What is this box?

These boxes have appeared, in the last week, attached to the telegraph poles on our street.

https://imgur.com/a/fWJd4y3

The current poles connect 3 houses on each side, so 6 in total. There are many more connections in the box than houses. The boxes are at a seemingly low height.

Can anyone clarify what they are for and why so many connections?

That is an FTTP distribution box for an AltNet or possibly VMo2. One connector is for each customer drop / connection.

They are an Altnet’s FTTP CBT.

A fibre DP node as it were.

Currently low down as it’ll be someone else’s job to attach it to the top of the pole.

The multitude of connectors is most likely to serve several different poles customers.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

…and why so many connections?

Might be worth pointing out that these connectors are in fact couplers. So there are half the number of possible customer connections than what may appear on first glance - so 3 rows of eight = 24 possible end customer connections.

From what I can tell only the middle row looks to have one side fitted from the splitter output - so ‘only’ 8 actual connections. The others have their white dust caps on both ends, so may be connected in future or not at all. Just a standardised pre-populated box.

As @Zarjaz pointed out this pole will probably serve a single pole span of houses on either side of it. So actually the numbers are commensurate.

Have a picture of the outside?

Either VM or CityFibre aerial secondary node from what I've seen though someone else could easily be using similar kit.

Outside is blank.

So is this box overkill with so many couplers as every pole currently serves 6 houses with overhead wires. There is a box on every pole.

Just curious.

As said, the way they come from the supplier. Fully populated with couplers. It’s up to the installer to populate as a many as required. Looks like 8 will be live in that box.

brsk use these boxes too.

Looks exactly like their ones that I have seen popping up around south manchester.

The box supports 1-4 incoming cables and 24 customer connections but as others have said only 8 are connected in that photo

https://www.hexatronic.com/en-uk/products/enclosures...

It will get moved to the top of the pole at some point

Edited by deleted (Thu 08-Dec-22 15:39:54)

Good to know: ta!

Did you ever find out what AltNet was building in your patch using these boxes?

Zooming in I reckon it's 16: 8 white strain relief sleeves on the bottom row, 8 green on the middle. Only the top row has dust caps on both sides of the couplers.

With your magnifying glass inspector, can you see if they've inscribed the midspan fibre coming in with their autograph? 😉

Brsk.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Brsk.

Cheers.

Curious as I noticed that there is blurb on the Hexatronic website that they signed full-scale strategic partnerships with both CityFibre (quote from Greg Mesch) and Zzoomm amongst other providers.

I was aware that both these networks (and Virgin) use the very nearly equivalent HellermanTyton AFN for the DP/drop termination , so just wondered if they hadn't also started using Hexatronic for their DPs too.

There were cherry picker vans with Brsk, on the side, that installed the fibre from pole to pole.

There was a different name on the van with a huge roll of fibre (presumably) on a trailor being jointed at a chamber in the footpath at the start of this week. As I was driving I didn't catch the name.

The huge drum could have well been sub-duct that they were installing into the ducts between chambers for them to blow fibre through. Possibly a third party civils contractor doing that. The splicing/jointing and actual fibre related works sounds like it's being done by their own engineers (or at the least in their labelled vans).

Much outside plant, fibre and civils work is once, twice and thrice subcontracted these days.