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If the answer is yes please read my special article about rural fibre reliability if a broadband connection is essential to you or your business.

14th APRIL 2017 - HORSTED KEYNES AND DANE HILL FIBRE BROADBAND FINALLY RESTORED

It took a lot of behind the scenes complaining, and we understand a spare part being "borrowed" from another exchange, but at noon today the village finally got its broadband back! BT Openreach had been putting the advertised repair time back but at last villagers can get to work sending emails and browsing. This fault, which affected almost 1000 local homes for two days, does show how far we are from civilisation as mobile phones and especially mobile broadband simply does not work reliably in this area.

A WARNING ABOUT RURAL LIVING AND FIBRE BROADBAND

As some of you will know I have qualifications in electronics so feel able to comment on matters technical. I am also a villager and am aware that this can bring with it protracted problems such as power cuts which sometimes affect the "other half" of the village meaning that your lights keep burning while your neighbours shiver in the darkness. Our power cuts frequently exceed 10 hours or more.

As the telephone cabinet boundaries do not coincide with the electricity supplies a problem might occur if the power is cut off from your fibre broadband street cabinet while your house or business remained connected to the mains or equally if you run a generator during a power cut. For example the Openreach cabinet that provides fibre broadband to much of Hamsland, Challoners and Lewes Road gets its electricity from the Haywards Heath direction - this is opposite to where these roads get their electricity supply from. Some parts of The Green and Church Road get their electricity from the cabinet that is powered from the Uckfield direction, while Westfield House has it's own mains generators, again this is simply asking for trouble!

That is the reason for this article, to explain and warn about something that you may have not thought of. Until now as long as you had electricity, or a generator, you have been able to connect to the internet with your adsl modem. With Fibre this ain't necessarily so any more! Please let me explain further.

With adsl your modem is connected direct to the Dane Hill telephone exchange which not only has a 48 hour battery supply, it also has back up diesel generators and at least 2 weeks of fuel. This is specified by OFCOM for all rural exchanges and is enough to keep local phones (and adsl) working in almost all foreseeable circumstances.

When you switch to fibre broadband you need to communicate with the exchange via one of the new green cabinets which have inside them what to all intents and purposes is a bank of four small computers that change the copper signal from your home into a fibre data signal to go the rest of the way to the exchange. These green cabinet "computers" naturally need electricity to work. The designers did at least think of power cuts in their design but then thought of cities like London where the power seldom goes off for more than a few hours at most. So there is a 12 Volt battery at the bottom of each green cabinet which in normal circumstances can run the connections under average usage for between 4 and 6 hours, but certainly not more* - mostly dependant on cabinet temperature. And I am reminded by a correspondent that this capacity is when the batteries are brand new, just like your laptop battery they naturally deteriorate over time which is why an Openreach engineer comes out every 6 months and switches off the electricity supply to the cabinet. If it keeps working for a few minutes he moves onto the next cabinet, hardly an exhaustive test!

There IS an external port to attach a fully charged battery or more likely a portable generator if power can't be restored immediately but can you honestly expect Openreach to have dozens of generators, the manpower to deploy them as well as the petrol to keep them working if the outage is a long one? And get them all working within 6 hours? Perhaps I am pessimistic, perhaps a realist!

On top of this thieves have discovered that they can pinch the batteries - which are an expensive type - without immediately affecting service. Rather like taking the battery out of your laptop which continues running without its battery until you come to try and restart it. If the power were to go off on a cabinet with its batteries stolen the fibre connection will drop out immediately - and then stay out - until the batteries are replaced by an Openreach man in a van. A day, week or month later.

After the batteries run down you will lose ALL broadband connection, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and worse still your connection will not be restored until the cabinet has warmed up and the batteries have recharged to 80% which in cold weather can take up to 36 hours - although it's usually 12 hours or less. So this quite simply means that in a rural area a protracted power cut - or series of power cuts such as we suffered a Christmas or two back - could mean no fibre broadband service for several days. Remember around here we all share the same infrastructure, it does not matter which ISP you use.

Please note that your telephone service will stay connected just like now as this still gets all its electricity from the exchange, fibre and telephone, are entirely separate. This explains why the green cabinets that you see everywhere are arranged in pairs!

I have not seen the above warning clearly explained in many places on the internet so the only thing that I can suggest is that if you are a business or simply must stay in touch and happen to have a spare phone line you consider keeping this on adsl so that you can keep the emails and a basic internet connection working under almost all circumstances. Some people use their burglar alarm line for this purpose.

