Lymm Cabinet 18 expansion

Our youngest son is moving from a rented place in Lymm and has bought a house in Lymm and moving in shortly. The rental had FTTC via Cab 3, their new place is connected to Cab 18.

I can't locate Cab 18 - the Mouselike site has no mapping data for the cab so I've no idea where it actually is.

The BT checker gives the status Status "Your area is enabled for Superfast Fibre but demand is high on your cabinet right now. This means you may not be able to order fibre today but we're working to increase capacity. Please check back for an update."

He hasn't been able to order FTTC, he's told the cab is full. Is there any way of seeing what, if any, expansion plans there are and timescales?

Also, any other way of locating the Cab?

Cabinet and fibre twin is most likely just outside the exchange at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.3776599,-2.4727639...

Never seen a cabinet that got full that has not had expansion happen, but it can be a few weeks to some months depending on the expansion that is needed e.g. new cards, more copper link cables or a new fibre twin

Thanks. I'd looked on Google Earth and saw the exchange but couldn't see any cabinets. Given the Streetview images are 2011 then any FTTC won't be visible but I'd have thought the 'old' cabinet would be. Or are they sometimes in the exchange premises?

The now-common upgrade for EO lines is to build a new PCP outside the exchange building, and build a new FTTC cabinet next to it.

From the location, I'd say this likely...

And I believe the postcodes served were previously Exchange Only ones.

I wonder if I can crowd fund a grand tour of all 5,500 telephone exchanges

HTTPS://goo.gl/maps/X4hwxaBJF2v

Seems to me that the cab is full.

As far as my son's house is concerned - ~150m line-of-sight from the exchange - it's clearly said to be serviced by Cab 18, nothing to say it's an EO line.

I'd just found that one, can't see a Cab no. But it looks to be A 96 or 128 line capacity cabinet.

The "fibre" cabinet, shown in the image to which Ribble posted a link, is equipped with a Huawei SmartAX MA5616 MSAN. Such a device is able to serve a maximum of 128 lines.

Not an exchange only line now, but believe it probably was in the past

Thanks

Moves my link by 100m, have not looked at that exchange for a year now.

Andrew

In streetview image the 18 is readable if you zoom in.

My previous location was based on what I'd worked out before the Google Map updated in 2015, and did not do a full drive around today.

In reply to a post by burakkucat:

Such a device is able to serve a maximum of 128 lines.

Codelook reckons the PCP serves 515 premises. Perhaps an MA5616 wasn't the best choice for this location!

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Codelook reckons the PCP serves 515 premises. Perhaps an MA5616 wasn't the best choice for this location!

Indeed. (But at least it is not equipped with an ECI Hi-FOCuS M41! )

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In streetview image the 18 is readable if you zoom in.

Ah, top left of the PCP. I'd thought that was some sort of logo, hadn't studied it enough to realise it was 18.

Thank you.