The rollout of superfast broadband to Caldecote resumed in early April, having stalled for several months. Half the village is now able to order the service. Unfortunately, the rollout now seems to have hit a brick wall as the other half of the village is still in superfast broadband darkness !
Annette Thorpe, the BT regional partnership director had told the audience at the Caldecote Parish Council meeting on 18th April that BT expected to have most residents on the internet highway by the end of April. Indeed activities by various workmen seemed to continue after the meeting, and then gradually stopped by the end of April.
So what happened. Well Mrs Thorpe was back at Caldecote Parish Council meeting on Thursday 16th May, to give an update to residents. She apologised for the fact that the target of end of April had been missed, but was unable to give a firm date for when the rest of the village would get superfast broadband.
She was able to give a list of roads in the village that were now enabled for superfast broadband, and these were:
Clare Drive, Grayway Close, Mill Quern, Dorral Dean, Strympole Way, Thorny Way, Goose Cross, Grove close.
Readers should note that this is a subset of the list of roads that I had worked out and distributed in a note to the village toward the end of April.
Superfast broadband engineering works
There are two PONS that serve Caldecote, PON4 and PON5. Annette stated that BT had some outstanding civil works, 8 cabling jobs on PON4 and 7 ciivil engineering jobs on PON5, as a result of civil engineering work failing after her last report to the parish. However, of the outstanding 7 engineering jobs , 6 were completed as of Friday 10th.
Final release on one is being help up as because apparently one resident told BT not to build outside their house. They could have just gone ahead but it was sensitive to listen to their objection. BT have now rep-planned and agreed to change the route of service.
They have also had some sourcing challenges for manifolds which have held up some order placement until they have the parts coming online again. This is re-iterating the fact that FTTP is a new product, with the associated teething issues.
Expected completion is now expected to be end of May, but she could not commit to that as a firm date as happened in April, only to find they encountered problems.
Overhead network solution for superfast broadband
BT has identified that some houses will need to be served on the last leg from the PON to the house, not through cable ducts, but on overhead lines via telegraph poles – the aerial solution. These will apply to houses where the current telephone service goes into the premises via telegraph poles.
The question of an overhead network was raised at the last meeting she attended. Mrs Thorpe confirmed that there is overhead work still to be done and a solutionis to be found for this. BT is still testing this solution out in its FTTP labs in Milton Keynes, but again, could not give a firm date though she expect that a solution will be found within a couple of months. This overhead network solution will affect a maximum of 77 premises across Caldecote, wider amount exchange wide.
Finances
Another question raised last time was on financing, as someone in BT service chain had said to a resident (of Hardwick) that BT could not complete installation to his premises due to funding issues. Annette was able to confirm that there are no ongoing budgetary constraints or financial decisions which are associated with the deployment at Caldecote or indeed the Madingley exchange in general.
Communications with residents
Residents also made known their irritation at the distinct lack of information coming out of BT. Mrs Thorpe re-iterated that the BT heirachy is at play where although BT Group is funding the work and BT Retail is implementing it, unfortunately they don’t have access to each others systems!
In addition, with normal commercial rollout, BT does not communicate with residents and this race to infinity rollout is different, and is something they are not used to doing.
Date of next update
Annette Thorpe will be back at Caldecote Parish Council on Thursday 6th June 2013 to give an update and take away any specific issues that residents may have.