Motherwell Exchange - Cabinets and FTTC

Hi - I'm trying to work out what's going on in our area.
We've been waiting on FTTC for ages in our area, because distance to exchange is quite far - I've only been getting close to 2meg down on my ADSL connection.
WSMOT is now accepting orders for FTTC which is great - however, I've just found out that though we are getting FTTC - it seems we're getting the lower end of the scale - my line estimate is 23meg.

Does this mean the cabinet is quite far away from my home? (How can I find out where my cabinet is and the line length - I do know from using the BT Wholesale checker that I'm connected to cabinet 46).

Also - as I'm in the process of figuring out what services to go with (currently with Sky broadband and BT for calls) - does this line speed estimate mean it's a waste of time ordering Infinity 2 as I won't be able to take advantage of the potential higher speed ceiling?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

In reply to a post by subharmonic:

it seems we're getting the lower end of the scale - my line estimate is 23meg.

Does this mean the cabinet is quite far away from my home?

Yes - This page has a table that guesstimates you as being around 1km from the cabinet.

(How can I find out where my cabinet is and the line length - I do know from using the BT Wholesale checker that I'm connected to cabinet 46).

Use BT Wholesale's address checker to check the speed estimates for other addresses, and other streets (but checking they are on cab 46 each time). As you keep trying, you'll probably see the speeds increase in one direction, which will head back to the cabinet - which will probably be on some arterial road route back towards the exchange. When you get to estimates above 65Mbps, you're really close.

Using the address checker, you should just enter the postcode value alone, which will then give you a set of addresses to pick from - so try a sampling.

To get an idea of postcodes to try, use the Royal Mail's postcode finder, specifying just the street name and town. The street names can come from any local map, or Google Maps.

does this line speed estimate mean it's a waste of time ordering Infinity 2 as I won't be able to take advantage of the potential higher speed ceiling?

As an early adopter of your cabinet, you're likely to get higher speeds initially (with no interference from other subscribers at first). However, it still isn't likely to be beyond 40Mbps by much - in which case Infinity 2 isn't much benefit, unless you want the other extras that come with such a package (such as the unlimited allowance on Plusnet or BT)

PCP 46

I found it last night actually Ribble. -thanks for your efforts though.
I did the google Maps thing yesterday as well - couldn't for the life of me find it.
Buit went for a wee drive last night and got it.

So - We are actually at the other end of the estate - slap bang between two cabinets.
There's another cabinet at the bottom of Range Road, to the North east of Cabinet 46.
Everything bertween cabinet 46 and Range road is the new estate - some 400 houses I think. Why can't we get another cabinet fitted?

Edited by subharmonic (Tue 28-May-13 07:32:28)

I guess BT had enough capacity at those 2 cabinets to serve those 400 houses. With that, it means they didn't need to install new E-side cables all the way back to the exchange - only D-side cable back to the 2 cabinets.

Ironically, if they added a new cabinet in the middle, so that the new houses were split between the 3 cabinets, there wouldn't be enough premises to make it worth upgrading the new cabinet as part of the commercial rollout.