What Does The Future Hold?

Two years ago, thanks to BDUK and East Sussex CC, I moved to FTTC cabinet 1.3 km away giving me and my neighbours 15/1. An infill all In one cabinet has now appeared in front of my house, thanks to further subsidy, due to go live at the end of September. I'll be on 60m of line, including the height of the telegraph pole, so I'm expecting full FTTC speed. I'm sure that this will be ample speed for my house but I thought that too when I moved from dial up to a Stingray ADSL modem! The cabinet has a total of 70 lines running through it and serves a dispersed population. Eleven properties including mine have less than 300 meters of line to the cabinet. If BTOR stuck a g.fast pod on the cabinet tomorrow, I think they'd get two sign ups. Subsidy or no subsidy it difficult to envisage a Ultrafast Internet connection happening. What do you think the future holds for me and my neighbours when it comes to broadband?

Well, it's possible that you won't even move to that cabinet - others will probably be able to tell you for sure what this "infill" cabinet means for you. But the fact that it's outside your house doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be on it.

For the future... well, how long ahead are you talking? in 2/3/5 years, it's possible that nothing will change. Or, you could move to the new cabinet and get 80 down and however many up which goes with that package at the time. BT might alter that package to something like 100 down. After 5 years, it's possible that you'll be able to have a fibre "dropwire" or something like that, giving you FTTH, but it's really anyone's guess. A couple of years ago I don't think anyone was realistically talking about all-in-one cabinets being live by 2016.

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Sep-16 16:29:10)

You likely have the same future many others in urban and rural areas alike have. Openreach doing nothing further until the 2020s, then the bare minimum, potentially with further taxpayer subsidy.

I've managed to get it confirmed that I am included in the infill cabinet, which was a challenge in it itself. As a first stage I'd like to see a mini g.fast pods supporting a handful of users, the current one proposed by BT supports 90 odd users and that's never going to bolted on a cabinet with the potential of 11 customers with the reality being 2 or 3 subscribers. It would be nice to see Openreach cranking up the speed on existing cabinets if that is a technical possibility.

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Sep-16 20:57:56)

You don't want 2 or 3 you want as many as possible.

My brother was put back onto ADSL after BT decided the 11 on his cabinet were not viable and they removed it.

I talked with the Openreach engineer when he ran all cooper and fibre to this cabinet from the DP across the road. There are 70 lines in total running through it and it's got VDSL hardware installed to cover 96 connections. Paid for by BDUK and East Sussex CC, so it will not get taken down by OR. Assuming a 40% take up that's going to be 28 connections, but I guess that with ADSL from the exchange offering sub 2mbps and the nearest FTTC cabinet providing the same for some residents it was either stick in an In fill cabinet or FTTP for 70 properties or leave it as a slow spot.

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Sep-16 22:31:55)

BT removed your brothers (PCP) cabinet ??