If you are on a single line then I could suggest you keep the number of a low speed dial-up internet service to hand - then at least with your laptop you would be able to send a very slow email if hard weather strikes. Unfortunately I have been checking around lately and have not been able to confirm if any companies still offer a dial up PAYG service in this country. Several advertise that they do but when contacted they either do not respond or say they no longer provide any sort of dial up support. It seems that with dial up services so thin on the ground you'd have to use 3G to maintain connection - trouble is the village has very poor 3G service! Please see here for local coverage maps.

Therefore if continuous internet connection is absolutely vital a second phone line with adsl is the only way to guarantee connectivity. This can be had for about £180 a year if paid annually plus a free or very cheap low usage adsl connection - you'd only use it in an emergency of course. Worth thinking about in your emergency plan?

p.s. When the new fibre cabinets are up and running you may see a large silver bolt or padlock on them. PLEASE get in the habit of quickly glancing to see if the cabinet is bolted shut when you drive past and if not tell BT IMMEDIATELY. This will give Openreach a chance to check them out and replace any stolen batteries before a power cut strikes. 150 is the free number to dial. Do NOT call the police on 999 or 101 as they are reported to be disinterested in the extreme and will just tell you to ring BT. Report "possible equipment criminal damage" and BT usually answer and come out immediately, even in the middle of the night, as there will be exposed mains electricity so it's a health and safety issue. If in doubt please email us and we will be happy to check it out and report if necessary.

*We have found some obscure but very interesting data about the power consumption of green cabinets provided by Openreach themselves when trying to avoid having electricity meters fitted inside each one. This boils down to the average cabinet using about 170Watts per hour. At 12Volts this equates to roughly 14Amps. The batteries are about 80Amphours and some charge is always left to prevent damage by frost. Simple Ohms law does the rest and shows that 4 - 5 hours is a best estimate before your fibre broadband goes off.

FEBRUARY 2017 VILLAGE BROADBAND SPEED INCREASE

Credit where it's due and let's face it BT don't get that much good press these days but we have noticed a marked speed improvement for those connected to Cabinet 2 (that's the one opposite the old Post Office). Villagers on the fastest tiers were getting a good speed connection of perhaps 40Meg in January but recent testing has shown that local speeds have increased by at least 10%. Our rather high end connection was at about 60Meg (see above) but now gives us an average download in the 70Meg range - that's as high as theoretically possible - so given we are 200 metres from the cabinet we are not sure if BT are testing some new equipment but the speed is repeated whichever test system we use and is a "real world" figure as downloads are markedly quicker.

So we ask other villagers to perform a speed test using the site of their choice and let us know their results. Interestingly we also notice that some local users are recording very low speed although they are on a fibre connection. We wonder if they are testing with a wireless connection, these always show much lower than a wired test.

THE "MICROSOFT PHONE SCAM" WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU MUST REMAIN CAREFUL

Many experienced computer users know about this scam, it has been going on for 4 or 5 years and we thought it was dying out but recently it has made a come back, and unfortunately there are still many who are caught out. A villager has just lost their entire computer contents and have had to renew all their bank and credit cards, so here is an article written simply for the less knowledgeable users to act as a warning.

Please note this scam is almost always performed by people from India and Pakistan. This article is not against any particular race or religion but it is they who are doing it so if the cap fits!

HOW THE SCAM WORKS

You receive a phone call. The call may sound a bit "odd" or unclear, rather like a poor quality service call. This is because the scammers are using what is known as an IP telephone line so that they can't be traced, the number on your phone display will almost certainly be fake, show as overseas or simply unobtainable. The caller WILL have a thick accent and may not have a full command of English, this should be your first warning. The jobs are often taken by people who have failed in their secondary education, again not insulting, just a fact. Believe it or not the job of working in these call centres is seen as quite attractive. The callers have absolutely no scruples about tricking people - who they see as "rich" - out of money! I asked one girl if her mother was proud of her, "Certainly" she replied, "I feed my entire family".

The scammers say they are from Microsoft in the UK or the USA and they are ringing you as a service because your computer is reporting "on the Microsoft servers" that it has many viruses or problems and Microsoft want to help you with this. n.b. This is absolute nonsense, Microsoft NEVER EVER ring you to help you like this, NEVER. And Microsoft have better things to do than monitor every computer in the world, can you imagine?!! Anyway, please read on, it's a clever scam with lots of social engineering.

The scammer uses lots of frightening words like "driver corruption", "viruses", stealing data (which is precisely what they are trying to do!) etc., and says that your computer is so badly affected that you risk losing all your data, all your banking, all you work. In other words they are out to frighten you, and you SHOULD be frightened as if the scam goes the way the scammers want that is exactly what WILL happen. They are very good at frightening and psychology especially if you are an inexperienced computer user. They like to pick on older people and women at home alone. I was in the home of a villager fixing a network problem when they happened to receive one of these calls. I tried my best to explain to the villager that it was a scam. The villager did not believe ME. So beware even if a REAL engineer is in your home these scammers have real persistence!!!

