Maybe by the Start of the Summer

Highways RBWM is unwilling to move the closure of Bradenham Lane forward any more than to the middle of May.  It seems that we are somewhat ring fenced by other work being done on the 404 and the policy of not having the signage for two projects competing with each other.  The project that is most in our way is a four week effort being done by Highways England and ending the middle of May.   Andy Hudson, the Director from Openreach that is helping us to get connected, has had someone on his staff meet with Highways England in hopes that if their project is done more quickly than four weeks, that we might then get a jump start on ours.  Andy is hopeful that this will be the case.

The bottom line is that we will not get the fibre to our new cabinets until May.  This is why we were hoping that Openreach could have come to terms with Randall Farms.  It is too late now for a second path to help us but if we had been able to gain access to our neighbouring farm land we would likely be saving some months of waiting.  I guess having waited for years a couple of months is not that long but I am still disappointed that any additional delay is being added on top of the months and months that we have already seen tacked on the end of our original promise date.

If there is any good news it is that we have been assured that Call Flow will be ready to connect the fibre and offer us service in the minimal possible time.  We have not gotten any indication from them, however, as to what they expect that length of time to be.  I think that we can be assured that it will have been a year from when we had originally hoped to have been connected to when we are FINALLY brought out of the dark ages of Internet connectivity.  I lived on a boat in near Washington D.C. fifteen years ago and had better connectivity that I do now living in the shadow of one of the world's greatest cities.  It is really a little appalling.  Hopefully not for much longer.

The Latest - Another Delay ... Go Figure

As our luck may have it, mostly bad that is, the conduit between the top of the lane at the 404 and our cabinets down here in the village is not passable and 200 meters of new conduit will need to be installed.  This will require a closure of the Brandenham Lane and that has been requested by the contractor that will do the work for Openreach.  The standard for such requests would be that our closure would be granted for some time three months from now.

This would, obviously, be painful as the original promise date for our improved service was a year ago this coming June!  This is the worst case though.  The contractor has requested an expedited closure.  If that fails then Andy Hudson will make the request through a more senior channel.  His hope is that we could still get the closure we need in the next couple of weeks.

This is where having a second route being worked in parallel may have helped us in regards to timings.

Stay tuned.

Couple More Tickboxes Checked Off

Openreach has completed a run of Fibre down the 404 and across traffic to near our exit from the 404 North.  This is the good news.  The bad news is that the task of running the fibre through our existing duct works requires a specialist contractor and to the best of our knowledge this has not yet been scheduled (our Openreach contact is on holiday).

As of today another contractor, working on behalf of Call Flow, is connecting power to the new cabinet that will house our high speed connection hardware.   We have asked Call Flow for an update on how long it will take to offer us service once the fibre is connected but our contact there is on holiday.

Finally, given all the holidays above, I reached out to Superfast Berkshire to see if they had any news. Guess what?  On holiday!  I kid you not.  Is there a special telecoms conference going on somewhere this week?

Hopefully the duct works overlay part of the project will be scheduled soon and will not encounter any issues.

This is where it would be nice if we could have to paths being pursued at one time. 

Progressing Forward Again

Openreach needs to do two pieces of work to get the new fibre connection to the Call Flow cabinet.  The first of these tasks is to run the fiber itself and this has been scheduled for this week.  The second piece of work is to repair some of the ducting.   This work should be getting scheduled this week.  Obviously it is this second piece of work that is going to dictate when we can see fibre in Temple to which Call Flow can connect us.

Fingers Crossed.

Not so Happy News

Below is an update from Openreach in regards to their efforts to get fibre to our new cabinets.

Unfortunately they have hit issues with both of the paths they can run along.  There is a blockage in the conduit in the first case and in the second the landowner along Temple Lane is asking for more compensation than Openreach are willing to offer (presumably because the other route would be less expensive even with all the extra works required).   Here is the text of the update from Andy Hudson of Openreach.

Will, Roger

With reference to the installation for Call Flow Solutions to serve your community.

I know you are eagerly awaiting the delivery of your solution and I thought I would provide you with an update.  This is more detail than we would usually provide but in the interest of good community relations I am happy to keep you informed.  Our customer for the solution is Call Flow Solutions and I have asked that they too get the same update too via their commercial team on copy.

The route via the farmers’ fields seems unlikely to progress as the farmer is seeking higher levels of compensation than we would support.  I do not have the details but our planning and wayleaves team are continuing to see if they can secure this option with the landowner. Helen Monroe on our side is leading this element and has everyone’s details following the site meeting.

The route down the road with the existing duct has a section that is not passable and requires replacing.  This necessitates building a joint box in the road or verge and laying new duct with a road closure.  This is being planned and the necessary permits and applications prepared.  I will inform you when we get traffic permit dates back.

