In reply to a post by Adsl24:

Rustington is all FTTC, no FTTP in that area!

I've found more information online with photos of Engineers doing the same thing, and that does also say it's for FTTP, not FTTC. It is definitely what they were doing though. Hmmm. They were at cabinet P5, which isn't my own cabinet but so far there are 3 they've been working on one by one within a day of each other, and mine (P34) usually comes next.

I have just walked past one of the other cabinets in Rustington, and Openreach are working there too. A black outer cable was coming out of a duct near the cabinet with "Fibre Optic Cable" written on it, and leading to the inside of the van where the engineer was connecting it to exactly the same thing as in that photo and as they were working on at the other cabinet yesterday. I had the balls to ask questions this time (well after he'd caught me being nosy!), and he confirmed he's only dealing with FTTC and not FTTP, and he was connecting the fibre strands to a node (he didn't specify the type of node but it consisted of many trays and was identical in how it looked to that photo).

Interesting and a bit confusing after what I've read here and on other websites. Being an ex electronics engineer I love this sort of thing so am keen to read more about it. I'll do some more Googling.