After a lot of waffle where they find out lots about you including what you do for a living (i.e. how much money you are worth and what they are likely to find on your computer) the scammer asks you to press a certain keyboard combination that almost nobody uses in normal life. ***If anyone asks you to do the following STOP and remember the website you are reading now*** They tell you to "Press the Windows key" or the "Windows flag" and at the same time press the "R" button. Again if told to do this STOP. The Windows Key in the one bottom left of your keyboard with 4 small squares on it - when did you last use that key? If you are asked to press it by anybody you don't know you can bet it will be for a scam, nobody uses this key combination these days.

Anyway after pressing the Windows key and the "R" key a box opens. It's called the "Run box". I can't tell you exactly what the scammers get you to type next in the run box but it will lead you to a web site where they give you a code number which permits them to take over your computer. It might lead you to Team Viewer or one of 20 other web sites. Almost all are genuine free services that are very useful if you know what you are doing. They enable a remote engineer (or of course in our case the scammer) to "take over" your computer and run a fake virus scan to "prove" that you have viruses. More details later if you want to try it for yourself.

All the scammers are actually doing is asking you to go on line and then go to a certain web site but doing it this surreptitious way again looks technical and confuses less experienced users. They also almost never say the web address out loud they spell it letter by letter, "w for walrus", "p for petrol", "c for cup" etc., etc. After all if they just said Open Chrome and go to "www.scamcentral.com" you might well smell a rat!

At the end of this section I am going to show you exactly what the scammers get you to do. There is no risk and you might find it interesting as I won't go far enough to do anything bad. Obviously ignore the end part is you are worried but I am in the village - not in India - so I think you can trust me!

Once you have downloaded the software that the site offers you - and you will have to ignore many warning messages to do so - the scammer can move your mouse and proceed to "show" you the viruses on your computer. Unfortunately in allowing what looks like innocuous access the scammer can also look at any file on your computer, look at your bank password, steal all your information and phone numbers etc. and eventually after taking what they want irreversibly lock up your computer so it never works again until or unless you completely reinstall the operating system. Normally 2 or 3 people from the scam centre work on your computer at the same time - you of course only know about one of them.

Incidentally on the way and to keep you busy while they raid your computer another scammer will probably try to sell you an expensive and totally unneeded anti virus programme and computer repair service. Cost? Up to £500! And people pay - if they do the scammers also raid their credit card account as well. After all you are on the phone to them so no one can ring you and they will have stopped your emails so you don't get any warnings from your bank until it's too late.

Neat, nasty and illegal! Why don't the police do something about it? Because firstly you need to know where the offence was committed and the police if some countries can be bought rather cheaply.

That in a nutshell is what the Microsoft Scam is all about. I warn you to put the phone down if you get an unsolicited call like this.

Now though I though I would show you some of the things that the scammers do - none can harm your computer as I won't take you that far, but if you are at all worried please ignore this section, or try it on an old machine perhaps.

Let's assume that the scammers have taken over your computer what they do first is type this...

CMD

You too can type cmd with no risk whatsoever - you write it into the box that the start button brings up usually where it says Search. Now you will see what looks like an old fashioned white on black box made for engineers where you can get to the nitty gritty of your computer. If you get in a panic just close the box by clicking on the red cross top right of the window - just like any other programme. This will close the frame and do no damage whatsoever.

So the first thing they do is perform a fake scan to give you something to look at, delay things and give the scammer time to type (often in flashing red) "VIRUSES FOUND" etc. You don't actually see what they have typed until the scan has finished so the scammer can be very inventive if they have time. Incidentally the time it takes to complete the scan also indicates how fast and expensive the computer is - another clue if the owner is worth a lot of money. Remember scamming is a proper business that makes the business owners quite literally hundreds of thousands of dollars each day! I have heard that some companies have 1000 employees, on 5 year contracts with health benefits!

Next try typing in the same cmd box EVENTVWR. After ten seconds or so you will get a page of information shown, be patient. On the left click Administrative Events. Frightening, isn't it! We can actually blame Microsoft for showing all these "errors", let me try and explain - I'll do my best anyway! As you may know Windows isn't one computer programme it's lots of computer programmes that only run when you need them. For example it would be silly and would tie up your processor to have the printer programme running when you are not actually printing a document. Silly to run the web cam when you don't need it, etc., etc., etc. So Windows sometimes sees the fact that a part is not running as an error. HUGE mistake in my opinion but all this was written in the days before there were any computers on the sub-continent, let alone Indian scammers out to screw money out of you.

