Is there a limit to the number of FTTC cabs per PCP ?

Our original cabinet was full when I moved in to my house, it got extended 6 months later and then a year after that, a second cab was stood (Feb 18), both times capacity was reached in a couple of days.

The cabs are the small Huawei ones so I think cab 1 capacity will be 192 and cab 2 currently will be 96/128 ? So in total at the moment there could be 320 ports with a max possible of 384 (correct me if I�m wrong).

According to Codelook, there are 552 properties passed by cab 36 (G72 6PA), will they stand another cab if as I suspect an extension to cab 2 fills up ?

Yeap another cabinet is possible

And someone who worked out which type of cabinet to install in the first place, and then what size for the second one at BT/Openreach needs the sack for getting it badly wrong. If this was covered under BDUK then it is even worse.

The problem is that this cabinet seems very popular, but take-up rates are very variable, so what makes take up brilliant here is not going to be the case on other cabinets.

On BDUK installing a smaller cabinet is fractionally cheaper to the public purse, since the subsequent extra cabinets are fully paid for by Openreach. So there is actually an incentive for Openreach to install bigger than needed cabinets in BDUK areas - assuming local authority will pay the invoice.

Thanks for the replies, good to know at least that further cabinet is possible, should mean that everyone will be able to get FTTC eventually.

I know that Openreach try to minimise their outlay by installing smaller cabs if they can get away with it but 2 cabs so far with one extended and another extension required seems such a waste of resource when one big cab would have the same capacity and only one install !

Is the price difference really that much between the large and small cabs ?

I believe there are 64 port cards which take the capacity of the H100 cabinets to 256 ports

I take it this is quite a recent development, good news if so.

The issue is that BT/Openreach are very very bad at estimating demand for any broadband access product. You can see this in the original ADSL trials. They rolled out to a bunch of trial areas that included deprived council estates where computer ownership was low (this is before smartphones and tablets with WiFi) then claimed take up was too low for ADSL to be economically viable, and ADSL rollout in the UK was delayed. That was a miscalculation of epic proportions.

We have seen the same with FTTC, the scale of the clawback on the BDUK installs shows that yet again BT/Openreach got the calculations on what was commercially economic to install massively wrong again.

As such when BT/Openreach say rolling out an internet access product is not economically viable commercially, nobody in their right mind would believe a word they have to say on the subject.

Note it should be relatively easy to estimate the take up for a cabinet. Take a look at the number of lines on that cabinet that have an ADSL connection, look at the speed those lines can get with ADSL and then factor in something like Acorn profile for the area. Probably LLU makes this analysis more complicated but I doubt it makes it impossible. I further doubt this was properly done by BT/Openreach.

Jabuzzard

I Know the analysis wasn't done well, there were many upper rank managers who didn't believe that remote cabs on the outskirts of exchange areas towns would get far better penetration than ones close who already had 16-24Mb.

I tried to argue for the bigger cabs furthest from the exchange to be done first as they would get the best payback but was in the wrong area to have any influence. The parts of BT that were used to dealing with new technologies and customer profiles were not allowed to influence OR commercial policies by OFCOM mandate. Therefore OR didn't want to listen in case they were sanctioned by OFCOM, another case of regulation preventing the best solutions due to fear.

I tried for years to argue for new estates( especially those on the outskirts of towns/cities at the limits of Copper) to be fibred but again OFCOM didn't want to disturb the LLU market which was all copper based. With OFCOM support all the TPON sites ( Too far for copper voice so fibre to the kerb) could have been moved to FTTP instead OR were forced to provide Cu service over the top of the fibre and customers got a very poor BB service.

BT could have been rolling out FTTP from 2004 onwards if OFCOM had been prepared to grant it permission, but it was not to be so. Imagine if all estates from 2004 on had had full fibre, it would now be normal for builders to provide it everywhere!

Rant over....

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Jabuzzard

BT could have been rolling out FTTP from 2004 onwards if OFCOM had been prepared to grant it permission, but it was not to be so.

Perhaps, but the failure to do so reflects the company's arrogance from its previous monopoly existence, and karma is restored by the fact that BT's failure to invest in fibre and its myopic focus on driving out every penny of its copper infrastructure now means that there is now a massive focus on FTTP by other competitors and BT has completely missed a trick. I see that Wightnet is now offering FTTP all over the Isle of Wight and it would be good to see similar initiatives springing up in more rural areas that BT has been steadfastly ignoring for years.

I feel sorry for the 13,000 employees that BT has today announced will be made redundant, but that announcement - and the halving of its share price from £5 a few years ago because of fraud - is a sign that this dinosaur's health is failing, unless it can make a success of its pay TV.