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 deleted (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...

In reply to a post by Yerman164:

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.

Me too.... I'll be disappointed if I don't see big fugly cabinet appear on my road very soon! Which provider are you moving to?

In reply to a post by nmg196:

Me too.... I'll be disappointed if I don't see big fugly cabinet appear on my road very soon! Which provider are you moving to?

I think it's going to have to be BT Infinity for me. I'm not massively keen on moving from O2 to BT, but the other providers currently offering FTTC are more expensive for a lot less usage. Don't think you can beat free installation, £25 for 300GB. I don't do much P2P so any throttling shouldn't affect me.

I'd like Sky or O2 FTTC but I don't see it happening for 6-12 months, so may as well get BT Infinity then change after 18 months. Who are you thinking about moving to?

Still no life on my cab yet, there is 100% no chance this will be ready for 31 dec.

In reply to a post by Yerman164:

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.

Plug your postcode into the map on this page and then click on the green cab picture allocated to your postcode and the little balloon will tell you which PCP you are connected to..

It's not always accurate though.
It appears to map to the nearest cabinet, which is not necessarily the cabinet you are actually served from.

AFAIK, the data comes from BT, so if there are errors then it's BT's..

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

Still no life on my cab yet, there is 100% no chance this will be ready for 31 dec.

I'm thinking the same for me too, no action near mine either

Using just the post code will always be inherently error prone.

A post code could be a single building or a large area covering several streets.
When mapping by post code only, the centre of the area covered by the post code is generally used as the reference point and without details of the specific line - and hence the routing of the line - there is bound to be an element of guesswork and assumptions.

If different parts of a post code area are served by two different cabs, how is it decided which one is correct?
Mapping software will (generally) make the assumption that the cab nearest to the reference point used is correct, but this is not always true.

"There are quite a few cabinets within 100m of each other near my house."

You sure those are BT cabinets ...... Lots of green cabinets near me, but only 1 is BT.

Ah yes, I see what you mean..

i have to add that when i look at the area i work in on that site it makes no sense.

mentions newton mearns exchange on a pcp fed from maryhill so i would take the info on that site with a hug pinch of salt

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

"There are quite a few cabinets within 100m of each other near my house."

You sure those are BT cabinets ...... Lots of green cabinets near me, but only 1 is BT.

It does sound like the Nynex >> NTL >> Virgin ones near here. That's about the distance between them.

To the OP - if there is a long cabinet number on it then this is the case. BT ones seem to be double-digit at the most round here, though I expect there are many 3-digit elsewhere.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It does sound like the Nynex >> NTL >> Virgin ones near here. That's about the distance between them.

To the OP - if there is a long cabinet number on it then this is the case. BT ones seem to be double-digit at the most round here, though I expect there are many 3-digit elsewhere.

I'm fairly sure they are all BT cabs. There's no cable services in my area, so can't be Virgin. They have short numbers on them and look like this:

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5127/cab0.jpg

I didn't realise it was unusual to have cabs so close to each other.

Looks like BT to me.

Hi Yerman
Just an update... A BT Openreach engineer came round to sort out a fault this morning and while he was round, I asked him about why my cabinet appeared to have been 'missed out'. He told me that it hasn't been missed out - and he had personally overseen the upgrade to FTTC a couple of weeks earlier. It turns out that the cabinet I thought was mine, is not even a BT cab, despite being identical to the other BT cabs in the area. He thinks the one nearer to me might be a utility monitoring station or control point. Odd as it looks exactly the same to me:

http://tinyurl.com/2uorwf9

So anyhow, it turns out my cabinet is a little further away. The good news is that it's visibly been upgraded and has it's big brother cab installed next to it. I'll probably be going with BT Infinity (Option 2) as well - others are just too expensive and my current ISP doesn't offer it.

Any news on yours?

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Dec-10 13:18:26)

Did anyone ever find out if they link multiple cabinets together?

According to the checker using our phone number we're due to to get fttc at the end of March.

After speaking to an engineer I believe our cab is about 200 yards away and hasn't been upgraded yet however there is another cab that is also about 200 yards away from us and about 100 yards away from our cab that was upgraded in December.

They might have had to delay our cabinet upgrade due to the snow as the original go live date for us was supposed to be the end of Dec.

Edited by StuB (Tue 01-Feb-11 17:13:50)

In case anyone is interested, that looks like a typical cable company cabinet. Definately not a BT/Openreach cabinet.
This is a BT/Openreach cabinet

Edited by deleted (Tue 01-Feb-11 17:47:04)

Fairly sure that multiple cabinets are not linked. Think 100 metres is likely to be too far for the copper cabinet=>FTTC cabinet link cable, as it would significantly add to the overall loss/attunuation .

Edited by deleted (Tue 01-Feb-11 17:42:10)

Thanks for the reply, hopefully they'll be back to upgrade our cabinet at some point soon.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

In case anyone is interested, that looks like a typical cable company cabinet. Definately not a BT/Openreach cabinet.

Why is it "definitely not" a BT cabinet? It looks identical to other known BT cabinets in my area. Even down to the same protruding handle.

Because it definately dose not look like any BT/Openreach cabinet . There are no markings visible which would indicate it is an Openreach cabinet, and I would take a guess that the footway box next to it says something like CATV on it.
Here is another Openreach cabinet near you

Edited by deleted (Tue 01-Feb-11 20:33:56)

I've looked again and the concrete slab in front of the cabinet says CATV on it rather than BT as shown on most other nearby concrete covers.

What else could it be then if it's not a BT cabinet? My area is NOT a Virgin Media area (or any other operator). We only have BT here, and nobody seems anything other than the original grey BT cable conduit on the front of their house (estate is 12 years old).

CATV basically indicates its Cable TV . If threre is not any cable service in the area then it suggests that although the cabinets were installed , and possibly the underground duct work, the area may not have been physically cabled. This did happen in some areas when the money ran out.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

CATV basically indicates its Cable TV . If threre is not any cable service in the area then it suggests that although the cabinets were installed , and possibly the underground duct work, the area may not have been physically cabled. This did happen in some areas when the money ran out.

This is exactly what happened on our estate when it was being built. NTL as it was known then pulled out because of lack of funds. We have the underground ducting in the street and to the house but no cabling.
The newer part of the estate was abandoned totally without any ducting.

Same here - CATV ducting everywhere. Estate built 1996. Though have not seen any cable cabinets, and there is no VM service

A neighbouring estate had the ex-Videotron service, but I had a suspicion they've now totally withdrawn service and not upgraded

In late 2010 VM were surveying - I got in touch with their build team and they did say they were considering whether to redeploy and/or extend the coverage but hadn't made a decision

There is some partial Infinity coverage (I have it now).

BT engineer also told me the estate is all ducted for BT cabling - right up to property too which makes cable replacements/fibre etc all very viable should that ever be an option on the table.

Shame haven't got FTTP now..

Still can't grumble at about 34/8