New fibre cabinet

Is it possible for more than one existing green cabinet to be connected to a new fibre cab?

There are around 5 green cabinets near me, however so far BT have only installed 2 new fibre cabinets, and they appear to have now moved on to install them in another area. All the houses near me should be able to get FTTC according to the checker so I'm wondering if one fibre cabinet can have several existing green cabs connected to it?

Also is there anyone on here who works for BT or an ISP that is able to tell me which green cab I am connected to? I would like to get some idea of my line length to the cab before I risk moving from a 10meg O2 connection to FTTC.

I believe there is no technical reason why more than one green cab shouldn't be attached to a single fibre cab, as all that is needed is copper from the green one to the fibre one, where the user line picks up the VDSL2 from the DSLAM.

As a single fibre cab has a maximum of 288 connections though there would need to be unusually low sales expectations per green cab.

They don't always upgrade all the cabs. Near me, it seems rather sporadic and many cabs come up as "unplanned" even when they're between two planned cabs. It seems they probably tune it based on the expected demand for your cabinet and perhaps there are fewer properties on your cabinet which is why they haven't upgraded it? Does your line show it will be upgraded in the BT wholesale availability checker (using your line number and NOT your postcode)?

In some areas they also seem to be skipping cabs close to phone exchanges (makes sense as people really close to an exchange will have less incentive to upgrade).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I believe there is no technical reason why more than one green cab shouldn't be attached to a single fibre cab

Wouldn't be rather impractical though? Green cabinets are usually hundreds of meters apart and the VDSL cab needs to be within a few meters of the cabinet it feeds (that's an excuse BT keep using as to why certain cabs are not getting upgraded - "no suitable location within 10 meters"). I can't see two green cabs being only 20 meters apart. I would guess that if a cabinet doesn't appear to have a VDSL cab near it, that it hasn't actually been upgraded yet.

I believe the maximum tie cable (cable between the new FTTC cabinet and the Old passive PCP cabinet) is 100 meters. So multiple cabinets can be linked if they are within that 100 meter limit from the new FTTC cabinet. I.E. cabinets either side of the road could be linked to one new FTTC cabinet.

That would actually allow for there to be 200 meters between two old cabinets if the new FTTC cabinet could be placed slap bang in the middle.

Edited by 5km (Tue 30-Nov-10 20:35:24)

Is it possible for more than one existing green cabinet to be connected to a new fibre cab?

Not seen that happen round this way, and wasn't briefed out like that either.

In reply to a post by nmg196:

Does your line show it will be upgraded in the BT wholesale availability checker (using your line number and NOT your postcode)?

Yes, if I put my phone number in then it says FTTC is available Dec 2010.

There are 3 green cabs quite close to one another. The one in the middle has a new fibre cab however the other two which are within around 100m by road don't have a new cab. There are 2 more that are within 100m but only one has a fibre cab. If you check addresses nearby there don't appear to be any gaps in which properties will be able to get FTTC, which led me to think maybe multiple green cabs have been connected to one new fibre cab. Seems this might be possible from the replies here.

I'd still be interested if anyone can help me identify which cab I am connected to. I'd be happy moving to FTTC if I knew I was within 500m and would likely get the full 40mb sync. Bt estimate is 29/7 for me, I'm not sure if this is still quite conservative or is more accurate since they updated the checker.

I've got the same thing in my area... they've upgraded about 4 out of 6 cabs but haven't done my nearest cabinet yet. I can only assume (and hope!) that they're going to come back and do it before it supposedly goes live by the end of December.

I think wiring two cabinets to the same VDSL cabinet is very unlikely unless the cabinets in your area are unusually close together (within 100 meters of each other). Is that the case? Some websites cite 10 or 15 meters as the max distance, but one site says 50m (between the old and new cabinet).

I think it's most likely they'll come back when it stops snowing and fit a new cabinet in your area - keep us posted in this thread

In reply to a post by nmg196:

I think wiring two cabinets to the same VDSL cabinet is very unlikely unless the cabinets in your area are unusually close together (within 100 meters of each other). Is that the case?

There are quite a few cabinets within 100m of each other near my house. You could be correct that they will come back and do them all, but they've started doing them closer to the exchange now so it just seems strange that they didn't do them all at the same time.

I will update this thread if other cabs appear, or if I manage to find out from an engineer if multiple cabs are connected to one fibre cab.

They will come back and do it...

Same thing happened with mine, nothing happened for 2 weeks then all of a sudden there were those big cabinets everywhere...