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.

Thanks zom22,

I would agree that 244 line cabs would make sense, but i'd imagine BTOR will say that is not economically viable as they can't be sure what the take up will be and they don't want to pay the extra cost involved. I think your right they will provision for a certain percentage and then place another cab if necessary. I just think it would be more sensible to put the bigger cab in first. All about cost I suppose.
I haven't seen a big cab in my town.

70% of households have broadband approx, so 50% switch to FTTC is still only 35% of lines.

Where cable is available potentially lower takeup too ?

All the cabs on our three local exchange's are the smaller 128 line ECI cabinets.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/05/take-up...

Various flaws, but even a report commissioned by a competitor suggests 2020 for take-up to take off. So the current not installing capacity to serve 100% of a cabinet seems sensible, rather than installing larger cab that remains unused.

Who knows by 2020 FoD may have come down in price.

Interesting report that one.

The report gives a lifetime of 8 years for DSLAM electronics within the cabinet, but 20 years for the cabinets themselves and for the fibre, then 40 years for the ducting.

That suggests that one possible future upgrade (with a 2020 timescale) would be to replace the DSLAM with higher density linecards - which would work if the cabinet could be fitted with enough copper connection strips.

I agree that the power users will have started to move out of the FTTC cabinets by 2020, and started drifting into full fibre solutions. That is a factor that increases availability of ports in the DSLAM.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

All the cabs on our three local exchange's are the smaller 128 line ECI cabinets.

I was under the impression that all ECI CABs were the same size and it is simply the number of cards inside which determined the capacity?

Yes, I think you are correct, the bigger cabinets are Huawei cabs.

Thanks for all your recent posts guys RONSKI, greenglide, yarwell, WWWombat and thanks for the link MrSaffron, interesting reading.

On a slightly different topic, I thought BTOR might have put stickers on enabled cabs saying SFBB now available for people served by this cab. That ever happen?

They usually do, though it seems to vary from place to place. We were enabled a month ago but no stickers have been placed yet, though others areas around us who were enabled a while back have stickers on every fibre cab.

Thanks Crusiux,
I wasn't too sure if all would get them, I just remember seeing a photo of the SFBB in Cornwall, big purpley advert if memory serves me right, plastered across a Huawei 244 cab. I realise they are a slightly different kettle of fish a there scheme is a massive thing I think with EU money (?) something of an Openreach flagship affair.

Maybe advertising stickers come along in time if takeup is at a snails pace?

Going back to earlier posts about cab capacity and extra cabs for demand, if you haven't already seen this page, makes interesting reading/viewing. His village did get more cabs to keep up with demand. Diary of an FTTC Install

The big Huawei is a maximum of 288 connections. AIUI initial configuration in most places is 100 "lines".

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5745-do-you-have-...

That cabinet is in south London. It was not meant to have the advert sticker, so may have been removed by now.

If a council has been sensitive over planning, then more likely for Openreach to keep the stickers low key.

The QR code takes people to the http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/ site, which offers equal promotion for providers.

Thanks RobertoS, yeh sorry I should have put 288

Thanks MrSaffron, Thanks for the link, I'm loving the vinyl wraps, very effective. The brick work ones especially are fab.

The 'advertising stickers' are/were put on by engineers, you could register to help the company, they sent a pack out, the engineer went fly posting.

So a lack of posters on some cabs will be down to CBA attitude of local engineers.

Thanks Zarjaz, I haven't seen one yet in my town, so maybe our local engineers CBA like you said.