For the last 6 months a group of villagers have been valiantly fighting the monster that is BT !

After many hours of work and masses of misinformation, misdirection, and misery our very own St George (Geoff Preston) has finally managed to find out what is going on……

Here’s his summary :-

Many of you are aware we have been experiencing issues in the village with broadband for some time. You will have seen the new cabinet on the corner of Follyfield (cab5) and may have been concerned its appearance late last year has not resulted in improvement to service. The Parish Council(PC) have been speaking to Wiltshire Council, BT and Openreach to ascertain exactly why this has been the case. We are now able to outline why there has been no noticeable improvement and advise this should change in the not too distant future. We can also clarify a key concern of the PC relating to just what the planned work is and will result in.

The PC and residents have had concerns the planned migration to the new cab5 would not be migration to fibre ports on cab5, but migration from the existing cabinet outside the village (cab3) and would use copper to cab5. Residents in the village had ascertained this was the current state of affairs and whilst users where connected to cabinet 5 they were seeing no significant speed or line improvement.

Based on the discussions we can confirm Openreach’s planned migration to cab5 will result in ALL existing users on fibre ports on cab3, being migrated to fibre ports on cab5. The current routing from cab3 to cab5 via copper is part of the “Live to Live” migration process aimed at limiting customers down time. The existing cab3 ports are routed to cab5 via copper in the interim, whilst OpenReach gain confirmation from all Internet Service Providers who use the cabinet that a defined date is acceptable for a 2-hour outage. Openreach advise most ISPs have now confirmed a date later this month however they are still waiting for one or two ISPs to respond. When all ISPs with customers on the cabinet confirm the date all users on cab3 will be cut-over to cab5 fibre ports. This will should result in faster speeds throughout the village and environs as the 1.2km – 2.0 km of copper cable will be removed.

Of course, speeds are also dependent on the package you have with your service provider i.e. limited download speed packages. In the interim new lines are being connected to cab5.

In summary, based on our discussions with BT/Openreach:

–          The current migration to copper is an interim part of the Live to Live cutover.

–          The planned migration target is for ALL users on cab3 fibre ports to be migrated to cab5 fibre ports.

–          OpenReach are currently liaising with Service Providers to agree a final cutover date later this month.

–          The final cutover will mean a loss of broadband for a period of 2-3 hours.

Many thanks Geoff !