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Green box full for 3 years in Central London

Prozn

Casual Member
The green box serving my block of flats has been full now for 3 years straight, with the BT checker showing "waiting list" the whole time. Luckily I moved in a month or so before and have 80Mb/s, but all new residents to my building are stuck on 4G or 8Mb/s ADSL2.

I've tried multiple times to get an altnet FTTP installed, and the ISPs want to proceed, but it always gets stuck in wayleave red tape.

I want to try to help the other residents get somewhere, but I am concerned that Openreach has just given up on green cabs entirely, with 100% focus on FTTP. As this area is not on any form of fibre rollout plan, and has heavy Virgin Media coverage (but not to this block), it could be 4+ more years without even FTTC.

Has anyone else had experience of this? Is there a way to contact Openreach to find out about their plans for the cabinet?

Thanks
 
If you send me the details of the building (address) then I can try to ask.
 
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So Openreach said this for your cabinet.

There are currently no spare ports. The cabinets capacity was uplifted back on the 11th April 2020 to 384 ports but these have since been taken up. As it stands at the moment there are no incremental builds in place to increase the capacity. The PCP did have 3 spare ports available as of 29/04 but these have since been taken up by new customers.

As for FTTP, there are currently no plans to bring full fibre to the area at the moment.
 
There is a strong case here for Openreach to install a Gfast pod on the cabinet, that way anyone on this cabinet migrating away from FTTC 80/20 to Gfast would free up a port, or indeed for those without FTTC to take a Gfast connection, assuming they are within reach to benefit from this.
 
There is a strong case here for Openreach to install a Gfast pod on the cabinet, that way anyone on this cabinet migrating away from FTTC 80/20 to Gfast would free up a port, or indeed for those without FTTC to take a Gfast connection, assuming they are within reach to benefit from this.
There is! The green box covers three blocks of flats, all limited to FTTC, if there are slots available! It also covers quite a few houses, but they all have Virgin or Hyperoptic available.

However, while we are very close to the green cab, my VDSL downstream line attenuation according to my router is 7.1 - indicating a line length of ~0.5km (I think?), which is too long for Gfast. I have no idea what route the phone line is taking to be that long!

UpstreamDownstream
Current Rate (kbps)2000079999
Max Rate (kbps)2118885343
SNR Margin (dB)63.4
Line Attenuation (dB)10.47.1
Errors (pkts)00

There is another block actually next to the cabinet, that would definitely benefit from Gfast though, and as you say, free up ports for those of us further away.

Zero chance of this happening though unfortunately. Fibre is the focus, as it should be, ignoring my selfish wishes of just FTTC availability for my apartment block 😁
 
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There is! The green box covers three blocks of flats, all limited to FTTC, if there are slots available! It also covers quite a few houses, but they all have Virgin or Hyperoptic available.

However, while we are very close to the green cab, my VDSL downstream line attenuation according to my router is 7.1 - indicating a line length of ~0.5km (I think?), which is too long for Gfast. I have no idea what route the phone line is taking to be that long!

UpstreamDownstream
Current Rate (kbps)2000079999
Max Rate (kbps)2118885343
SNR Margin (dB)63.4
Line Attenuation (dB)10.47.1
Errors (pkts)00

There is another block actually next to the cabinet, that would definitely benefit from Gfast though, and as you say, free up ports for those of us further away.

Zero chance of this happening though unfortunately. Fibre is the focus, as it should be, ignoring my selfish wishes of just FTTC availability for my apartment block 😁
Your downstream line attenuation 7.1dB that pretty very good as you have very short line and much closer to the G.fast cabinet (if there G.fast showing up on your BTw checker should be max speed easily 330/50)

My line attenuation on downstream say 10.8dB but BTw checker give me

G.fast Range A (Clean)
263.6​
190.3​
40.3​
18.7​
166.5​
Available​
Available​
--​
G.fast Range B (Impacted)
219.6​
158​
27.9​
13.8​
144​
Available​
Available​
--​
 
Thank you, good to know. If only Gfast had remained an option for hard to full fibre premises :(
 
Sure, here is the full thing. I check it far too often! FTTC still showing available, so the cancelled customer slots must not have been taken up yet. One of the residents in my building was able to submit their FTTC order, which is positive news! I expect it will be Waiting List again very soon though.

1620826421968.png
 
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The FTTC here is excellent, when it is available, decent speeds and very low pings - so we are lucky in that regard. While FTTP would of course be great, 80 is still completely fine for low occupancy residential currently.

