What's going to happen to all those Fibre Cabinets?

... thinking ahead a few years.

Not just the cabinets but the equipment and associated fibre to the exchange?
And the PCP?

Will we be left with concrete plinths all over the place?

Can the cabinets be repurposed for direct point to point fibre connections? (i.e. replace the copper with fibre)

In terms of the cabinets themselves, I would fully expect OR to remove them as soon as all copper/FTTC connections from them are ceased. Not least because the FTTC cabs will be costing them money to run in terms of power.

As for the plinths, I can't say for certain but I do know that where they have removed old phone boxes they have removed the concrete standing for them so one would hope they would do the same for cabinets.

In reply to a post by Eeeps:

Can the cabinets be repurposed for direct point to point fibre connections? (i.e. replace the copper with fibre)

That’s not really the design / deployment model that Openreach have adopted for FTTP (with very rare exception in some far flung rural areas with subtended headend). All active equipment is otherwise kept at the BT exchange. The rest of the network is passive and joints including aggregation nodes, splitter nodes and track nodes are all either in chambers or on poles. Never in cabs.

with very rare exception in some far flung rural areas with subtended headend

Quite a few in urban areas too, to save on spine fibres

Historically openreach have been quite slow to remove unused cabinets. Maybe if there is a mass decommissioning there may be more incentive, especially if local authorities are involved. Otherwise I'd expect them to be around for sometime yet.

There's probably at least another decade of them being actively used as they need to stay in place until the last customer has moved off. I would expect someone to eye up the concrete base with power and ducting in place for small cellular sites.

The nearest cabinet to us was removed decades ago, a concrete plinth has been there ever since, at a guess the removal (or mod) of any plinth might depend on a risk assessment, i.e. is it a trip hazard.

Cabinets removed, plinths used to build memorials to the copper network to help Fibrebubble through his bereavement. 😉

Plinths used to mount the Coppersaurus:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/2018-...

Local to me they moved the copper cabinet about 10 years ago, the old cabinet was removed and pavement made good.

And around here we also had the defunct Digital region cabinets, these were all removed after a while. I don’t know if that was the council pushing the receiver to remove them. Here you can still see the patch in the pavement between the Openreach cabinets where it used to be.

I’m interested to see what happens with the cabinets. Prior to becoming a Fibre First area we had two copper cabinets (one on main road) and three fibre cabinets next to the one on the side road (2x288 line and 1x384 line). The level of FTTP take up now means soon they could groom it back to fewer cabinets.