Fttp & power

Just wondering what parts of the Openreach fttp kit actually need power, I realise most of it is passive obviously but what bits likely to be in the street, Chambers or up poles needs power?

The head end in the exchange. The ONT in the property.
The stuff in between does not require power.

The exception to the rule being so called subtended headend (OLT) in street cabs.

But those suckers are relatively few and far between (literally) - or as someone here called it, in “ultra rural” locations (beyond the typical 20km-ish GPON distance limit)

Thanks guys we've finally got Openreach & their contractors nipping around finishing off the stalled BDUK FTTP install that went out of scope due to blocked ducts 2 years ago. Our cfp hit 100% in Nov so work has resumed.

Just wondered as we've got several road closures coming up to put new power installs in, they're in the street so not houses & there's no street lighting so not that & wondered if the 2 were related.

I believe the exchange the fttp is using us about 6 miles away (by road) so I'm guessing it's just a coincidence then.

Thank you for the info

GPON FTTP is almost always unpowered. I believe it can do spans of up to 20km.

(My head-end exchange is about 7km away as the crow flies).

Whenever you have to do things like media conversion power is needed. It's the same for Virgin Media's RFoG which has powered virtual hubs and ONTs.

Edited by deleted (Thu 11-Mar-21 15:30:04)

That's why I was wondering about fttp as typically there isn't much that needs power away from cabs/exchanges. I've been lead to believe that our fttp instead of going to the nearest local exchange is going back to the nearest town exchange, 6 miles by road I didn't know if that meant a slightly different roll out to urban fttp iykwim.

Anyway UKPN will be doing work for new install nearby on 16th so guess we'll figure it out then.

In the meantime I've walked the village following the phone lines some via poles then underground then poles then underground & every pole near abouts has a CBT on it with fibre coiled up still. This us an improvement as previously our road had CBT's fitted & then abandoned & OR are still about putting more up so hopefully in the next few weeks they'll all get hooked up

In reply to a post by Rich44:

That's why I was wondering about fttp as typically there isn't much that needs power away from cabs/exchanges. I've been lead to believe that our fttp instead of going to the nearest local exchange is going back to the nearest town exchange, 6 miles by road I didn't know if that meant a slightly different roll out to urban fttp iykwim.

That's standard across the UK, and is where the current FTTC cabinets in your area already run back to.

The OpenReach network is made up parent and child exchanges.
Each parent exchange (also called a Head-End/Handover exchange) has a number of (usually) smaller child exchanges.

All the fibre services (FTTC(VDSL,G.Fast) and FTTP) come from a parent exchange.

If you are on FTTC then your line runs from your home to the cabinet. The copper line continues to your local exchange for voice services. The fibre runs from the cabinet to your Handover exchange.
This means your voice and broadband although on a single phone line, come from 2 separate exchanges.

My local exchange also happens to be the local Handover exchange so all services come from there.
It makes zero difference to your service if your local exchange is a parent or child exchange.

The intention is to close the child exchanges when everyone is on fibre.

As mentioned above by others the only point where power is needed for FTTP is in the parent exchange and your home. It's passive inbetween.

In very rural areas where the parent exchange is too far away for the FTTP signal to travel they can effectively start the FTTP signal from a subtended head-end, but the power for this is shared with an existing FTTC cabinet.

Any local power work is almost certainly unrelated to OpenReach's FTTP rollout.

The span depends on the number of splits. It's nominally 20km but that is for 32 splits. If you have fewer splits you get longer distances. If you have no splits the reach is about 70km, though at that point you are probably better off using some Ethernet BiDi SFP's than messing about with OLT's which are a lot more expensive per port than an ethernet switch.