Chelsea UK Telephone Exchange Closure to Hit Broadband Speeds

Some 13,000 premises in Chelsea (London) could be impacted when BT start closing the local Telephone Exchange (WRCHEL) later this year and shift related lines over to South Kensington, which for some ADSL based broadband ISP subscribers could result in slower speeds.

The situation first emerged last year after the landlord of the building where BT base their exchange chose not to renew the operator’s lease, which left them in a bit of a pickle and one that was not of their own design. It’s unclear why the landlord took this action, although property in London is in high demand and they may have been attracted by more lucrative options.

Since then BT has been working feverishly with ISPs to find a solution and it now looks like most of the services will have to be re-routed to South Kensington, which could result in slower speeds and possibly some stability problems for many ADSL / ADSL2+ based broadband lines due to the greater distances involved.

One solution to this problem could be to move existing ADSL subscribers on to newer FTTC (VDSL) based “fibre broadband” services, which wouldn’t suffer from the same performance woes as a result of the change.

A related special offer (running from 1st July 2016 to 30th September 2016) has already been proposed (here), which cuts the setup and installation costs for FTTC lines in the affected area. However encouraging customers to upgrade may be more challenging because FTTC packages tend to attract a +£5-10 monthly price premium over slower ADSL lines.

A Spokesperson for Openreach (BT) told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We have been asked to move out of the Chelsea exchange building, so Openreach began planning for the move with its communication provider customers at the earliest opportunity, back in May 2015.

The aim is to close the exchange by the end of March 2018, when all Openreach services will be migrated to our neighbouring exchange in South Kensington.

We’re working closely with every company that provides services out of Chelsea to minimise the disruption and ensure a smooth transition.

The move may have an impact on traditional copper broadband speeds, so we’re investing to upgrade the entire Chelsea exchange area with fibre – giving every customer the option of moving onto these faster services.”

ISPreview.co.uk understands that Openreach will begin moving equipment over from Chelsea to South Kensington in October 2016, with related customer migrations occurring at night so as to minimise disruption. As above, the whole tedious process should then be completed by the end of March 2018.

Suffice to say that those with affected lines should hopefully be hearing about the situation from their ISP in the near future and it’s possible that there may also be some temporary problems (brief disconnections etc.) as a result of the move. We should say that situations like this one are rare.