Change Cabinets

Hi all,
I am currently living in a relatively new (2 year old) development on the South of Sunderland. We are connected to the East Herringdon exchange. While both cabinet 5 and cabinet 7 have FTTC services, and have had for about a year, cabinet 6 (the one which a group of about 40 houses are connected to) has not had an FTTC cabinet installed. Both 5 and 7 are less than 500 metres from the house. So my question is, can I pay BT to have my line connected to either cabinet 5 or 7 and thus get FTTC service?

If happy to pay a good few thousand pound and then see it wasted as cabinet gets enabled in a couple of years, possibly.

Does this happen? No, more people get six numbers on lottery each week

Anything is possible, but the cost for this would be astronomical.

The cost of installing a private circuit is astronomical, yes, but surely rejumpering when the duct for cabinet 7 runs past the front of the house would be in the hundreds, not thousands. I guess I'll ask at BT.

In reply to a post by XR219:

The cost of installing a private circuit is astronomical, yes, but surely rejumpering when the duct for cabinet 7 runs past the front of the house would be in the hundreds, not thousands. I guess I'll ask at BT.

Did you ask and what price were you quoted? I'm in a similar position where some cabinets around me have been enabled and mine has not. I want to move to a cabinet that has been enabled and am willing to pay depending on what the price is.

In reply to a post by XR219:

but surely rejumpering when the duct for cabinet 7 runs past the front of the house would be in the hundreds, not thousands

I don't think you appreciate how the BT network is set up.

There is one or more big (up to 2000 pr) cables coming out of the exchange. Pairs are split out from this at various points, usually into smaller cables, and these end up at cabinets. These are known a E(xchange) side cables.

From each house in a specific area there is, either via an overhead or underground cable, a connection to a smaller cable. This is in turn connected, with others, to a slightly larger cable, and so on, until it gets back to a cabinet. These are known a D(istribution) side cables.

The cabinet is a cross connection point, that is its sole purpose, so a pair coming from the customer can, flexibly, be connected to a pair going back to the exchange.

So, to get from your house to a different cab, another cable would have to be run to link in to the other cabs distribution side. This is where it gets expensive.

Think of it as a mountain ridge with river valleys coming off it at intervals. All the valleys connect back to a big river at the bottom, but each has its own catchment area. Getting water from one valley to another would not be easy.

Ian

In reply to a post by XR219:

The cost of installing a private circuit is astronomical, yes, but surely rejumpering when the duct for cabinet 7 runs past the front of the house would be in the hundreds, not thousands. I guess I'll ask at BT.

The last I heard, it costs 150 pounds per meter of road/pavement dug up in the Uk. You said you are hundreds of meters away, so this would obviously cost many thousands of pounds.

I understand it can get epensive but I am not convinced it would be too uncostly 100% of the time.

A regular poster on this site (i think izools but not sure) managed to get a line routed via a diff cabinet on a adsl service.

In my case I have a cabinet across the road from me, I am not connected to this cabinet. The duct feeding that cabinet from the exchange goes by my pole, I would be surprised if my D side doesnt share the same duct as the E side for that cabinet.

I dont think the cost in my case would be 1000s unless BT really overpay for things but it would clearly probably cause service downtime for everyone on the bundle been moved so BT wouldnt be keen doing such work unless to fix a MSO or something.

I would say normally the solution is if possible just pay for FTTPoD which is an interesting one because what happens if you near to a FTTC cabinet and ducting from that cabinet goes by your house but the cabinet connected to isnt FTTC would FTTPoD be denied? In my view considering the end user is covering BT's costs on FTTPoD BT need to be much more flexible on it. Sadly tho I expect people who rent like me wont invest in FTTPoD because of the risk of having to move shortly after as well as not gaining the benefit to property value from it.