Why fibre only to cabinets?

Looks like many people whose premises are not connected to a cabinet, won't get any fibre anytime soon (me being one of them).

I wonder what's the difference between going with fibre to a cabinet, as opposed to a block in the case the block is not connected to any cabinet.
How many customers, in average, are served by a single cabinet?
If a block has 150 potential customers, why BT wouldn't bring fibre to the block, and then use the existing copper cables to every flat? That looks even easier than going through a cabinet, but BT won't do it.
Any logical explanation?

BT are currently trialling FTTB (fibre to the building).

The reasons are because typically a cab will have 200+ Openreach PSTN connections so there's likely to be a bigger uptake of FTTC as opposed to 1 block of flats.

The fact that the owner of the building would also have to permit Openreach equipment to be stored and locked there safely is probably another issue.

Cabinets come in sizes of 96 to 288 connections I believe.

There are three adjacent blocks of flats close to here which have been totally refurbished on in the case of one block converted from offices.

They are all Direct Exchange Lines - a couple of 200 pair cables run from exchange to a switch/comms room and from there up to each flat. The duct back to the exchange already has fibre and space for more.

However, BT approached the owners/landlords and were refused permission to install a DSLAM in the comms room!

Very backwards attitude. They could charge more rent for locations with fibre to the basement.

Perhaps they got a moment of delight and importance from sticking their fingers up at BT. Either that or they foolishly decided they couldn't be bothered with the (fairly short-lived) hassle/disruption.

Or they already have their own high speed bb by a dedicated line? If not, it seems like a pants-on-head stupid decision (maybe an incumbent provider pays them for subscribers).

In reply to a post by MHC:

However, BT approached the owners/landlords and were refused permission to install a DSLAM in the comms room!

Maybe the owners didn't want the hassle of being "tech support", or thought (mistakenly) they'd get this hassle.

I'm in a block of flats, but a small one (two sets of 6, only two stories high), so why isn't BT offering similar to us? :-/

Don't know the full story but it is possible to crawl through the ducts from exchange to comms room!

When the conversion from offices to flats (actually 2 blocks) there was a need to more lines to serve all properties and it had to be copper to te frames.

Hyperoptic offers an FTTP service - that's fibre all the way to the property. They installed in my building (133 flats) three months ago - the speeds we're getting are astonishing!

They offer a 20 meg, 100 meg or 1 gig service. I opted for the 100 meg - the speed test results are below:

Download Speed: 100084 kbps (12510.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 89435 kbps (11179.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 5 ms
Mon Feb 20 2012 14:30:38 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time)

Get it if you can - it's fantastic!

How much bandwidth do you use each month?

There's no cap through Hyperoptic. Lucky really as since signing up I've discovered the joys of on-demand film and TV (in HD of course!)

In reply to a post by MHC:

Don't know the full story but it is possible to crawl through the ducts from exchange to comms room!

Not really ducting, more of a cable tunnel. I wonder how it is sealed (against ingress of gasses, water and vermin) at each end?