So tired, tired of waiting

The below is from a forum post written to reassure that everyone is in the same boat with regards to Virgin Media's expansion, no-one has any idea what's going on, least of all Virgin Media it seems.

Right I just wanted to update the community in case anyone thought I was getting preferential treatment - I had some contact with VM around the time of my posting here, so January of this year.

A part of the local area that already had ducting was made live, as was discussed. Triple play was indeed available in the area that same week.

Just one minor problem: telephony isn't actually available here yet, so all those who ordered it had it removed from their package, in some cases meaning they were being asked to pay more for TV and broadband than for triple-play.

Next: An aspirational date for some additional homes to be ready by the end of February was mentioned. We're half-way through March and absolutely nothing visible has happened to progress this. In fact, going by the dates that roadworks are being booked for in neighbouring districts it's perfectly feasible that no work will start until at least June with no additional availability of services until July.

So just missing that 'hoped for' availability by the end of February marginally.

I have no idea what's going on with either of those issues as those in VM who may actually know what's going on haven't responded to me since January. I use the word 'may' as I'm not especially confident that anyone has any idea what's going on.

I have no doubt that the member of staff who gave me the information did so in entirely good faith, although I'm not so sure about a couple of months of mushroom treatment.

Anyway: those unable to get information or being provided incorrect information don't get too disheartened. Even going pretty much right to the top and pulling every string available as a former member of staff doesn't help. It seems quite literally no-one has any idea what's going on on the ground with regards to Project Lightning, or if they do they don't talk to the rest of the business let alone to us mere mortals.

It's nothing personal. Don't mistake non-existent or simply wrong internal and external communication for anything malicious.

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In other news after sitting waiting for a few months to order a second line to improve connectivity to this property for small business use to augment the existing FTTC connection I've finally gotten the hint that VM don't appear to know hindmost from cubitus so have ordered an alternative solution.

Definitely seems more than 2 years ago when I was meeting with VM at the local council's offices being invited to join trials, with a second ducted connection to the property for a fibre overlay being mooted.

What a mug allowing myself to be used liaising with the community and deflecting criticism.

For all their faults at least BT did what they said they would when they said they would, and managed upgrades to provide additional capacity to the area.

Here the Leeds South hub is stuck on the old platform leaving a number of nodes congested after being due for upgrade in mid-2016, then November 2016, now March 2017 though I've no idea why anyone would take that seriously.

Wish I could be so cavalier with promises, so indifferent to timelines, and then go silent on a whim in either my day job or with my business.

Complete Commercial Confidentiality Companies

Following on from my post in May of last year, sadly there are still zero properties on the estate that can order. A small development is that the Virgin Media availability and planning checker doesn't work for these postcodes where it previously did. That's progress I guess, right?

 Having asked the CEO's office for an update I seem to have received more questions than answers, with the strong implication being that VM themselves don't know what's going on. Mental note: don't sing the praises of companies until they actually deliver.

 Might go into more details later, depending on how much more substantial the next update, if any, is. Hopefully be a bit more to it than pleading commercial confidentiality and asking for information that had already been provided. A simple 'Be patient, we'll get to it later.' would be better than I have now, although perhaps wouldn't amuse those whose pavements were being dug up 10 months ago and are still yet to see any benefit.

If anyone from VM is reading, I've no idea what the references for the bits that have already been built is, but NBU 28973 is a good place to start.

Addendum 2 hours after writing: Just received another email from the CEO's office apologising for the late response and inviting me to put my postcode into CableMyStreet and register my interest. I'm not sure which email of mine this was in response to but the checker is broken for every postcode on the estate. Stated this initially.

Virgin Media streetworks porn

For those so inclined, this is what big network builds look like. No-one said they were pretty, easy or cheap.

Pavements markings for a cabinet along with the chamber and ducting needed - in this instance 3-way.

I see a For Sale sign on one of the houses - bad timing!

Virgin Media's contractors working around the cabinets I'm typing this through. Thankfully no damage caused!

Pavement markings indicating placement of power pillar, MSAN for telephony, and chambers.

Random Sunday update - ultrafast frustration, Ofcom

In a somewhat frustrating note today I had a wander to the local supermarket and as soon as I left my own road was greeted by marks on the pavement indicating the route ultrafast broadband is going to take.

There are a fair few people making a lot of use of our existing broadband. More than once during the school holidays I had to play with settings to ensure I could work smoothly. Our speeds are decent, for the type of connection we have we're above average, for the UK as a whole if all were to buy the fastest connection available to them we're considerably below average.

Regardless my only option longer term unless I manage the quality of service on the connection is to purchase a second link in order to keep the online experience smooth, and it's going to have to go through the exact same equipment, copper, cabinet, etc, as the existing one so there are going to be plenty of common points of failure between them.

It shouldn't be this way. I live in the 3rd largest city in the UK, in a densely populated residential suburb. I am quite happy to spend money on my connectivity however if I want truly diverse and strong connectivity the bill for the second line is way out of range for a home worker. The install charge quoted is £6,150 and the monthly fee on a 3 year contract £240. Not a lot anyone who builds networks can do about this.

Any solution would run the risk of requiring street works which are not possible here right now. The more properties covered the higher the risk of street works. The only way to reduce this risk is to cover fewer properties which means higher costs per property.

