Fibre availability at a specific cabinet.

The cabinet for our line was enabled just over a week ago. I think it is an
ECI 128 line cabinet, (single door) as all the ones I've seen in my town seem to be. Is there any way of knowing what the take up has been at it, and in so knowing how close to full capacity it is? When a cabinet is fully used do they install another for future need or is that unlikely?

Is there any way of knowing what the take up has been at it, and in so knowing how close to full capacity it is?

Only Openreach will know this and they don't make it public

When a cabinet is fully used do they install another for future need or is that unlikely?

Openreach will consider it, they have done so before.

Thanks Ribble, I thought nobody was going to offer any advice.

if you catch an engineer at the cab you could ask otherwise it's hard to say.

With takeup running around 20% and let's say 400 lines in the PCP then there should be spare capacity for a while at least.

Thanks yarwell, I do know a OR engineer, she might be able to find out for me. She told me my cab location recently as I didn't have a Scooby.

Edited by GorillaWheels (Mon 06-May-13 09:49:10)

Might take her off route (the vehicles are tracked), but ask her to physically check and see how many FTTC ties are in use, and in fact how many there are.

In reply to a post by GorillaWheels:

The cabinet for our line was enabled just over a week ago. I think it is an
ECI 128 line cabinet, (single door) as all the ones I've seen in my town seem to be. Is there any way of knowing what the take up has been at it, and in so knowing how close to full capacity it is? When a cabinet is fully used do they install another for future need or is that unlikely?

Why do you need to know?

Thanks Zarjaz, I can ask and see what she says.

Why do you need to know?

Hi somerset, it is purely a case of personal curiosity, me being nerdy & nosey I suppose. As soon as I knew our cabinet was enabled/accepting orders I've been wondering what the take up for fibre bb will be. If only 128 homes get a chance of fibre and my PCP serves 400 homes, there may be some disappointed people down the line who won't be able to get it once full capacity is reached. Whether full takeup is even likely is of course another question. yarwell said 20% takeup rate above, so it could be a long time before full.

Before you ask, no I haven't ordered fibre yet, still can't decide yey or nay.
Long story, not just my decision in our house. Then if we do, which CP, stick with EE or move to someone else?

'tis an interesting question as to the current policy on how many available FTTC lines are currently being installed per cabinet, either under the commercial roll out or under the BDUK program.

Suppose we have a cabinet containing 200 phone lines.
Say 180 of these are currently enabled for ADSL.

What size of FTTC cabinet are BTOR going to fit?
Do they assume all 180 will swap (eventually) to FTTC plus some more in the future.

Or do they only now provison for a certain percentage and provide a FTTC unit to meet that % and then if and when the remainder start to convert to FTTC then have to put another alongside.
Do they factor in the current speeds on ADSL - so if they are around 3Mbps then BT reckon most will swap while if they are around 10Mbps many more are likely not to bother at the present.

I guess in my (real) example, the most sensible thing would be to fit a 250 whatever unit and then only part populate it with cards.

Add into the mix a (presumed) desirability to get people off ADSL and onto VDSL if they are going ahead with vectoring as existing ADSL2 lines would be outside the x-talk cancellation process. Then they could also remove any PSD masks in place to protect ADSL2 signal, meaning they could reduce the power settings of close to the cabinet users while upping the power for further distances. All thereby improving the reach/speed of VDSL for those at the extremes of distance form the cabinet. Win Win.