The optical fiber come to 12.3 million real estate units of Spain, of the 16.1 that there are with an Internet connection in our country. In large urban centers, coverage is almost complete, and by 2025, all ADSL access points will have disappeared. However, even if you have cfiber opening, you may not be able to hire her. Why?
When an operator offers fiber optics in our building or home, it does so through an access point called CTO, or optical terminal box. That CTO is placed in the facades, poles or in the buildings telecommunications roomsand it is the last part of the path that fiber optics follows until it reaches our home.
CTO full = possibility of portability rejected
These CTOs are of different sizes, with the smallest being placed in buildings with few floors or streets with few houses. However, in buildings with dozens of homes, the largest of each operator are usually installed. Normally they usually put those that have 16 ports each. The problem is that, even if the largest ones are put in, they may fill up.
This is happening more and more frequently in Spain, where the percentage of discharges that are rejected for this reason. Someone who has just arrived at a home decides to contract a fiber tariff when they see that there are coverage in your building. However, when the technicians arrive, they realize that the CTO has all ports fulland they cannot add a new one.
From here, several things can happen. Normally, if there are several operators in the same building with fiber coverage (with a CTO from Orange and another from Movistar, for example), it is very likely that in both cases there are unused cables connected. This happens because, if we already have the installation made of two operators, when we we change operator (from Orange to Movistar, for example), the cable that goes from the CTO to our fiber outlet at home remains connected if no installer comes to remove it, since, for example, the Movistar router is self-installable.
The problem is that some installers decide disconnect directly a random wire of the CTO to service the new customer. Statistically, this will cause some neighbor to go offline, creating a cascade of problems.
Solution: inform the operator to install a CTO
The correct solution in these cases is inform the operator that the CTO is full. This must be done by the technicians themselves so that the operator can install a second unit in the building, and thus not have to disconnect the rest of the neighbors. The problem is that, to save costs, there may be operators who decide not to add that CTO, forcing the user to contract the fiber with another operator that you have space in your CTO.
Telefónica is only obliged to add a new CTO if an ADSL center that is providing service to that area is closed, or if they have to guarantee access to an operator with indirect access, such as Vodafone. The operator explained to the CNMC that does not plan the anticipated expansion of CTOs, and it only intervenes when a network fault is detected. If it is not profitable to provide more fiber, the solution they offer is to provide coverage through 4G at home. In the case of Orangethe operator expands as soon as it detects that they have busy 12 of the 16 ports to avoid problems.
In the event that we find ourselves in this situation, it may be that a measure that forces Movistar to install a new CTO is to contract fiber with an indirect operator. If there is no space available, the operator will be obliged to expand the CTO existing or install a new one. Normally they install less capacity thinking that competition is going to arrive, or because many users have enough to use mobile data rates. However, given that less and less fiber is deployed due to the fact that almost the entire country is wired, the operator usually has no problem installing a new CTO if the one that corresponds to us is saturated. However, he may discharge takes a few days more until they install it.