Summary of the last 24 months progress re connecting cabinet 20 to fibre
July 26 2017: “The cabinet has now been fully commissioned. Unfortunately when commissioning it was identified that there was a battery fault which meant getting the team back out to replace the battery units. This was done yesterday and the final commissioning was able to be completed.
The cabinet has now been released to the ISPs and orders should be able to be placed off the cabinet next week with the various ISPs who will be offering a service off the cabinet once the various systems align.”
July 24 2017: “The cabinet has been marked as ready for service today; once the data records have been completed we should be in a position to order by the end of this week at the latest”.
July 2017: “copper issues” on existing cabinet need to be resolved.
June 2017: fibre fault has been resolved; cabinet going into final stage of commissioning.
June 2017: cabinet showing “no light”; Openreach looking in to it.
April 2017: cabinet 20 now has power and should be commissioned within a few weeks.
December 2016: land access problems delay power connection again
October 2016: connecting power was more complex issues than envisaged due to landowner but was promised by December 16th
Previous history follows below.
15th March 2016
Meeting with Councillor Debby Blakebrough, Western Power, Openreach and Superfast Cymru was very productive. Read more …
14th July 2015
The new cabinet has been in place for a while now and OpenReach were working on making more connections today. It seems that the next steps are to commission the new cabinet and test it before the new service can be offered to residents. Residents concerned are those connected to cabinet 20; you can check if you qualify using the online form at the bottom of this page.
These processes are expected to take around a couple of months from now.
23rd June 2015
Work started yesterday in Lone Lane on installing the new cabinet needed by BT for its Infinity service (fibre to the cabinet). Progress is being held up by the hardness of the ground (i.e. solid rock!), this requiring a digger to be brought in (see picture, which shows where the new cabinet will go).
What then happens is that connections are made between the fibre cable from Monmouth (already in place it seems via buried and overhead ducting) and the new cabinet, and between the new cabinet and existing cabinet 20. The engineer on site guessed that the whole project could be completed within a few weeks when customers would then be offered the chance to subscribe to the new superfast service.
The bottleneck in the system remains the last part of the broadband connection, that via the old, existing copper wires between cabinet 20 and each residence. The theory is that the new scheme will deliver speeds on a par with those delivered to Spectrum customers as the latter also rely on the same copper wires for the last leg of the broadband journey. So, those close to the cabinet will receive much faster broadband than those 2 or 3 km away.
This applies only to those connected to cabinet 20 in Lone Lane and unfortunately will not apply to residents in Tregagle or The Birches whose phone lines come from elsewhere. The BT broadband checker will confirm if this is the case – simply insert your telephone number (including area code) into the box and click “submit”.
If you are connected to cabinet 20 you will receive the information that
“Telephone Number 01600xxxxxx on Exchange MONMOUTH is served by Cabinet 20”