Firstly, the bad news. When fibre broadband was installed, BT Openreach installed a single cable between the new fibre broadband street cabinet and the existing street cabinet, containing 100 ‘copper pairs’ i.e. 100 pairs of copper wires. This means that only 100 premises could be connected to fibre broadband. Due to the incredibly high take-up of superfast broadband, all these pairs have now been allocated. As a result, some installations of fibre broadband have now been delayed or cancelled.
Rest assured, Mark Heath raised the issue of capacity well ahead of reaching this point with Connecting Cambridgeshire. He was informed that the “Openreach Service Management team has plans already in place to ensure the cabinet does not run out of capacity”. He is, therefore, very disappointed that Spaldwick has reached capacity before a capacity upgrade has taken place.
Secondly, the good news. With 100 pairs allocated, the take-up of fibre broadband has reached an amazing 40% – in just one month. We’re expecting Openreach to upgrade the cabinet next week by feeding an extra ‘tie cable’ between the new fibre cabinet and the existing street cabinet, which will contain another 100 pairs. This means that 100 more households could be connected.
The photograph above shows where the pairs will appear. As soon as this upgrade is complete, we will publish an alert on the Spaldwick website, and via email and Facebook. Then, you will be able to order superfast broadband without issue.
Latest! Tue 5 August 2014. Connecting Cambridgeshire has kindly sent the following message:
“We met with the Openreach delivery team this morning. They confirmed that the copper ties work was completed yesterday for Spaldwick (Woolley PCP6) and the second stage to install the card will be done today. An engineer has been dispatched for this. There is then a refresh process that will run overnight tonight. Openreach will confirm to us how long the information will take to cascade to the ISPs. We have a follow-up call booked with Openreach at 1:30pm tomorrow for the latest status and will be able to send an update after that call.”
Thu 7 August 2014. Update.
“We have had confirmation from Openreach this morning that the capacity issues in Spaldwick (Woolley PCP6) are now resolved and customers can now order / re-order.”