In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

I'm thinking of ones that look something like this

I'm hoping that eventually OR decommission these cabinets, when every property served by a cabinet CAN get FTTP, there should be no reason to keep and maintain these powered headaches in the network.

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

I felt I had to edit my post to mention the rare use of a subtended head end. I knew it would be picked up by others. I hadn't seen your post by the way

Your post beat me to it by just over one minute

Except as noted above for the AltNets that use cabinets in their FTTP network, some passive and some powered, albeit not anywhere in the same quantity as Openreach FTTC cabinets.

What and remove all the copper? That would take ages to do, surely?

In reply to a post by Grimers:

What and remove all the copper? That would take ages to do, surely?

I mean in my area they are going to have to if they ever want to add more without digging up 3KM of main road and pavements as the ducts are basically full, getting the microduct for fibre in was a squeeze, literally.

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Your picture is one type of FTTC cabinet, there are various other types. Some ALT-nets do have cabinets for FTTP, such as GigaClear but they use a different FTTP system..

Thanks for that info, I didn't know they did FTTC cabs that small as the weird thing is I have seen three appear locally and in every location one appears a while later FTTP has been appearing on thinkbroadband map so that's why I thought it was a trend. I just know that the areas they have appeared in already had FTTC available so it just seemed FTTP related.

In reply to a post by Grimers:

What and remove all the copper? That would take ages to do, surely?

There is some scrap value to the copper(*), although personally I don't think they'll bother removing copper from any ducts which are also carrying fibre cables - too much risk of damage for too little return.

However the cabinets will surely go in the end, if only to stop paying for the mains power connections.

(*) Back-of-envelope calculation:
- one strand of 24 awg has a cross-sectional area of 0.205mm^2
- a one metre cable with 100 pairs of 24 awg has a volume of 41000 mm^3, or 41 cm^3
- given a density of 8.96 g/cm3, this makes 0.367kg of copper per metre
- at a scrape value of £3 per kg, that's about £1.10 per metre of this cable

In reply to a post by Grimers:

What and remove all the copper? That would take ages to do, surely?

Keep the original PCP, just remove the linked VDSL/FTTC cabinet. The former is passive, the second active with mains power, monitoring etc. They are linked by short lengths of copper patching between the two.

Removing the D side (PCP to home) or E side (PCP to exchange) is a completely different topic !

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

In reply to a post by Grimers:

What and remove all the copper? That would take ages to do, surely?

I mean in my area they are going to have to if they ever want to add more without digging up 3KM of main road and pavements as the ducts are basically full, getting the microduct for fibre in was a squeeze, literally.

It would be "cart before horse" if Openreach were to remove (in use) copper from their network before its been retired and replaced completely with FTTP. There's a few stepping stones along that journey yet.

Hi All,
Thought I would issue an update this evening, about 5 openreach engineer vans were down my street this evening fitting CBT's.
A promising sign I must say.
No fibre is yet lit, or at least that i know of.