Is there a register of where street cabinets are located?

Is there a published register of where street cabinets are located?

I'm trying to help out an elderly relative of mine who lives on almost the other side of the country from me, in Norfolk. Because he lives a bit out in the countryside (but still only 3 miles from Norwich) and his exchange is about 4 - 5 miles away from him, up to now his broadband speed has been just 250K bps and clearly confined to ADSL. But the exchange (Honingham) has just been upgraded to FTTC and a quick test using his postcode/tel. no. has given for him a projected downstream speed of (apparently) 6M bps. Whether or not this speed qualifies in Openreach's view as worthy of FTTC I don't know, but the test showed he's on Cabinet no.2, somewhere in the region of Marlingford. We'd now like to find the location of that cabinet, to confirm his revised copper distance.

As an aside, Openreach have recently published a huge list of all FTTC-enabled exchanges in the UK and Honingham is now on that list (EAHON). However, there's a mistake there. The list gives Honingham's region as "Breckland, Norfolk", whereas it should read "Broadland, Norfolk". There's no such place as Honingham in the Breckland area of Norfolk. The only Honingham is the one just to the west of Norwich.

List of FTTC enabled exchanges is useless, since it depends on your cabinet.

Presume you mean HONNINGHAM and cabinet is at
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.6541032,1.1543607,...

and is fibre/VDSL2 enabled.

It's spelt "Honingham". There's only one 'n' in the name.

Yes, have just looked up that location you gave me, and it does appear to be the cabinet in question, doesn't it? So, many thanks for that; I somehow doubt we'd otherwise have found it, as the location of Cabinet 2 is in the village of Easton, whereas he lives in the village of Marlingford.

I've been doing some quick calculations and I reckon he's still situated, copper-wise, some 2.5 - 2.8 mls away from that cabinet. That'd probably account for the speedtester coming up with a figure of about 6M bps.

It looks as though Openreach have run fibre for just 1.5 miles eastward, along the A47, and no further.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 11:59:38)

Really? MrS goes and finds the cabinet for you, gives you the location on google street view and all you can do is correct the spelling of the town name? I would have thought a simple "thanks" would have sufficed?

At least with streetview it is just time spent on Streetview rather than getting in the car and driving around

Excuse me?! It was only a moment ago that I saw the reply and began my own reaction. I was in the process of actually loooking up that view as given, and was then about to edit my reply, when you nipped in and started criticising me. Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to judge and criticise people?

You've got to know where to look, though. Clearly, you had some inkling of where it was. We'd assumed it would have been in the middle of Marlingford, as I'm sure I've seen a BT cabinet there on occasions when I've visited him. If not there, then it could have been literally anywhere within about 4 square miles of Honingham.

Anyway, at least I can tell him where it is now. He'll be disappointed to get only 6M bps, but at least it'll be a whole better than 250K bps!

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 12:14:46)

BT will provide their "Faster Broadband" product where FTTC is available and speeds are less than 15Mbps. http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47740...

It uses the same technology, same modem and everything else - it just has a different name to keep the ASA and others happy.

Your original response only said:

It's spelt "Honingham". There's only one 'n' in the name.

I see you have now edited it but that seems a somewhat unusual way to post. I was responding to your original response which was abrupt and had no recognition of the help MrS had given. These are threaded forums and it is unusual to do a post and then massively change it by edit (small changes for corrections yes, but to add such a massive amount of content...)

Anyway, no matter, you have edited the post now.

If they are really 2.5 miles away then even 6 Mbps is probably never going to happen.

2.5 miles is near to 4km and VDSL2 tends to run out of steam at 2km or so.

If you private message the postcode can take a look at a map.

I estimated that 2.5 miles from a paper map (road distance) but admittedly the scale of the map could mean that I'm somewhat inaccurate. I'll give you his postcode by PM.

I was immediately keen to emphasise that the name has only one 'n'. This was important because there might conceivably be another place in the UK with a similar-sounding name; very similar placenames in the UK can often differ by only one character. Openreach themselves have already made on error in listing Honingham in the wrong region of Norfolk, so it was important for me to confirm to MrS its precise spelling. Otherwise, he might have been looking in the wrong place. That's why I temporarily broke off at that point, to see where exactly MrS's google location was.

MHC,

Before a few seconds pass and I get hammered for not thanking you (heh, heh, heh), let me just say how grateful I am for you giving me that link, as it now seems to explain more carefully what's going on. I've passed it on to my relative, for him to investigate further.

Replying in public without mentioning location.

2.5 miles was an over estimate, more likely to be 1.5 miles and that improves odds that Openreach checker estimate is correct.

A CAUTION: The checker is saying a range of 1.7 Mbps to 5.9 Mbps and at these distances it only takes a sneeze to mean you get no improvement, i.e. it is worth trying but be prepared to not get 6 Mbps. If at all possible arrange things so they are an engineer install, as they will fit the VDSL2 faceplate and isolate extension wiring to give you the best chance.

Absolutely! Just before I saw your latest reply, I sent my relative a recommendation to do precisely that.

I particularly urged him to pre-lay some Cat5 cable from where his existing master socket's located (the loft, would you believe!) to a spot just behind where his desktop PC sits, in the room below. Then if he gets an OR engineer to specifically come to the house, the engineer will be able to quickly join, in the loft, the requisite pair in the Cat5 cable to the outside line and to terminate that pair in a new and re-sited master socket just behind the PC. He (my relative) can then withdraw the old BT wiring at his leisure. His router is by the PC too, as is also his landline phone.

If he's lucky, he won't incur a charge for the fitting of a new master socket. I imagine that he'll need a filtered faceplate and/or intermediate plate, but maybe these days those two bits get sent to the subscriber in the post for fitting.

Anyway, I've now advised him as best as I can and I only hope that he takes due regard. Either he should now take the opportunity of having a half-decent internet connection and savouring it, or stop whinging about how utterly, miserably slow his connection is, which is what he's been doing up to now for years!