FTTC Cabinet Question

Are all the FTTC cabinets quite large or are there likely to be smaller ones to cover a smaller area. The reason I ask is there has been a new(ish) cabinet at the end of our road (about 100m) from the house for a while. I noticed an Openreach van at it the other day and when the guy opened the door to it there appeared to be nothing inside it, or at least very little.

Looking at the cabinet about 50m further down the road when it was being worked in it looked stuffed with cables etc (as one would expect!). I just ask because I recently saw somewhere yet another revised date for Dunblane to be FTTC as 4th quarter 2011?? Mind you, that's about the 4th date I have seen so far.

Are there any obvious markings to look for?

[edit] I should add, I have been hunting for pictures, but few if any have any way to judge the scale of the box....

Edited by SimonCandest (Sat 09-Jul-11 16:14:18)

How about this page (on TBB main site).
As there's a guy kneeling in front of the cabinet, that should give you an idea of scale.
There's also a smaller cabinet (with a single door) about 1/2 to 2/3rds the size.
You can see the old regular cab to the right.

And this is what they look like closed.

The large ones are about 5 feet tall and have double doors with a central lock. The smaller cabinets are about 4 feet high and about half the width with a single door and a lock on the edge. They are commonly used in rural locations (popping up a lot in west Cornwall) and less densely populated locations.
This is one of the small FTTC cabinets (128 line capacity)

Edited by Ribble (Sat 09-Jul-11 16:39:20)

The Rutland cabinet you linked to is much smaller to the large Openreach cabinets, and a different design to either the small or large Openreach cabinets

Here's a thread on Saddleworth. The first post links to a set of photos that have both of the usual sizes of FTTC cabinets, while some shots have the existing PCP cabs too.

BT have shown, in diagrams, a variant where the fibre is a "top-box", but I don't think one has been spotted in the wild yet.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

They are commonly used in rural locations (popping up a lot in west Cornwall) and less densely populated locations.

Or, possibly, in a town where there are lots of cabinets (each feeding a lesser number of properties than larger ones)?
Quite a few here (Banbury) are smaller cabinets, even though the exchange serves around 21,000 lines. I guess it's due to the way the town has expanded over the years (forcing BT to put in more cabinets than they normally would).

Indeed, possibly this one gives a better idea of scale as it's right next to a standard larger BT cab.

Or this one.

Nope, it's smaller than that, it's only got a single door. What puzzles me is that there is an existing cabinet ~50m (possibly less as I have never bothered to measure it), and afaik there are no plans for new housing up this way (nowhere to build!). Can't see the point of another cabinet so close to the old one??

Ah, that looks a bit like it. I will try and get a photo of it.

[edit] Looking at that pic again, I realised even that is too big. I wonder if BT are just planning to replace the old cabinet with a new one, cause I have not seen one quite this small. Like I said, I will try and get a photo of it.

Edited by SimonCandest (Sat 09-Jul-11 17:04:36)

if anyone is interested, I found it on google maps. Now, how to get a link to the position?

Aha. A Link