The scammers use the fact that some parts of Windows are not running to mislead you on other scans too. Rest assured that if Windows needs a part of its programme to run then it will run it when needed!

Some computer users who know a little bit about machines may challenge the scammer to prove they are from Microsoft by simply asking for the registered number of their machine. In other words that 25 digit number that you are occasionally asked for  when updating your computer. Of course you won't have that immediately to hand so the scammers are ready for this! In the cmd window type ASSOC. A short scan will take place and there is a number displayed at the end of this. The scammer will tell you that THIS is your Windows registered number and will quote it to you.

It's usually 888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062.

The number is NOT your number and is NOT unique. In fact almost every Windows 7 and 8 computer will show the same number! Don't be fooled!

If the scammers have finished with you they have one very dirty trick to finish off their endeavours, they tie up your computer by putting a secret password onto your hard drive. They then ring off and block your phone number. This effectively means that your computer is totally unusable and the only way to get it going again is to reinstall the operating system from scratch.

 21 MARCH 2016 - ADSL (NON-FIBRE) SPEED AND CONNECTIVITY ISSUES IN THE VILLAGE

Some users of the older technology, non-fibre ADSL internet are experiencing a weird problems with their connections. At HorstedKeynes.Com we have two lines. One is fibre which is working fine but our second back up line still uses adsl. The speed on here has reduced from a normal 8Meg to just over 2Meg.

We have raised an "issue" with BT and the issue is still open, but users of other internet providers are not being allowed to raise an issue without being told that they may be charged if no fault is found. Given that the fault seems to be intermittent and is usually worse in the evenings it seems this might be a problem!

Others are finding that their connections drop out with monotonous regularity.

If YOU are experiencing problems please contact your ISP. Even if they don't escalate the issue the problem will at least be logged.

ALL users can also perform a speed test using the http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ website. If you then perform a second level test the results are automatically listed on the BT Openreach servers. Costs nothing and helps your neighbours! p.s. If your speed is really slow the BT Speedtester may go to level three which requires that you alter settings in your router before it starts. If you are not 100% confident we would advise against doing this as you may end up with no connection at all. It's obviously fine to do this if your ISP are talking you through the procedure on the phone.

If YOU are experiencing any sort of speed issue whether adsl or fibre please do get in touch with us. If we begin to see a pattern then we can warn and advise other villagers who might be able to use the information to get their ISP to contact Openreach. As we have said before working together we can help each other stay in touch at the best speeds available in our area.

This article in course of completion

JANUARY 2016 - THREE MONTHS IN, HOW IS YOUR FIBRE SPEED DOING?

We have had reports - and indeed we had begun to notice ourselves - that local fibre broadband speeds seem to be dropping.

It's easy to forget your fibre modem, it sits there day after day for the most part just working - unless the village gets a power cut that is! Best recommendation is to reboot your modem every few weeks as this makes the BT green box reset and renegotiate your connection status. Once a month is ok, once a fortnight is better.

In our case we had not realised it but our download speed had dropped from over 70Meg when first installed after the bugs were ironed out, to just 20Meg; interestingly our upload speed stayed the same. The fact that it took us so long to notice did make us wonder whether we needed to have paid so much for the premium speed product when we first ordered, but hey ho!

After we rebooted we noticed that we were only downloading at about 50Meg and this decrease does seem to be quite common as the local fibres are getting rather congested. So we do suggest that you check your speed and then give your fibre modem - that is the last link in the chain, the box that connects to the BT master socket - at least 30 minutes rest by unplugging the mains. Leave all other connections alone.

After this do another speed test and please let us know if this has helped.

OCTOBER 15th - SOME Openreach ENGINEERS ARE GOOD GUYS

After hearing from correspondents who only complain about their fibre installations can we offer a quick thank you to the engineer who spent the better part of two hours sorting out the problems that we have had since our fibre was installed here at horstedkeynes.com. We now download at over 70Meg and more importantly for both you and us upload at 18Meg after our fibre modem was replaced and our line rebalanced.

The problem started off as a classic confrontation between our ISP who blamed the telephone line and Openreach who blamed our ISP for throttling our connection!

Well it took someone who was prepared to take their time and eliminate everything else to discover that our Openreach modem "which never go wrong" had in fact got an intermittent fault!

Our grateful thanks to the engineer concerned, he arrived on time and took his time. It's a pity that the modems are not available to purchase as we believe in having a spare of everything important "in stock".

Just one thing, it does seem to us that the BT/Openreach system which allocates the next engineer to a job wherever they happen to be at the time must waste an awful lot of time in driving and fuel. Our engineer today came from their last job near Maidstone, but others have come from as far as east Kent and Shoreham-by-sea. This does seem an odd system but perhaps it makes sense to the "money men".

