New Green Cabinets appearing

Hello

With 4 children, three being teenagers I'm desperately looking forward to fibre.

Over the last few weeks 2 new cabinets have appeared, one about quarter of a mile from my house and another just 150metres further on. I'm in rural West Carmarthenshire. We're on the Hebron (SWYRO) exchange but these cabinets are on the A478 and a good few miles from Hebron. I can't imagine that there is ducting all the way from the exchange and wonder will the cabinets be fed from another exchange that has ducting along the main road. I was also wondering how long they will take to be up and running? Is this just a shell?

Thanks for anyone who could shed some light.

Hube

If the one of the cabinets has slots for air vents then it will have all the electronics inside

Could be live within a month, or might be a year, depends on the time line for all the other work such as power and fibre.

Thanks for that, I'll check in the morning. As regards the ducting, would BT have run ducting alongside the road in such a rural location? If there isn't it's certainly going to be a long wait to get the fibre. Is there a map of the infrastructure?

On Sunday I saw an engineer and working on a green cabinet several miles away and spoke to him briefly, he didn't know the details of my cabinets but said that they decide which exchange supplies which cabinet not based on the old exchange but where they can get infrastructure to. That seems bizarre when doing a check for fibre, that always refers back to the exchange.

Sorry for all the questions but I'm interested in how it all works.
Thanks Hube

Not too sure if your on cabinet 1 or if your still an EO Line, but it says on the Superfast Wales site the following for Cabinet 1:

Coming soon

You are connected to cabinet number 1 on the Hebron exchange, and work is currently taking place to install the fibre network in this exchange area.

We expect the first cabinets in the area to be upgraded by the end of June, 2015 and work will continue after this to complete the network.

Please register your interest and we'll keep you posted.

Where it says "You are connected to cabinet number 1" this was due to I used a postcode that was on cabinet 1 to get a date.

The above date is a rough date and can change due to issues that may pop up.

Paul

In reply to a post by Hube:

On Sunday I saw an engineer and working on a green cabinet several miles away and spoke to him briefly, he didn't know the details of my cabinets but said that they decide which exchange supplies which cabinet not based on the old exchange but where they can get infrastructure to. That seems bizarre when doing a check for fibre, that always refers back to the exchange.

The checkers all base their reports on the exchange your are currently connected to (by copper) simply because most people know and understand that reference. Nowadays, the checkers make explicit reference to the cabinet number too - because people are gradually coming to understand that this is important. It is also something we can see on the streets.

In the future, when we have only fibre, BT will not need as many exchange buildings. That is because the signal can get somewhere in the region of 5-8km over copper, but 20-30km in fibre. As a result, the fibre used for each cabinet only needs to go back to so many "head-end" exchanges, that can be sited further away.

In turn, that means the fibre spines, travelling out to the cabinets, don't always go in the expected direction.

Eventually - perhaps another 10-15-20 years - BT will be able to get rid of some of the small rural exchange buildings.

As for ducting ... there is a fairly good chance that ducting did already exist - at least as far as the cabinet, and likely on to the DPs on poles or in underground chambers.

Of course, if the fibre goes to another exchange, then it is likely that some of the path wouldn't have existing ducting - so it would depend what the cheapest way to add ducting would be. It might be cheapest for the fibre to go back towards the existing building, without going inside, and then follow existing junction or trunk cables back to a parent exchange.

The fibre itself will be within one or more multi-fibre cable fed through ducting, or more likely through empty sub-ducting which itself was pulled through existing ducting.

There has been some recent reports that suggests BT are trialling some new types of fibre, in order to cope with duct blockages better. However, I'm not sure we'll see that affect the spine work going on to each cabinet.

BT have maps of their infrastructure, but I wouldn't expect to see them online - it would count as a sensitive subject, security-wise.

In reply to a post by Hube:

Thanks for that, I'll check in the morning. As regards the ducting, would BT have run ducting alongside the road in such a rural location?

Oh absolutely. It used to all be overhead, long distance overhead trunk lines connecting exchanges.

But this was all put underground in the 60s and 70s. Then from the 80s onwards the trunk lines were replaced with long distance fibre. It can either be under the grass verge or under the road itself, whatever made the most sense at the time.

Thanks for that Icaras. I'm amazed at that. I never thought that this kind of infrastructure existed. The cabinets have appeared where there were no cabinets before and they are the ones with vents.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I can see how it's all being pulled together now. I'm sure they will have trouble finding power for these new cabinets since they are in the middle of nowhere and are nowhere near power or another cabinet. Looking forward to the next step.

Paul.

I couldn't find the reference to the cabinet on the Superfast Wales site, thanks for finding out.