In other news I've made a few somewhat unkind comments about Ofcom in the past. Seems as though their thoughts with regards to BT and Openreach are politically expedient, extremely incompetent and more of the same - further regulation in order to try and undo the mess their regulation has created. A view I've heard a few times is that Ofcom's end game is to quite literally wear BT down by placing regulation on top of regulation into voluntarily divesting Openreach as it ends up impractical for them to continue ownership.

If this does end up being the case I sincerely hope BT use every tool available to them to push back on Ofcom. We are supposed to have a Conservative government in power; you'd hope they'd be far more enthusiastic about allowing the market to work and trying to ensure that those who've risked their own capital making investments see those risks fairly rewarded. Forcing Openreach to allow access to their dark fibre is opposed by those who've made investments themselves as competitors to Openreach and rather than incentivising private investment actively discourages it. Why invest yourself when you can wait for Ofcom to give you what you want? Win:win - you don't have to spend your own money, Ofcom get to justify their own existence and impress the politicians.

Ofcom certainly seem to have politics down. As with most politicians and political institutions if you think the problems they've created are bad just wait until you see their solutions.

Here's hoping that the rumours are wrong and Ofcom will impress and surprise us all.

Developer delays

So as may have been noted from an earlier post of mine rollout of ultrafast broadband in my area is difficult due to unadopted roads.

This area has had a long history of issues between developers and council, as I suspect most do. The FTTC cabinet that serves the area is only there because the council adopted the road early after a bunch of wrangling with the developers concerned.

I'm beginning to understand their pain. This is from the section 38 agreement governing the road adoption process in my immediate area. The maintenance period is the 12 months between being provided a provisional certificate and the final adoption inspection.

Now I'm not a lawyer but this seems pretty clear. During the maintenance period keep the road to be adopted in good order and fix anything that you find wrong.

The below email from a developer seems to indicate they disagree:

Again I'm not a lawyer and could be, and indeed probably am, wrong, but I'm not sure that ignoring the defects until the inspector has highlighted them and rejected the road due to them is keeping to the paragraph in the agreement above. I would have thought that the developer should be doing a little more than just noting the defects, fixing them would've seemed to be more compliant.

I have, of course, brought this to the attention of the local authority. Because I'm nice like that.

I'm not holding my breath for the developer remedying the issues any time soon, which is bizarre as you'd have thought they'd be desperate to rid themselves of responsibility for roads, not drag the process out.

Input on why they'd do this welcome. The cynic in me says that they are hoping the highway inspector won't see all the issues they are aware of and they can save money on repairs, instead having the taxpayer pick up the tab post-adoption. That is just me being cynical, right?

Why the lack of FTTP?

I've seen a whole bunch on forums people wondering why the UK doesn't have as much fibre right to people's homes as a number of other countries, and has less of it planned.

I've learned a few bits from watching Virgin attempting to dig in South Leeds alongside other experiences that have educated me.

The obvious major reason is, of course, that actually getting it out there is expensive. Secondary to this comes that the UK has little appetite to spend more to pay for it. Following on though why is it so expensive to deploy in the UK?

We have fewer people living in flats/apartment than many other countries. People very much like their houses with garden, ideally detached if possible. Bringing up kids in flats is something that doesn't appeal to most, and the flats are built with that in mind. It's way more expensive per property to service a hundred houses than a hundred apartments in a building.

Our infrastructure has for quite a while now been almost universally underground. Digging is expensive. Despite poles being in use in North America, Japan, and other first world nations an apparently commonly held British attitude to them is that they make streets look 'like a third world country.'. There's also the concern that they lower property values and reduce the beauty of views.

Of course digging roads and pavements produces its own issues, as do the cabinets that accompany it. I'm aware of at least two instances in the South Leeds area where residents are demanding that Virgin Media completely relay pavements at a cost of thousands of pounds per home and another instance where a resident seeks any excuse to complain about the cabinet sited near their property. The demands for full relaying aren't due to safety concerns, but aesthetic ones.

In summary as far as building the infrastructure goes if you put it on poles you're making streets look like a third world country, if you put it underground you upset people by leaving tracks in pavements and street furniture on pavements and verges.

We've stronger health and safety requirements than many with a bunch of rules that must be complied with in order to carry out works. Watching videos of fibre deployment in Southern Europe the regulations there are either far less onerous or they are ignoring them. This isn't an option in the UK.

We have a system whereby it costs a company three figures before they put a single shovel into the ground in order to notify local authorities they intend to build, then after they build a bunch of complications and headaches.

Building to new estates of mixed status such as my own is extraordinarily problematic. I'll detail this separately in a different post.

That's the cost part. The benefits of building in terms of the money that can be made back are tricky, too. Virgin Media off customers 50Mb, 150Mb and 200Mb tiers. Less than 5% of the customer base take 200Mb.

Dozens of operators offer 38Mb and 76Mb via BT Openreach's FTTC product. The majority take 38Mb. Operators have been hiding price rises of broadband in line rental for years, because people are so reluctant to pay for it and know that a couple of low-end providers have heavily skewed the market.

With that in mind it's no surprise that catering for the highest end users who want the state of the art products and are prepared to pay for them is problematic. Many don't want to pay the list prices for the lowest end products. Who'd want to spend money building a network that delivers ultrafast speeds and a quality service experience to be faced with people trying to haggle because x operator delivering services on wafer thin margins over a network they didn't pay to build will give them y for z price?