TUESDAY 6th - FIBRE INSTALLATIONS PROGRESSING RAPIDLY BUT STILL A FEW CANCELLED WITHOUT WARNING!

May we thank the villagers who have reported their fibre installation experiences - both good and bad - to us. Seems that we are getting the speeds that were promised but it's worth remembering that we all share just a few fibres so speed reductions at busy times are to be expected. Your contract should state an expected normal minimum speed - often 35Meg on an 80Meg connection. If you regularly don't get it - complain! There are things that can be done if enough people moan such as blowing a couple of extra fibres into the cabinet.

We were very surprised to learn that some villagers who have paid for the expensive fastest connection have not received their promised engineer visit and have been told to continue using their existing plug in filters. We think this is to be deplored and is asking for problems in the long run. You may well have to pay if the problem is seen as being at "your" end in say a years time! If you are contacted by an Openreach engineer and he or she tells you that you don't need a new face plate may we suggest that you politely disagree with them. Frankly they are just being lazy.

We mentioned a week or so ago that BT/Openreach were not honouring some fibre order dates. It would be a good idea for all villagers with an outstanding order to check that it is still open. This is for ALL orders remember, whichever supplier it's with as BT/Openreach are the final link in the chain and it is they who will perform the final setup and physically swap your phone line over to digital fibre. If you are using one of the more expensive suppliers the Openreach engineer will also bring you your fibre modem.

Even your router arriving is no guarantee of the date being honoured. One of our orders was cancelled a week ago, then to another villager on Monday and now one more today! We have not yet heard of anyone being left without an internet or phone connection but it has happened elsewhere when things go wrong.

Herewith one tale of woe from a villager on Cabinet 1 - this is the cabinet on the corner of Dane Hill Lane...

It would be really helpful to other villagers if you let us know if your order goes through on time and also, if you are able, a note of your new up and down connection speed. Here are a few that we have received.

If either speedtester says we have removed a backlink we have NOT!

One or other of the above speed testers above should work and have been set up like this so that you can test your local broadband speed as accurately as possible. You can also use the official BTWholesale tester (whichever ISP you use) but this is a little more complicated.

www.speedtest.btwholesale.com 

The old Horsted Keynes exchange looked just like this. It was located in the corner of the field behind the old Police House. The foundations still exist. Do you have a photo of the Horsted Keynes building?

OUR OLD TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

With all this talk of high speed fibre it's easy to forget the past and many villagers do not know that Horsted Keynes used to have its very own small telephone exchange!

Located in the field behind the old Police House this RAX Rural Automatic Exchange had facilities for 40 subscribers. It held batteries and racks of equipment and was used for nearly 30 years when automation first came to the area. An engineer used to bicycle over once a week to check the specific gravity of the batteries. In those days you could only dial local calls; in fact as far as Glyndebourne, but not to Eastbourne and Saltdean but not Brighton. You could dial Tunbridge Wells numbers though. Telephone areas always were a mystery! Any further and you dialled O for the operator which cost more - unless you knew the secret codes which connected but the call was sometimes quiet. A form of phone hacking in 1936!

A very kind correspondent sent me this picture of an identical exchange building, just before it fell down - they were all of a similar design. If he would kindly remind me of his name I would be delighted to give him a credit here.

SEPTEMBER 23rd - HISTORY IS MADE - BOTH HORSTED KEYNES CABINETS COMMISSIONED
FIBRE GENERALLY AVAILABLE BUT SOME HOMES DENIED UPGRADE
EXTRA CAPACITY AND MORE FIBRE ALREADY ORDERED.

The broadband checker now shows both village cabinets as "accepting orders" and villagers are clammering to get hold of the maximum 288 lines available on the new green cabinet opposite the old Post Office. Each green cabinet will really connect to 276 subscribers, 12 lines are reserved but can be released in an emergency. The other cabinet on the corner of Dane Hill Lane covers a much smaller area and will never be over subscribed. Orders with BT are now extending to the middle of October, but those with the smaller and more expensive ISPs seem to be going through rather sooner than this, perhaps they have some reserved appointments? We have received reports of some orders stalling. No doubt it will all work out eventually.

UPDATE 27th SEPTEMBER Very surprisingly demand seems to have slowed down if the availability of installation appointments are to be believed. Earlier there were no appointments available until the third week in October, now October 11th seems to be free! This may be due to the extra in cabinet equipment or Openreach allocating some more engineers. Either way expect to see Openreach vans buzzing about all over the village for the next few weeks!

If you get an appointment it's worth keeping an eye on it as at least one subscriber had theirs cancelled without being told about it.

PLEASE also do heed our warnings about using plug in filters with fibre. If your speed is not what you expected after it's installed get in touch with us and we may well be able to help.

