He points to the off-white blocks: with these, connection requires a technician to feed a 0. If a line terminates in a black block - several decades old, with a neatly hand-painted shelf number - the technician will need to solder the wire on. Wholesale resells broadband to another BT division, Retail, and to anyone else who wants its service.
Openreach is responsible for the lines from the exchange to customers' homes, on behalf of all communications providers.
Phillips is happy to explain the fiddly process. He picks up a short length of stick with a hole in it, through which he threads a jumper wire. A technician connects the wire on the MDF's exchange side - which links to internet service providers' equipment elsewhere in the exchange - and unspools it up or down channels to the customer's line.
The stick is then pushed like a giant needle through the middle of the frame and threaded to the customer's connection block. Once connected, the jumper wires drop out of the way behind the blocks, looking like a river of brightly-coloured vermicelli. This MDF is old-fashioned compared to the exchange's other equipment. The ranks of metal cabinets holding the System X call-switching equipment upstairs may bear BT's old circular logo, but instead of the loud clatter once generated by exchanges, they patter like rain on a window.
And the seven cabinets owned by communications providers, including BT Wholesale, for broadband and non-BT telephone services, are right up to date. About two metres high and wide, these contain equipment including DSlams - digital subscriber line access multiplexes, which combine a provider's traffic into streams of data.
But the way one of Sheldon's 20, telephone lines gets to a DSlam is through a strand of vermicelli wrapped across the MDF. Phillips says this frame is easier to work on than others: "Some are a lot taller," he says, and have gangways for the higher levels, rather like the inside of a prison.
So why do customers have to wait so long for broadband? It's just that it's a manual process. Each connection takes roughly 30 minutes, and only two technicians can work on an MDF of this size at once - there's simply not the room. BT Openreach gets four working days to do this process and update around 40 databases.
So why does the customer have to suffer a two-week wait? As of last week, 10m customers were connected to broadband through their local telephone exchange, which is twice the target BT set itself for the end of When it announced its 5m target back in April , fewer than , lines were connected.
Connections usually take around two weeks, and many are delayed for longer by "a tag on the line", the subject of more than half of all complaints made to communications regulator Ofcom in the year to September , a staggering 1, calls a week. Irate Tiscali customer Cliff Thornton signed up last July on the promise of a day connection.
He was finally connected six months later. If its a new build property, then provision can take many months if the infrastructure is not in place. Your new post was a continuation of your existing issue which was unsolved, so it was added to your original one, so that all the answers are in one place.
The fact that there are sockets in the house, has no bearing on the external network, as there may be shortage of cable pairs, or other issues. Sign In Forum Help. Turn on suggestions. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for. Show only Search instead for.
Did you mean:. All forum topics Previous Topic Next Topic. Georgecc Beginner. Message 1 of Why the activation takes so long? Message 2 of Re: Why the activation takes so long? It's not rocket science!!! Message 3 of Message 4 of Message 5 of Message 6 of If you're new to BT, we'll aim to get your BT Broadband up and running within 2 weeks, although this can sometimes take longer.
If you're moving home it may take us up to 2 weeks - occasionally longer - so please contact us when you know the date. If you're staying at the same address on the same product for example, Broadband, Superfast Fibre or Fibre it should take 1 day.
If you're staying at the same address and changing product for example, Broadband, Superfast Fibre or Fibre it should be weeks. On the day, we'll switch it on any time up to midnight and we'll do our best to make sure you don't lose service. You can check your activation date and follow the status of your broadband activation by tracking your order online, or via the My BT app. Ask the BT Community.
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