We have applied for lane closures on the A404 to access our boxes along the main route as all the boxes are manholes in the main carriageway.

We will continue to complete or attempt as much work as is possible in parallel.

I should have some information or road closure dates etc within a week and I will drop you a note when I have more details.

Regards

Andy

The net impact of the above is a delay of anywhere from a couple weeks to several months (or more based on our record so far with this project).

I am hoping that someone in our community knows Mr. Randall well enough to reach out to him on behalf of the village.  It would be nice to know that he is aware that this project is not being driven by profitability for BT but by the government on behalf of his neighbors who campaigned relentlessly for a year to get it approved!

Happy High Speed New Year

It is the new year and things are starting to happen in earnest relative to our broadband speed upgrade!

Earlier this week Call Flow's new DSLAM (digital subscriber line access multiplexer) cabinet  was installed on top of the concrete pad that was put in place during December.  This is the cabinet that will contain the electronics that will get us on the super fast broadband that Call Flow will be offering shortly.

Once that cabinet appeared I notified BT Openreach (at their request) that it had been installed (hopefully they also had heard this from Call Flow)!  The very next day Openreach began the process of connecting the copper that will be our bridge between our phone lines (in their new cabinet) and the superfast connections in the new Call Flow cabinet.

The fibre connection is proceeding as well.  BT Openreach are pursuing two paths in parallel.  One path would come from a fibre pickup point near the exit to Temple on the 404 down the conduit the provides us with our phone service.  The downside of this path is that the conduit is crowded, though not at capacity, and the nature of the path into our valley is such that it may also have gotten silted up over time (creating a challenge for the running of our fibre).  Work on this path is set to begin on the 14th of January.

Given the possible issues with the above path a second option is also being pursued.  This option would take fibre from a pickup point close to the beginning of Temple Lane and trench it from there, down Temple Lane, and ultimately to the new cabinet that has just been installed.  There is a meeting on the 16th to discuss this approach with the landowner.

In the meantime we will be waiting for power to be supplied to the new Call Flow cabinet.  This has been ordered for mid February.  We have been informed that all setup activities can still be completed by Call Flow without power to the cabinet, however, for subscribers to gain access to the cabinet the power will need to be there!

All of the above is good news for a change.   In an ideal world we will not need the backup path for the fibre connection and we could have fibre to the new Call Flow cabinet in the coming days (or worst case week or two).  At that point it will be up to Call Flow to get their infrastructure working.  Continuing in the ideal world scenario this could mean that we might see high speed broadband available in February.

Confirmation from Call Flow

Roger and I have received a confirmation from Call Flow that the update from Superfast Berkshire was a good assessment of their plans and commitment to our upgrade.  They added the following details:

1. Openreach finally concluded the ‘CuRe’ part of the project after 12+ months on 25/11/16 i.e. after escalating to Ofcom.  [It should be noted that Roger and I were completely surprised to hear about this after the fact.  We feel that had we known this was an issue we could have helped bring it to a conclusion sooner.  We are also interested in gaining an understanding from Openreach as to their side of the issue as there are usually two sides to every technology issue between vendors.]
2. We duly submitted an order for the next stage of the process (sub loop unbundling – SLU) on 26/11/16.
3. OR completed their survey and planning of the SLU part of the process on 6/12/16.  Call Flow accepted the SLU charges on the 7/12/16 i.e. so that we could then officially connect our ducting into BT’s joint box.
4. Our cabinet base and ducting as above has been completed as you indicate i.e. within days of being given the formal go-ahead from BT. This is far quicker than would normally be achieved and is an indication of the focus we have on this job.
5. We plan to install the cabinet on the newly installed base in early to mid-January. This should, in no way, hold up the installation of BT’s fibre (some nearly 3km required cabling required which will take some time before they get to our cabinet).
6. No wayleaves are required as our installation is on highways land.
7. We are waiting for SSE to confirm an installation date for power and will chase this again later this week.  While this will not hold up the BT fibre installation, it will be required to launch the service.
8. We are currently anticipating the service to be live around mid-February provided both SSE and BT deliver on time.

The critical path does seem to be in the hands of Openreach given that they have nearly 3km of fibre to run to the new Call Flow cabinet.  Call Flow is confident that this cable could be run now, with the necessary conduits installed to connect the Openreach Cabinet with the Call Flow foundation, and the end point and coil of fibre for final connection left in the Openreach Cabinet until the Call Flow cabinet is installed in early January.

This seems reasonable to me and given this I have asked our contact at Openreach if the laying of our fibre can be escalated to ensure the end project date.  We have also suggested to Call Flow that they get an approval of this from their local Openreach project manager.

The bottom line of all this should be that we could get connected in February if all goes well. 

There are still a lot of things that may not go well but this is the best date that I have seen in terms of having a good plan to support it to a good conclusion.  Roger and I will continue to stay on top of it!