BT Openreach announced a project recently starting Jan 09 to remove TPON for end users living in the Whiteley area. End users that may have TPON lines will generally have a postcode format of PO15 7XX. You may have noticed the Openreach vans that have been hovering around Whiteley lateley, they are slowly adding copper lines to the TPON fibre network.
Background on Whiteley
Due to the major development of the Whiteley area for both business and residential end users in the last 10 - 15 years, the local access is unusually complicated. Whiteley end users were originally within the Locksheath exchange area (MDFID – STLOCKH). However, following changes to the local access over the years, "new" users started being served via a remote MDF site geographically closer to the end user premises sometimes called the Whiteley exchange (STWHTLY). This means that Whiteley end users could have:
• Copper lines from an MDF at Locksheath TE • TPON lines from an MDF at Locksheath TE • Copper lines from an MDF at Whiteley remote MDF site
Plans for TPON removal
Openreach has recently commenced the replacement of TPON with copper access lines. The removal of TPON is planned to be completed over the next 6-12 months.
For these reasons users in Whiteley often experience slow connections (512K - 2mb) even though they are paying for a higher speed such as 8Mb. Existing copper overlays in Whiteley are at full capacity and getting yourself added if you are not currently connected to Broadband can be problematic. Providers such as Sky, virgin and O2 often offer really good deals however they all run on the basic infrastructure provided by BT. If there is TPON on the line or insufficient capacity then these suppliers cannot provide a solution for you.
Most houses will be connected to the Locks Heath Exchange and they maybe up to 1.6Km from the Exchange, Broadband does not work too well from that distance. BT will not swap you from Locks Heath to Whiteley Exchange as they say its against the competition or ombudsmen rules. The bottom line is BT are slowly adding copper but they say that it simply isn't "cost effective" for BT to rush to put in more copper overlays. In the meantime you may experience issues.
If your line is physically connected to the Whiteley Exchange then you will find that the Whiteley Exchange is not ADSL+ enabled or LLU unbundled. This means that only BT broadband will get through to you and your only option is BT.
Speed Checker: http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/
T-pon Telephony over Passive Optical Network - This basically means you have fibre rather than copper between your house and the exchange. LLU = Local Loop Unbundleing - Basically someone other than BT install their own broadband equipment into an exchange. It still uses BT's line to get to your house, but uses the BT broadband infrustructure so if you have TPON on your line they it wont work. Eg. O2 are available at the Locks Heath exchange. They offer up to 8meg for £7.50 (if you are an O2 customer) however Whiteley exchange doesn't offer this but Locks Heath does. ADSL2 offers a theoretical maximum speed of 24meg and offers higher speeds over a longer distance. MDF - main distribution frame generally where every telephone line copper pair terminates.
Last Updated on Friday, 01 January 2010 19:25
