Pole-mounted BT equipment

Have recently returned from mid-Wales where it appears that BT Openreach are making considerable moves to get folks connected to the wider world, and many poles seem to have 'fibre cable' strung along.

The interesting thing is that lots of Pole-mounted green "boxes" have started to appear, with what looks to me like this 'fibre cable' coming down the pole and going into them. These boxes are mounted on the poles at chest height, are about 2ft long, and painted in BT green (the same as their street cabinets).
I have a couple of pictures, but seem unable to attach to this posting for others to try and identify. [If someone can help here, I'd be grateful.]

Knowing that BT need some sort of fibre "equipment" to get broadband out to the farms and houses out in the wider countryside, sight of these may be of interest to other rural members here, as I've previously not seen one of these before!

Sounds like fibre to the remote node or FTTrN

Does it look like this - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a_RXnNSxjxU/Va37QYTrGkI/AA...

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-Mar-16 13:09:01)

Wales is now at the stage of rolling out at a lot of FTTP so more likely to be fibre splitters than FTTrN

I actually did originally post that it could be either fibre splitters or fttrn but then removed it as wasn't sure

Yes, it's what is shown in that picture.

So, a fibre splitter, eh. Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!

Just annoying that out in mid-Wales BT can be putting these in, yet here in rural Bedfordshire there's no sign of anything like that - and CBC's BDUK plans don't seem to have us in line for anything like that for another 3 years!! Really annoying, when our little village has to crawl along at little more than dial-up speeds in the evening. BT seem to have just used the BDUK funding as a 'bank loan' to finance them whilst dealing with the middle tier of difficulty in provision to the country.

Most of the work in Wales is down to Superfast Wales, they're really pushing fibre closer to rural communities.

Some of these things have been up on poles with nothing connected to them for over 18 months.

In other areas in Wales I've seen 5 of these on a 1/2 mile stretch of road with only 4 farms in that area, and in another village there are two of these on poles next to each other which wil presumably feed the 4 houses nearby.

As part of the Superfast Cymru Big Build, FTTC cabs were due to be installed to connect the current cabs, then FTTP was the next steps. EO lines would come 3rd, then satelltite, wireless or other technologies to do the rest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jqyCreCts

They seemed to go for the easy solution of new cabs for EO lines 1st, then FTTC, FTTP etc.

I'm not complaining, I went from a decent 7.5 line to 80 due to a new "EO Cab", and a few weeks after the exchange for FTTC became live, ADSL2+ became available too.

My sister on the otherhand is still stuck on 1Mbit/s miles away from the exchange. Since the summer a couple of new poles have been erected in the field next to her house and fibre a splitter was put up soon after, but none of these are connected to anything yet.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern to how things are setup and no rhyme or reason to the order they do things.

Edited by mrijones (Mon 21-Mar-16 15:52:52)

Hardly a "bank loan" as I understand BT only get reimbursed on the provision of invoices for work done/completed. No BDUK money is used to fund BT's commercial upgrade.

At least you are covered by BDUK funding, more than is the case of those of us living in the larger cities who, for whatever reason, are still stuck on ADSL with no prospect of BDUK funding although that might of course change in the future.

The YouTube clip will be a highly simplistic summary.

Oddly for everyone who moans about EO getting done early there is another person moaning they are left out totally.

Priorities vary across the UK and its not always a linear do a,b,c,d,e,f tasks, often these can be mixed around to suit the mixture of skills available in an area, i.e. if teams doing the FTTP fibre splitters onto poles would be otherwise twiddling thumbs the planners may send them to a native FTTP area, even though the duct/fibre blower team is not expected for a long time.

Actually the commercial roll-out particularly in London is starting to deliver cabinets again, but all depends on where you are of course.