In reply to a post by adminkatana:

Is it just due to the fact that the old PCP placements didn't really take account for distance to households? The new Fibre box next to cabinet 4 seems very close to the other cabinets?

Openreach aim to place the fibre twin as close to the existing PCP as possible and require it to be no more than 100m away. As the cable length between the PCP and fibre twin is part of the FTTC line length, they want the twin to be as close as possible for performance reasons.


Most decisions about the number of PCPs to deploy and where to site them were taken with no inkling about FTTC or what it might mean. D side line length (line length from the PCP to the user) doesn't matter for telephony or relatively slow digital services like basic rate ISDN.

With ADSL from the exchange, what matter is having the shortest and highest quality line back to the exchange, not how much of that line length is before or after the cabinet. It's only once the decision was made to install DSLAMs at PCPs as part of the FTTC deployment that D side line length became important.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that BT's commercial funding worked on cabinets down to around 300 lines.

BDUK-subsidised cabinets have been seen down to around 100 lines, but not significantly lower.

Placing a new FTTC cabinet where no PCP currently exists would likely require re-arrangement of the copper - as is done for EO lines - which would add to the cost.

On balance, I'm not sure that the extra cost would be considered viable for 50/60 properties in the current phase 1 project.

In the SEP (phase 2) project, funding increases per home, and will make smaller cabinets more viable. You may still qualify for this phase with sub-15Mbps speed.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

BDUK-subsidised cabinets have been seen down to around 100 lines, but not significantly lower.

really? I'd have though my cabinet is well under that figure.

On exchange SSPTN there are a couple of upgraded cabinets that have significantly fewer than 100 lines - cabinet 6 has 76 lines, cabinet 8 has 48. These were done as part of the Wiltshire BDUK project. I guess a lot of factors are at play here and this won't be the case in other, more difficult areas.

As a general range of figures would agree but there are ones outside those figures

Thank you all for your advice/ comments. Most appreciated and interesting.

I am happy to be shortly receiving much faster speeds than currently experienced (2 - ~15-18Mbps). But for what its worth I've emailed the council/ councillors just to see what they might say about a new cabinet being placed closer. I imagine it's pretty far down the line of importance, but worth a shot.

Hi there,

Bit of an update/ any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm about 0.8 miles from the Cabinet, BT sales said that on the Faster than Broadband service we'd get 12-18Mbps. Used to get 3.5Mbps Up/ 0.5Mbps Down on ADSL2+.

We received the HH5 on Monday, installed it straight away as instructed and Wednesday were told no need to be at home while our new broadband was being enabled. Came home to a much faster ping (gone from 40 to about 10ish) but the highest speed I've achieved since Wednesday is 4.2Mbps! Highest upload has been 1.2Mbps. Fastest speeds I've ever seen so something's obviously changed, just not quite the level of change we were expecting!

HH5 I have power cycled twice on the first day, left it since then to no change.

BTW Speed tester reveals line profile to be 4.2Mbps

HH5 stats are as follows
BT Hub 5A
5. DSL uptime: 1 days, 11:31:46
6. Data rate: 1237 / 4093
7. Maximum data rate: 1233 / 4456
8. Noise margin: 6.2 / 6.6
9. Line attenuation: 16.7 / 32.2
10. Signal attenuation: 16.7 / 27.9

BT live chat have arranged an engineer for next week, but does anyone have any other tips? Seems crazy just how slow it is, at present its really not worth the extra cost over ADSL at all!

Thank you for all your help.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Mar-15 08:58:15)

Compare yourself to this thread:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4395543-re-...

That is someone who reckons they are a mile from the cabinet, and have almost the same attenuation as you do at 33dB. They're getting speeds of nearer 12Mbps.

Of course, length of cable isn't the only thing; the thickness makes a difference, as does the quality of the joints. The material matters too (as aluminium is much worse than copper). All of these can make your experience different from the one you expect.

But it certainly could be the case of a wiring problem inside the house too, as FTTC can be more finicky about the way the copper wire is laid out. Ideally, you would have the modem/router at the master socket,with no other extensions in the way.

From your description, no engineer showed up to do anything inside the house. That means you are left to figure this part out for yourself...

Can you describe your wiring setup in the house?

The HomeHub 5 is plugged directly into the Master socket via the ADSL filter that comes in the box. It is an Openreach Master Socket which was installed by Openreach a few years ago.

Only other things plugged into extensions in the house are a Cordless phone with an ADSL filter and a Sky Box with an ADSL filter.

Yes, no engineer came to visit our house when our 'Fibre' (BT Unlimited Faster Broadband) was installed. I just received an email saying I didn't need to be at home, and the existing broadband would cut out for 30mins or so while the new service was activated/ installed.

On ADSL2+ we used to get 3.5Mbps at about 2.4miles (by road) from the exchange. Now getting 4Mbps at 0.8miles from Cabinet.

The DSLChecker says

FTTC Range A (Clean) 18.1 11.6 1.3 0.8 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 15 6.4 1.2 0.6 -- Available

So is quite strange, thanks for your help!

Try the test socket with a different microfilter. This will reveal if the line is being held back by noise from elsewhere.