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[j0hn]

Looks like I'm in the same boat as yourself. We got a Huawei 288 installed next to our ECI cabinet today. Cabinet is showing as full again so new cabinet definitely not taking orders. I'm just about to cancel my migration, as I'm willing to wait for the benefits of the Broadcom DSLAM. I'll try pop down and speak to the engineers installing the cabinet to get a likely activation date.

[j0hn]

added a couple pics of the activity at my cabinet

[ejs]

My oversubscribed ECI is suddenly taking orders, and a whole bunch of cones and barriers have appeared. Roadworks scheduled by OpenReach between 11th-17th at the location of my cabinet. I'm due to migrate on 18th but will likely cease the line and order a  new service if a Huawei cabinet pops up during those works.

Isn't there a chance that your "new service" will simply re-activate your previously ceased service, connected to the same port on the same ECI cabinet? Don't they just leave things connected so that the FTTC service can be immediately re-started without having to send someone out to the cabinet?

[j0hn]

I know that would definitely happen with a migration. I'll try taking out a 1 month contract FTTC and hope it's on the newer cab. My thinking there is that someone else will be given that port. Failing that a 2nd line. I'm off from Talktalk either way. IMO it's worth jumping a few hoops on the chance I'll get connected to the new DSLAM.

Very interesting seeing the mix of Huawei & ECI again. OR obviously installing exclusively Huawei now. All the other double cabs in my area had been twin ECI till now.

[Alucidnation]

Driving past my cabinet the other day I saw a large surrounding area barriered off. Returning later I found that in addition to the cab having a pod, a further fibre cabinet had been installed. As you'll see Mrs PCP must ahe been puttting it around judging from the second offspring. Has this sort of thing been reported before?

I also drive past that every day.

 

[Alucidnation]

As an update to this, i am looking to change providers and looked at BT to see what they had.

Turns out the existing cabinet is full, so i guess the additional one is to add extra capacity.

[renluop]

Distance for distance from the cab, I wonder if there is a performance premium of one type over the other.

[Ronski]

It would certainly be interesting to find out, but unless you got an existing line switched to the new cabinet we'll never know. G.INP would certainly help if the line was interleaved, then of course some bduk Huawei cabs also have vectoring enabled, which will of course help.

[Ronski]

roadworks.org now shows a cabinet due for installation next to mine in January. Hopefully a nice new Huawei cab will be installed  My cab currently shows a waiting list. There's a few around our area that are, or have been scheduled for new/second cabs to be installed, but not aware of any that have a second cab installed.

May have to order another line, and hope I get on the Huawei cab.

[j0hn]

I just passed my new Huawei cabinet and their was 3 OpenReach vans parked next to it running tests on the new DSLAM. I had a quick word with 1 of them and he reckons it will be active "in the next few weeks".

I really hope after the trouble I've gone through that I don't get thrown back on the ECI. Taking advice from my old case manager at OpenReach I've already terminated the current FTTC so my port has already been reallocated.

She actually gave me quite specific advice on how the allocations will work with a mix of cabinets, and what I'm best doing to get on the new cabinet. If I waited till the Huawei went live to terminate on the ECI, my line would be "left in the jumper" as all new orders will be on the Huawei. They wouldn't even visit the cabinet to disconnect my line, and any subsequent fibre order would be reactivated remotely on the same port. If I didn't cancel before the Huawei went live I would then need to wait for the Huawei to fill before my ECI port got reallocated. As there's no individual waiting list for each this would be impossible to tell from the BTw checker. Alternatively I would need to order an ADSL service for an engineer to remove my line from the ECI.

I'm very eager to see a direct comparison between the 2 cabinets. Ordering a 2nd line wasn't an option as I just can't justify paying for 2 lines for 9 months. The changes between the 2 on a different pair would not be a direct comparison either, and the geek in me wants to see that.

[Ronski]

Thanks for the info John, I think in our case I'd order a second line and then cancel the other, in the hope I get a better quality line as well. Our cabinets now not showing a waiters list, so I'll have to wait and see what happens is January.

[j0hn]

Our cabinets now not showing a waiters list, so I'll have to wait and see what happens is January.

My cabinet does that about once a fortnight, but later the same day/next day it goes back to waiting list. My guess is a free port came up as I know my cabinet has all it's line cards installed. I'd be surprised if your cabinet just had more capacity added if there's a 2nd cabinet on the way.

[Ronski]

My own cabinet has now flipped back to a waiting list again, and is still showing on Roadworks.org as a new cabinet being installed next week.

I checked on another local cabinet today, which is scheduled to have a new cabinet installed this week, and today what looks like a Huawei 288 /384HD FTTC cabinet has been stood alongside the original ECI cab. It was dark and raining, and I was driving so couldn't get a photo, but it's much larger than the existing ECI cab, and looks like the one in John's photo above as far as I can tell/remember. There's also another scheduled towards the end of January.

[Chrysalis]

Seems you may have got lucky then ronski

Wont happen for me as I already have 2 ECI cabs and from what I can tell openreach never seem to deploy 3rd cabinets.

[j0hn]

The Scottish Roadworks website isn't that detailed unfortunately. All works show on a map but the info for each only shows the company, dates booked, and if it's low/medium/high impact works. There's absolutely no info on what's scheduled to be done.