The green cabinet opposite the old Post Office has two boards already fitted giving immediate fibre access for 144 subscribers and with a small upgrade (already actioned) there is room for an absolute maximum of 288 lines. The last dozen lines are usually reserved for special cases such as doctors, Post Offices, important businesses and that sort of thing.

We would suggest that villagers wanting fibre don't wait too long before putting in their orders as it does seem that this central cabinet - which incidentally serves all the way to the Bluebell Railway station - is going to be very well subscribed indeed! An extra fibre or probably fibres has already been ordered and should be blown into the existing trunking soon. This can be used for the second half of the cabinet and just possibly for Fibre To The Premises although we think this unlikely in the short term.

We would greatly appreciate hearing the experiences of people who are located well outside the village and who want to upgrade as we know of subscribers who are not being allowed to order because they are "too far away" when in our humble opinion they are not. Take for example a property that is actually passed by the fibre on Dane Hill Lane, this received a flat NO when it tried to upgrade! Dane Hill Lane is little over a mile long with a green cabinet at each end, and fibre is supposed to travel at least two miles - most odd!

With help we might be able to construct a map to give those who live outside the village an idea of whether they can upgrade or not.

We did get one thing wrong and that was where we said that fibre to the premises (FTTP) would be available from the start. It seems that this is not to be as fibre to the premises requires a second dedicated fibre when demand is high and Openreach planners will not be able to allocate their only spare until they know how popular the two village cabinets will be. We understand that after a very busy start orders on Cabinet 1 have dropped right back, possibly due to people at that end of the village finding that their adsl now connects at far more reasonable speeds after recent exchange improvements and the new fibre backhaul from Dane Hill exchange to the outside world. Some are seeing 12Meg down and 2Meg up on their existing BT adsl - all for no extra money, while the usual "lucky few" are seeing 16Meg down using adsl in Dane Hill itself. For many people this is completely adequate so they are not bothering to upgrade. The further you get from the exchange the less this improvement affect properties which puts more of a strain on the central cabinet.

Subscribers in Fletching are being allowed to order Fibre To The Premises, in one case we have been told that 14 new telephone poles are being erected (or updated) just to serve one property with fibre. Some ISPs will supply FTTP for a nominal installation cost while others charge thousands of pounds. Certainly a case of shopping around especially when you think that you can change provider as soon as your minimum contract period expires and the fibre stays where it is as it's owned by Openreach. (Hint ;-)

SEPTEMBER 18th 2015
OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!
"Cabinet 2 has now been passed to Openreach’s commissioning team"

We are overjoyed to officially announce that Cabinet 2 has had its connection problems rectified and is in the process of being commissioned. According to Openreach this can take up to 2 weeks, so let's keep an eye on the availability checker. Cabinet 1 actually went through in just 6 days!

It's been a long haul but let's all hope that at last the bulk of Horsted Keynes village can have full speed two way access to the internet very soon.

Here is the email received from West Sussex Better Connected

"I can confirm that the engineering works to enable Danehill cabinet 2 are now complete.  The cabinet has now been passed to Openreach’s commissioning team.  All being well, the cabinet will then be released to internet service providers within two weeks.  Please advise your readers to use the postcode checker on our website."

You webmaster can't get the above link to go to an active Postcode checker when using Chrome. If using Internet Explorer then it is necessary to accept cookies and then click on the resulting map.

SEPTEMBER 17th CABINET 2 FIBRE UPDATE

The contractors were far less forthcoming than they have been in the past, but I can confirm that just over 1km of fibre was completely replaced today. Using the official Openreach price list this replacement will have cost just over £4000. As well as this the route has been slightly revised meaning that one or two fewer joints will be required. Cabinet 2 is now 2,900 route metres from the exchange with just 2 joints in the fibre - rather good actually.

I can't confirm with certainty but believe that Cabinet 2 can "now see the light" all the way to and from Dane Hill exchange! If this is so then can activation be that far away?

To satisfy those who just don't believe there is already a bundle of four optical fibres under their feet, and 12 fibres at the top of the village, I have uploaded a short video that I took of the fibre re-blowing operation from earlier today. I hope you find it interesting despite it having been taken with a simple stills camera.

SEPTEMBER 15th - CABINET 2 TURNS INTO A JOKER!
DAMAGED FIBRE REQUIRE COMPLETE "REBLOW"!

Whilst the contractors who actually put the fibre into Cabinet 2 were factually correct - there WAS a physical fibre connection to the cabinet - they failed to mention one important fact - that no light was getting through from the exchange! This explains my exclusive update below when I revealed that a BT engineer visit would be required before commissioning could begin. So with that information to hand all my notes about immanent activation go right out of the door!

