Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Summary of Update from Openreach

I just got off the phone with Andy Hudson, Director of Network Delivery at Openreach.   Our conversation can be summarised down to the following:  Openreach are committed to delivering their pieces of a solution for Temple and this could be by the end of January to mid-February – he would welcome the opportunity to keep us updated. They have opened a new node on their network for Call Flow to connect.  To complete this Call Flow will stand their equipment cabinet next to the Openreach one and the two will be connected together by Openreach.  This is typically a 90 working day process as it allows time for the Communications Provider to stand their equipment and for work to be programmed in. However, Openreach will move the order through and complete work as soon as Call Flow have stood their cabinet.

Andy stressed that the overall project is Call Flow's to manage.  They need to stand their new cabinet so that Openreach has a place to connect to the network and attach the new fibre for backhaul.   In the course of such construction there is always the possibility of issues around land ownership, planning permissions and wayleave access which are sometimes outside of Openreach’s and Call Flow Solutions control.  However the Openreach cabinet is now stood and any such issues have been resolved on the Openreach side.

The challenge now is to get the same kind of update and commitment from Call Flow!

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Some Hopeful Correspondence

Having not heard anything back from Call Flow Solutions in regards to my request for information on our project schedule I decided to make some inquiries of my own into Openreach.  Working with Roger Thurston from the Island,  I wrote and sent the following message to Clive Selley the CEO of Openreach.  His response, and a couple of subsequent messages, follow:

Message from me to Clive Selley:



Wednesday, November 16, 2016

More of the Same Update for November

As per usual for our upgrade project the status is "Waiting for Openreach".

Apparently there are two pieces of work that Openreach need to complete in order for Call Flow to proceed their work.
  1. The first piece is a fibre connection to the new cabinet that has been installed on Brandenham Lane just off Temple Lane.   My assumption is that this is for the link that will connect the village end of the RF feed of the high speed Internet connection that Call Flow is to install with the new cabinet.
  2. The second piece is for Openreach to complete a new footway junction box and cable replacement near the main cabinet (LG9).  A "footway junction box" is where a customer connection joins a larger cable run.  My assumption here is that this is needed for the top end of the new RF connection that I mention above.
I wish that I knew more but information seems to be guarded as tightly as access to the vestal virgins of ancient Rome.

Even more than my desire to understand the topology of what is being implemented is my desire to know what our schedule is likely to be for access to the new service.   I have asked Call Flow for an estimate of how long it will take for them to do their bits once Openreach has completed the above tasks.  I will post another update when I hear back from them.  We have been assured that they will do what work they can do in parallel with BT's efforts.