Cabinet in daffy location

We're scheduled to get FTTC broadband from the end of March '14 as part of the Cheshire BDUK project. The thing is, our cabinet is outside the village and nowhere near anyone. There are two houses within 100m. The first houses in the village are about 400m from the cabinet, the school about 700m. I'm on a lane, among the first of about 20 houses and I'm 1500m from the cabinet. I currently get 3.5Mbps after working on the internal wiring and taking care to buy a tweakable router (and thanks to all of those who have posted such information and advice over the years). The last house in my lane, which gets 0.5Mb when the wind is in the right direction, is about 1800m from the cabinet.

So what happens, generally in such cases? Putting a twin next to the current cabinet would seem to be bonkers. I'd like to think that we'll end up with more cabinets. Is there such a thing as a mini cab for such circumstances or are we all doomed?

John

Wherever the "Fibre Cabinet" is installed it must feed back to the main cabinet to provide VDSL connectivity on your line. So unless BT move the main cabinet closer to you, which is unlikely then the closer the fibre twin is, the better for users.

I know two villages in a similar situation.
Main cabinet some distance away. They do have a secondary connection point mini-cabinet (SCP) in the village itself.
Main cabinet either is already or is going to be upgraded under BDUK to FTTC status.
So the residents of the villages are probably going to end up with a half decent ADSL2+ speed of service from their FTTC connection to the cabinet - which is in itself a huge improvement from their current 2Mbps on a good day connections.

What is/can be done about it?
Well the situation is exactly as per the Binfield Heath saga where the villagers paid BT £60K to convert the two existing village SCP's to full cabinet status and then upgrade the two to FTTC.

Otherwise nothing - BT are not going to be moving or creating new cabinet positions
The FTTC program both commercial and state aided is all about upgrading existing main PCP's to FTTC, not about moving, altering cabinets.
There is not even enough money in the BDUK pot to upgrade all the cabinets in the county so any extra money if ever found is going to be spent on upgrading those still remaining not done (ie like mine!) rather than on fixing certain cases when due to chance historical reasons a block of houses cannot get full superfast speeds.

So yes - I fear you are in your own words doomed - until the next technology comes along maybe around 2020+

I do not think that upgrading a cab to FTTC will have any impact upon ADSL speeds.

Sorry, you misunderstood my meaning

Currently, in my example, the villagers get a maximum of 2Mbps from their ADSL connection from the exchange.
When the cabinet some 1.something Km away is upgraded to FTTC they will then be able to get a FTTC service from it which will be much better than their existing ADSL one, but because of the distance from the cabinet the achieved speeds on FTTC will only be around that of a half reasonable ADSL2 type connection - say 10 to 12Mbps. They may be connected to a superfast service but superfast is not what they will be receiving.

I do appreciate and agree with you that continuing ADSL connections for those not taking up FTTC should not be affected in anyway that can be seen.

I guess I have to just wait and see. The cows in the field adjacent to that cabinet are in for a treat

John

The answers above are all correct, based on BT's current strategy for rollout of FTTC in both commercial areas and in the starting phases of the BDUK rollout.

We have also seen BT start to adapt their strategy to cope with EO lines, by adding new PCP cabinets. This allows the existing FTTC strategy to then apply to those new cabinets, and has been seen in Cornwall more than anywhere else - but will still be part of the BDUK rollout.

However, there are signs that they are beginning to consider further "infill" strategies that would be included within the BDUK rollout, and cover the cases where properties are too far from the normal PCP location.

I mentioned this yesterday, on a different thread:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

This isn't a thing that they are doing within the commercial rollout, and haven't yet done so within the BDUK rollout.

However, one village is known to have subsidised an upgrade in their own area, where the two FTTC cabinets are to be located (or perhaps already have been) with the SCP (secondary connection point) rather than the normal PCP, in order to gain the extended range. Unfortunately, SCPs are rare in the network.

But there is at least news of new solutions appearing on the horizon, though we have no idea how the new solutions are to be used.

One presentation, from Openreach NGA manager to Lancashire county council, lists some things for coverage of the final 3%. See pages 11 and 12 of this Lancashire presentation.

Another presentation, from a chief engineer in Openreach responsible for access-network strategy to NICC on their open forum day, The presentation is here, on NICC's website. Page 9 has some solutions (FTTPoD, FTTdp, and wireless for rural access), while page 18 mentions some "BDUK infill" solutions, including "NGA Amplifiers", an "all in one FTTC cabinet" located deeper in the network than the standard PCP one, wireless cabinets, and more.

Who knows when, or even if, any of them will get deployed in reality. But it is good to know that solutions are being thought of - it means they are starting to think about the final 10%.

(The unamed village I mention is indeed Binfield Heath, but I forgot its name - thanks zom22)

From those presentations, I note the use of both an "all-in-one" FTTC cabinet that is located somewhere lower in the network than an existing PCP/FTTC pair. That seems like they'd consider using it to create an SCP/FTTC pair. There is a mention of NGA Amplifiers too, but I haven't seen any technical description of such nodes.

Is there a "mini cab"? Yes, but we haven't seen one out in the real world. Take a look at this Youtube video, where one can be seen around 2:40 in.

Thanks www. "Further, faster". Some of those solutions do not look outlandish or expensive (he said, in his ignorance) so they may appear one day in the real world.

I'm optimistic that I'll get some improvement. Longer term, some of these technologies may arrive and improve matters still further.

Thanks,
John

In reply to a post by brightd:

I do not think that upgrading a cab to FTTC will have any impact upon ADSL speeds.

Not strictly speaking true. Many people are stuck on exchanges which BT in their wisdom have left on 20CN, and are thus stuck with slower than possible speeds. This is common on exchanges in smallish towns and villages in rural locations. So for example at the moment I get the maximum 8Mbps download speed, and really low SNR figures. If the exchange was upgraded to 21CN and I could get ADSL2 then without doing anything my download and upload speeds would improve.

From what I can see when an exchange gets enabled for FTTC it also finally gets an upgrade to 21CN if it was languishing on 20CN. Certainly the case at my parents home where town of population over 10,000 (specifically Prudhoe) was enabled in December 2012 it was also upgraded to 21CN.

Strictly speaking 21CN is only required at the handover sites for FTTC. As the vast majority of FTTC exchange areas are actually fed by fibre going to another exchange you can see 21CN isnt allways required for FTTC

Edited by deleted (Tue 07-Jan-14 14:38:56)