You can therefore perhaps imagine my surprise when on Tuesday morning I found two BT (yes real proper senior BT fibre engineers) in Danehill Lane trying to find a faulty fibre connection. Their equipment told them the fault was located 800 metres from the Cabinet 2 and common sense told them this was a good place to look! The trouble was they had been working to the old plans which showed the fibre going direct from Cabinet 2 towards Cabinet 1 and then on to Dane Hill but as older readers of the website will know BT decided in their wisdom to reroute the fibre via a  circuitous route which I have been asked to not reveal in detail - hence a few edits further down the page.

It was in fact doubly fortunate that I was about as the engineers, good as they were, had no idea where the fibre actually ran underground! You can't use a beeper metal detector to detect optical fibre of course. A quick trip in my car to trace out the route that I had watched going in and they soon found where some of the several problems lay. At least BT engineers seem to want to get the job done properly - 'nuf said!

UPDATE - It now seems the fibre is physically damaged underground and will require total replacement. Fortunately I am told that BT really want this job completed quickly so the contractors have been booked to return and do the job properly tomorrow (Wednesday, 16th September). Rest assured your scribe will be out to check. ;-) This means that providing the outer tube isn't damaged, a further weeks delay can be expected before activation of Cabinet 2, Horsted Keynes. If the outer tube needed replacement as well then that extra delay would be even longer. :-(

Is there a BT Company Director living in the village? ;-) As I mentioned some way down the page this job does seem to have been getting priority all the way through - not that I am complaining of course - just wondered why? p.s. Perhaps the priority is now running a bit thin!

SEPTEMBER 11th - ALL VILLAGE CABINETS TO BE PHYSICALLY CONNECTED TODAY - ACTIVATION EXPECTED NEXT WEEK - PERHAPS!

We have received a firm assurance - from the contractor actually doing the job - that all cabinets in the Horsted Keynes village area will be connected to fibre today. The last fibre connection to Cabinet 2 (opposite the old Post Office) went through this morning and the final joints were hopefully being made before noon.

After this automatic software should take over and a test sequence initiated. If this is passed - it usually is - then we can expect to see the web site offering "Accepting Orders" later next week. It's really quite amazing how automated the system is!

UPDATE We have just learned that Cabinet 2 will require an engineer visit before testing can begin. Looks like a further week to wait for the "unlucky" corner of the village!

So far the few people who have been connected in Horsted Keynes village are reporting above standard speeds which is only to be expected as they will not be sharing their service with many others. Once the entire village is connected speeds can be expected to revert to advertised.

SEPTEMBER 10th - CABINET 2 PUT BACK TO "UNDER REVIEW" BUT THE FIBRE GETS RECONNECTED!

I must say (this is your webmaster writing) that BT / Openreach never ceases to amaze me as when I checked their site this morning I was confronted with something that made my shiver - Cabinet 2 has been put back! Let me explain..

I was really disheartened when I looked at the Openreach web site today as I had been expecting to see that it was Taking Orders and I could confirm my long outstanding FTTC order but the weekly update actually showed that the activation had been put back and now read "Under Review" which can lead to delays of several quarters up to a full year. Imagine my amazement then when I passed the cabinet and found an engineer actually connecting the real actual fibre to the cabinet! You can see a picture of the very fibre that we will use at the top of this page - it's the actual offcut from the cabinet!

Apparently they had to reroute the fibre which partially explains the delays to activation. The fibre that was already installed did not meet specifications so had to be reblown via a different route. I stood and watched as the final piece of fibre was blown the almost 1 km towards Cabinet 1 in Birchgrove Road. This took nearly one hour! I am not sure if the fibre will stop and be joined on there or will continue down the existing route to Dane Hill exchange. Given the high take up in that part of the village I would guess that the latter will take place. The original route for the cable was the far more direct one along the Green but this was found to be blocked, hence the long diversion and the delay. The upside is that villagers in the Wyats Lane area could now order a faster service - at a price, unless BT/Openreach decide to install a new cabinet around there which is entirely possible given our population density!

I am in the process of uploading - slowly of course thanks to our adsl connection - some pictures of the fibre blowing operation which is indeed both quick and easy, the contractor just sits in his van drinking coffee while the installation takes care of itself! It's probably not that easy, and I am no doubt doing hard working contractors a disservice, but when you think how they used to put in telephone cables in the past with gangs of workmen sweating away, life these days does seem rather easier.

If anyone has firm news of activation please do get in touch, as it's pretty galling to have near neighbours able to connect at 60Meg when all we can get is 3Meg. Still things do seem to be going in the right direction!

