than helpful".