Is there a maximum distance for premises to cabinet?

My area is one of the selected ones for FTTC and in recent days I've seen BT installing fibre in the ducts leading up to and going away from two new cabinets in the main road that runs parallel to the one in which I live. But there seemed to be no sign that the technicians were going to install any fibre into MY road anytime soon.

Today, it dawned on me why, as tracing the pavement ducts in my road has shown that there are no existing BT cabinets in the road at all. There are only CATV cabinets. So, I guess my copper connection, and those of all my fellow residents in this immediate precinct, must pass uninterrupted under the entire length of my main road. Goodness knows to which cabinet(s) they eventually connect, though. I can only guess. Possibly, it's one of the two aforementioned new ones in the neighbouring road, though knowing that these new cabinets supply up to about 280 residences, I'd have thought there were well over that number of houses in this precinct.

Anyway, assuming that one of those two new cabinets does serve me, I did some rough distance calculations from my A-Z streetmap. The nearest of those two cabinets is around 900m away. The other is 1.2m away. Are these distances likely to be too great to serve as copper legs of an FTTC connection? Otherwise, perhaps completely new double cabinets will need to be installed in my main road. Is there any way of me finding out whether I'd be on one of those two new cabinets, without actually signing up for FTTC right now? The BT estimator tells me I'll get about 27M bps down, 7M bps up.

If they've quoted you 27 down then you will get more than that. Stop worrying.

In reply to a post by meditator:

Today, it dawned on me why, as tracing the pavement ducts in my road has shown that there are no existing BT cabinets in the road at all.

Not unusual at all. In my case the cabinet is halfway down the neighbouring road. Literally 50% of the distance to the exchange. (I live on a side road that turns into road A, and at the very end of road A is the exchange).

My line is currently 1200m (1.2km) approx - with a 24db attenuation (ADSL2+/Thomson).

The cabinet that my line passes through is about 600m away from my home.

The BT guesstimator suggests I could get 30.7mbps download, with 5.9Mbps upload; but the FTTC cabinet has not yet been installed, and the date is June. Meanwhile VM sells 100Mbps here, available in all parts of the town.

But I'm with BE and very happy with their service at 15 Mbps throughput (1.0 Mbps upload) but would like more line reliability.

Be wary, the cable routing may not be the "obvious" one.

The cabinet for my estate is literally across the road from my front door; and the BT Terminating Box is just inside my front door.

Geographically, my house is the second nearest to the box, the house opposite being nearest, with the cabinet by its garden fence.

The estate was all pre-wired, underground in 1967.

My phone line runs eastwards to the far end of the seventh house on my side, where it comes to the surface in a small, cast aluminium box, about one foot high, three inches by three inches cross-section with an "arched" top.

The elctricity board of the period used similar units, a very obvious one is outside a pub on the High Street.

The cable then apparently crosses under the road and back to the cabinet.

So to a total length of about 125 yards, to cover 25 yards.

I was not aware of the routing until I had to call out BT for extreme noise on the line, which I suspected was generated in the Exchange as amongst the noise were "engineering test tones".

The BT lad surprised me when he drew my attention to this small junction box, in which he re-made the wire-wrap connections on my line, as well as in the main cabinet.

This did not cure the intermittent noise; but did improve the connections when there was no noise, back in those dial-up days.

After one visit by an invetigatory engineering team, which found nothing wrong with my modems etc, the noise persiisting with a simple phone connected in the Master Socket, I managed to record the sounds.

This led to eventual agreement that it was coming from the Exchange.

As a result, our phone was transferred on to a newer frame and system - resulting in a change of phone number.

BT left a message on our answering machine - but this did not include the new number.

My wife phoned, enquiring what the new number was. "Can't divulge - it's ex-directory!"

After 20 minutes discussion, the BT Staff agreed to call the number and give the number to whom-so-ever answered - my wife, of course.

Our old number was clearly prionted in the relevant Phone Directory - so not "ex-directory".

My wife was the Senior District Nursing Sister for the area, on-call etc - AND the line was a "RED-CARD" line, with almost top priority for repair at any time!

Allegedly on the same priority level as the Police etc.

As a result, our phone was transferred on to a newer frame and system - resulting in a change of phone number.

BT left a message on our answering machine - but this did not include the new number.

My wife phoned, enquiring what the new number was. "Can't divulge - it's ex-directory!"

Priceless! Good to see that [censored] service at BT is a time honoured tradition. At least there appears to be some values they manage to hang on to.

Edited by mrnelster (Sat 12-Mar-11 20:43:21)