"Blowing the fibre into Cabinet 2"

The Openreach contractors - who incidentally also work for Virgin - were hard at work on 10th September 2015 installing the actual fibre into the ready installed pipes to provide a connection for Horsted Keynes Cabinet 2 today. Here are a few pictures to explain the process.

The fibre is in a huge drum inside the van. The fibre can run for up to several km without needing a booster amplifier. Please keep an eye on your cabinet - if it's open tell BT immediately!

The fibre snakes inside a protective tube from the van and into the cabinet. Then straight into the tube that goes underground and along to the next manhole.

Inside the cabinet itself the fibre can be seen entering the pre installed tube bottom left. Look closely and you can see there is room for up to 4 fibre pairs. Each will later be connected to the left hand side of the cabinet where the fibre to copper adapters sit.

This machine provides a very high 200psi blast of air which pushes the fibre down the pipe. I'm told the engineers once tried to use one to inflate a flat tyre which immediately exploded, so it's pretty powerful! The fibre has a rough outer surface to catch the air.

Inside the van: Air enters via the blue pipe on the left, fibre goes in at the side, both come out the tube on the right hand side of the combining machine! Neat! I watched very this machine push the fibre well over 1 km along a pipe.

The fibre itself with a rough surface so that it can be blown along. Containing 4 optical strands each able to carry several dozen internet connections up to several km depending on route and the number of joints. There's .3dBloss per joint and .6dB each end.

SEPTEMBER 7th - FINAL CABINET TO BE ACTIVATED THIS WEEK?

With thanks to Freddie Butler we understand from West Sussex Better Connected that the delay in activating the cabinet opposite the old Post Office (that's "Cabinet 2") was caused by a cable run becoming blocked which we further understand is in the process of being repaired over the next 24 hours.

This being so the cabinet can be expected to enter the "commissioning phase" later this week.

Please remember this information is passed on in good faith and we don't guarantee that it will happen as above, but wouldn't it be great if it did! ;-) Please also remember that the two web sites that we commonly use to check fibre availability can take some time to update and reflect the current status.

http://www.superfast-Openreach.co.uk/
http://dslchecker.bt.com/

If you see Openreach at work an email to us would be greatly appreciated. More firm news as soon as we get it.

AUGUST 28th - FIBRE NOW AVAILABLE IN TOP PART OF THE VILLAGE!

If you get your phone signal from the cabinet at the top of the village then you NOW can place your order for fibre. Activation is expected to be in 3 weeks time - the third week of September 2015. Those of us in the main part of the village will have to wait until our cabinet is activated when we will be at the end of the queue behind you lucky lot!

We have been told that some of the cheaper ISPs will not take orders until later next week, until then it's BT or nothing but as activation is a few weeks away this may not make much difference.

We would like to thank the village residents who told us of the latest update and would be MOST GRATEFUL to hear of actual speeds achieved once you get your service installed and working. Please let us know which speed you ordered - either 40/10 or 80/20 - and particularly whether you had an engineer installation or are still using filters on each phone socket.
 

AUGUST 24th - NOW THE FIBRE "PIPE" IS GOING IN!

It's all go on the Horsted Keynes fibre front as on a wet and miserable August Monday, and just a couple of days after our exchange was flagged as being "enabled for broadband", engineers started to install the "pipe", the final job before the actual fibre is blown in, and our village is dragged into the fast digital age!

Our exclusive photo shows an engineer feeding the pipe towards an access shaft located further down Lewes Road. It seems the plan is to encircle the village with fibre so if you are rich enough, or your company will foot the bill, Fibre to the Premises may be a real possibility in some parts! Unfortunately the fibre itself does not seem to be going down the hill towards the church which means residents living here would have to pay for a dedicated feed from the centre of the village (at £6 a metre) for Fibre to the Premises or put up with "standard" fibre speeds of 36/10 or 72/20 Meg. It's all a bit better than the present 5Meg anyway!

Fibre to the Premises is a bit unfair in some ways as the first person to order it will often have to pay for the fibre to be installed all the way to their house (doh!) but the next people to order can "hijack" that fibre and share it for themselves making their installation much cheaper. A way round this is to sell the advantages to your neighbours and share the initial costs. Having said that some ISPs will subsidise the extra fibre costs - it really pays to shop around if you want a truly fast internet connection.

More news as we get it but an educated informer suggests that no fibre will go in until all the pipes are laid. So it's still looking to be the end of September for the cabinet in the centre of the village to be activated (plus another two or three weeks for the actual installation) which is what some of us were told 3 years ago!

The OLD map - most people in the village could connect quite easily.
 

The November 2009 map shows much better coverage, but it's totally wrong.

The updated Three coverage map from May 2010.
One day it will be accurate!

July 2010 and the signal "improves" on paper. But is it rubbish on the ground?