All cabinets now live - South of the river, Stibbington, Sutton, Thornhaugh etc

Apparently some duct clearing was required, but the checker now offers Superfast services from cabinet 4 to a Stibbington number and one at the Wansford end of Elton Road :-

Further up the A1 the Thornhaugh area is now live from the small cabinet in the southbound bus layby:

Across the A1 the duct problems along the A47 have also been resolved and properties in Sutton served by Cabinet 7 can now order Superfast broadband from their providers and get a particularly impressive speed increase :-

So as far as I can tell we now have all the cabinets up and running and custiomers connected and getting useful speed improvements. The Connecting Cambridgeshire cabinet map hasn't quite caught up at the time of writing hence I validated the cabinets against connected lines using BT's checker and posted the screenshots above - for avoidance of doubt and other FUD that tends to surround broadband.

Sutton going Superfast

Cabinet 7 in Sutton has a Fibre twin :

So we can expect Superfast services in PE5 7XE and environs.

PS Found cabinet 1 hiding on the side of the A1 :

Cabinet hunting II

Some while ago my cabinet hunting got as far as this :-

1. TBA
2. Nassington
3. Wittering (Townsend Rd/Burghley Ave)
4. Wansford south, Stibbington, Sibson.
5. Yarwell
6. TBA
7. Sutton
8. Wittering (Small, Burghley Ave)

Today Thinkbroadband published a list of newly enabled cabinets which said :

WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	6	FTTC
WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	5	FTTC
WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	2	FTTC
WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	3	FTTC
WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	8	FTTC
WANSFORD ATE (Z)	EMWSFRD	9	FTTC

So cabinets 1 (TBA), 4 (Wansford / Stibbington), 7 (Sutton) and 10 (Wansford Exchange) are not yet in service. Of these 4 and 10 are in place to my knowledge.

Cabinets 1, 6 and 9 yet to be located......

Update:

Cabinet 1 serves Thornhaugh, PGRO and Sacrewell Farm area

Cabinet 6 serves the South end of Wittering - Lawrence Road/St Mary's junction

Cabinet 9 is in Wittering and includes Hillside Gardens
Wittering  PETERBOROUGH PE8 6DX and the School & Pub.

Fibre Cabinets in Wittering

After a comment made on the blog by Steve I had a quick drive up to Wittering and found two BT FTTC Superfast cabinets :-

These may be coming into service in the next few days, as the Yarwell cab has been fibred and powered up and Nassington have been told service is "imminent". You can see which cabinet you are connected to via the BT ADSL Number checker for example Café Delight is on Cabinet 3 :

BT BROADBAND AVAILABILITY CHECKER

Telephone Number 01780784822 on Exchange WANSFORD is served by Cabinet 3

In fact while typing this I see that at least some Wittering residents also have FTTC services available, Café Delight can order a predicted 60M service :-


Telephone Number 01780784822 on Exchange WANSFORD is served by Cabinet 3

Featured Products	Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Downstream Range(Mbps)	Availability Date
	High	Low	High	Low
FTTC Range A (Clean)	80	74	20	20	--	Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted)	80	61.9	20	12.2	--	Available

 
To get one of these services you'll have to upgrade or change ISP to one offering a suitable Fibre based or "Superfast" service, BT Infinity being one option. There will probably be a minimum 12 or 18 month contract to cover Openreach's minimum term for cabinet connections.

Sky and Talk Talk may take a little longer to provide a service as they do it slightly differently using their own kit in Wansford exchange with a handover from BT's fibre to the cabinets, however at the time of writing both Sky and Talk Talk systems are offering me fibre off the new cabinets. If you're with either of these two, or fancy switching to them, give them a buzz.

Typically packages will offer "up to 38" or "up to 76" MBits/s in the downstream direction with 2, 10 or 20 MBits/s (approx.) in the upstream direction. Not all combinations exist, and there are other options like priority traffic and ISP's GB per month bundles. Expect to pay about £40 per month for line rental and superfast broadband together, with offers like reduced price for 6 months for new customers.

Example of Talk Talk offer for their cheapest service :-

FTTC Cabinet appears in Wansford

As well as the Gigaclear activity, with their fibre run all but complete past the Doctors, a new BT FTTC cabinet has appeared looking rather lonely on the side of the road at the junction :-

This will be the "fibre twin" for the newly installed PCP cabinet "Cabinet 10" a bit further up the road on the other side - this will intercept lines connected directly to the exchange and not via an established cabinet.

Also today BT's contractors were braving the rain and hooking up the cabinet in Yarwell to fibre from Wansford :-

Gigaclear installing Fibre to the Home in Yarwell

The long haul Gigaclear fibre connection from Kings Cliffe to Wansford is installed from the Wansford Surgery through Yarwell to the coal yard at Nassington, and from the top end of Nassington out to Apethorpe.

In passing through the village and past other properties they are installing individual fibres and connection points at each house. Photos to follow.

It was interesting to see that SME businesses in Wansford are eligible for vouchers to fund superfast broadband connections - anyone who pays business rates to Peterborough City Council looks to be able to get £100 - £3000.

Wansford is showing ~20% progress on the Gigameter http://www.gigaclear.com/postcode-checker/

Yarwell has a Superfast broadband cabinet

Sat on the grass verge, waiting for a fibre connection from Wansford I think :-

 Before the cabinet itself landed :-