1620826791642.png


My concerns were for other residents unable to order FTTC for a year+ at a time.
 
Oh dear me, no G.fast there because if it does have it, you be easy getting 330/50 no problem!

Such a shame! Your VDSL is very high max at 80/20 with low 79/19 as mine is VDSL high at 80/20 with low 74/18. Mine below on FTTC 80/20 with Plusnet. As I am not bother with G.fast at present because 80/20 are more than enough these days.
 

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The waiting list on VDSL won't affect you as you already on FTTC. It's only for new customer who want to order their VDSL service if it was available or can't order it due to waiting list.

The G.fast kept changing in speed each day can be up and down and even taken off and taken back in. Such a crazy!
 

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I am in a similar situation. All the cabinets around me have FTTC availability (and some have GFast) and getting the illogical (crazy) message from Openreach - cabinet is full due to high demand, no plans to update FTTC, no plans for FTTP. (This is a NW London borough) What makes it especially irritating is that the nearest telegraph pole to me has availability. I am rapidly learning fast on this stuff - is GFast a solution to increase capacity on my cabinet relatively easily and cheaply?. Openreach seem very unapproachable-. Rattle the cage? Any advice to help would be much appreciated - thanks
 
I am also in NW London! Maybe it is just not an area Openreach are interested in for some reason.

Gfast is a technology to provider faster internet over existing copper wires, rather than running new fibre cables. Gfast is not able to provide speeds close to fibre however, so it was deemed a stop-gap solution and the project stopped, in favour of FTTP rollout.

Installing Gfast involves adding an extra pod to the green street box with the newer technology in. A side effect of this is adding extra ports, solving the capacity issues.

But this is all academic at this point. If you do not have Gfast available now, you never will, as the focus is on fibre.
 
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I am also in NW London! Maybe it is just not an area Openreach are interested in for some reason.

Gfast is a technology to provider faster internet over existing copper wires, rather than running new fibre cables. Gfast is not able to provide speeds close to fibre however, so it was deemed a stop-gap solution and the project stopped, in favour of FTTP rollout.

Installing Gfast involves adding an extra pod to the green street box with the newer technology in. A side effect of this is adding extra ports, solving the capacity issues.

But this is all academic at this point. If you do not have Gfast available now, you never will, as the focus is on fibre.
Not true. Openreach still roll out G.fast pod. My friend was shocked as Openreach has installed G.fast pod and become availability within three weeks later. Engineer told him will become available next month.

They still doing it but very small roll out. My mate house:

VDSL Range A (Clean)
80​
79​
20​
19​
78​
Available​
Available​
VDSL Range B (Impacted)
80​
79​
20​
19​
78​
Available​
Available​
G.fast Range A (Clean)
330​
330​
50​
43.4​
330​
Planned​
Planned​
G.fast Range B (Impacted)
330​
330​
50​
31.7​
330​
Planned​
Planned​
 
thanks! well this is what I need to know - Gfast seems agile and they could do it, And now i need to know how to 'rattle the big BT/openeach cage' and I mean big - strategy! For some areas in bad situations Gfast would be a good solution, or I just have my cable moved (!) which they don;t do generally but not unknown.. #needfibre #needFTTC
 
Not true. Openreach still roll out G.fast pod. My friend was shocked as Openreach has installed G.fast pod and become availability within three weeks later. Engineer told him will become available next month.

They still doing it but very small roll out. My mate house:

VDSL Range A (Clean)
80​
79​
20​
19​
78​
Available​
Available​
VDSL Range B (Impacted)
80​
79​
20​
19​
78​
Available​
Available​
G.fast Range A (Clean)
330​
330​
50​
43.4​
330​
Planned​
Planned​
G.fast Range B (Impacted)
330​
330​
50​
31.7​
330​
Planned​
Planned​
it would be very useful for reference purposes if you could tell me the location of this new GFast and how they got Openreach to do it -thx
 
I am fortunate enough to be on a cabinet that offers Gfast (although I have stayed on FTTC 80/20). However it is very frustrating to not have access to FTTC when it is 'available' but all the ports are taken.
A last resort option is to contact Openreach headoffice, and politely explain the predicament and urge openreach to consider a Gfast installation for your cabinet as a viable solution. it may prod them into assessing the cabinet as a candidate for Gfast.

High Level Complaints
Amanda Newstead
DSO & HLC Front Office
Openreach
81 Newgate Street,
London EC1A 7AJ
 
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