In reply to a post by danielhyde:

My question is who is stealing fibre cable?
I thought that it was copper cable that normally gets stolen

Indeed so. However those who wish to weigh in a few bobs worth of copper don't know until they put an axe through the cable whether the core is copper or plastic. If they have axed a fibre cable the connection is lost but they just move on muttering a few choice words as they go.

They will just rip out a large section which will be a mix of fibre and copper. Dump the fibre and sell the copper. Do they really care about anything except their pockets - not really and it is easier to sort it once away from the scene rather than on the spot.

Case in point.

https://status.zen.co.uk/broadband/fault-outage-deta...

One fibre break, the main exchange in the city of Wakefield plus the medium-sized exchange of Horbury Ossett on the west and the smaller Crofton on the outside.

Fair bet those 2 both have fibre into Wakefield and Wakefield is single-homed. Erk.

Lightweight thieves with a transit van and a tin of Red Bull are not skilled enough to determine a fibre tube without cutting it and looking what is inside. There is a lot of cable of all types at the side of railways much of it vulnerable.

The professional gangs know what they are looking for and rarely cut fibre tubes.

My experience suggests that cable thieves have recently come out of lockdown and are looking for business.

On a completely different tack, but just as this thread is about resilience :

During the second world war, the local banks made copies of all their ledgers every afternoon, and took them to the local railway station where they were taken up to the next town on the line.
That was the banks' resilience against local branches getting bombed out overnight.

Low tech works every time.

Very interesting.

I thought this would be the case.

So in a largish town (population 175,000) would the local FTTC cabs go back to their intended exchanges? All the exchanges are unbundled.

Do all FTTC cabs go to a handover exchange directly or via their local exchange first?

If the local exchange is the handover/headend exchange then the fibre will go direct to there. If it isn't in the local exchange then the fibre will go direct to the headend. It may go near to the local exchange on it's way, but is unlikely to go in it.

There is a lot to be said for KISS.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

If the local exchange is the handover/headend exchange then the fibre will go direct to there. If it isn't in the local exchange then the fibre will go direct to the headend. It may go near to the local exchange on it's way, but is unlikely to go in it.

Absolutely correct. But the FTTC local network doesn’t really have anything to do with what is being discussed in this thread anyway.