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[AngryMonkey]

Hi,
There are 3 cabinets in my area;
Cab 1: 200m away - FTTC due November
Cab 2: 300m away - FTTC due November
Cab 8: 1200m away - FTTC available now

I'm connected to Cab 8, so i've got fibre, but its further away from my house than 2 other cabs.

If I wait until Cab1 is FTTC enabled in November, then put in an order for a brand new BT line, can the engineer connect that line to Cab1, or is the cabinet determined by physical cabling buried in the road?

Thanks,
AM.

[licquorice]

Its determined by the physical distribution layout of the underground cables.

[j0hn]

The short answer is definitely not. Even if they could, they are not allowed to apparently. My line runs right past an FTTC enabled cabinet that most of my neighbours are connected to. After asking a number of times to get connected to the nearer cabinet I've accepted that this just isn't possible. It requires much more reconfiguring than you would expect, including changing the DP your line uses.

The only possibility of you being connected to the nearer cabinet is if OpenReach device to do some network rearranging when those cabinets go live. It most definitely can't be done upon request though. That's assuming your line even passes those cabinets, as it's very possible it runs in an entirely different direction.

[KIAB]

I had a similar problem, very poor speed, & other issues, stayed on same cab, but OR moved me to another pole, shortening the distance to the cab by several hundreds metre,as a result I went from 9-15Mb to 70Mb.
Took a few letters to Patterson, not much progress, so wrote to Sir Micheal Rake, who got things moving & had me moved.

[AngryMonkey]

Thanks guys. I take it that if I ask them to install FTTH (or FTTP whatever its called), even if i'm willing to pay the £3000 install charge they wont be able to do FTTH either?

[NEXUS2345]

They would more than likely be able to do it, but I would wait anyway as they are trialling a new install method which should be substantially cheaper.

[j0hn]

It entirely depends on the area of the country you are in and if your exchange is set up for it. only certain area have FTTPod (FTTP on demand). I'm not entirely sure how it works, I'm sure others could tell you more than me.

[TheKeymeister]

I'm in a similar situation, my cabinet is around 1200m away, but there's another one about 150m away that is also FTTC enabled.  The cab I'm connected to is in the middle of the village and serves a massive number of people and is nearly always over capacity for ordering FTTC, and the nearer cab just serves most of the estate I'm on and never seems to have capacity issues. 

As it was all paid for by the local authority superfast project type thing, I might suggest they move a couple of DP's over to the other one as it would alleviate the capacity issues at the main cabinet in the village for less outlay than adding a second cabinet (if it ends up being required, which I suspect it will).  I know it's not just a case of running new cable in and away we go, I understand there's a massive amount of jumpering and jointing as well.  I can't see it ever happening, as I know common sense doesn't apply at BT/OR (I used to work for them!) but having something more than a 21mbit FTTC connection would be lovely....

[Black Sheep]

Openreach don't work to 'Lovely feelings' though, Keymeister.

What one has to bear in mind, and what most folk don't do .......... is that if they do what you ask for ONE cabinet, ONE circuit, ONE whatever .............. then it sets a precedent for Openreach's ENTIRE cabinet estate !!

It is, and always has been a LEGACY product .......... you get what you're given based on the cable that has always fed your premises. Of course, there will be the odd anomaly, and no doubt someone will mention their sisters, best-friends, antipodean cousin who moved to the UK and got a change of routing .......... but these instances will be in the extremely low percentages.

Feel free to whinge and moan, that is your right  ............ but you have to try and see the bigger picture as I've pointed out above. 

[WWWombat]

@key
Sensible suggestion, but as @bs mentions, it costs.

Openreach aren't likely to set that precedent by themselves, funded by themselves (it undermines their entire BDUK plans), but there are indeed precedents for copper rearrangement - when funded by BDUK.

If you, and a bunch of properties can be upgraded from non-superfast speeds to superfast, then your local BDUK project should be open to the idea. You need to be in their intervention area to qualify, and the subsidy per home needs to be less than some other cabs in the county. Then they may be able to open Openreach's mind to the prospect.

It isn't common sense that needs to apply, but financial sense.

[Chrysalis]

Guys if I setup a stall where I was selling apples.

But you was not allowed to pick your apple instead I handed one to you, they would be in varying condition, including some rotten.  Would you consider it a fair trade?

I think whats happened here is that openreach have managed to convince people that it is not financially viable to do copper rearrangement, yet I know this has been done for people in the past and even in some batches of people, like a few streets as an example.  The fact it happened with BDUK is because those lucrative contracts require them to reach certain targets for homes connected, they couldnt do what they did on the commercial rollout which is to just say tough luck these X amount of properties go without because our cabling takes some weird zigzagged route.  As it is with BDUK copper rearrangement is cheaper in some cases than deploying more cabinets (and more fibre) which is no surprise.

Also when g.fast gets moving we will be seeing rearrangement with that as well, I dont see how they will rearrange just for g.fast customers so vdsl customers may benefit from g.fast copper rearranging.

So to those who want it done, keep pushing, the worst that can happen is they say no.  But dont give up because someone says it doesnt happen, because it does happen occasionally.

[Black Sheep]

You've more chance of getting an apple from Chrysalis.

[Ronski]

Exactly what TheKeymeister suggested has been done and mentioned on here recently, but I can't be bothered to go searching for the post. If it works in BTOR favor by freeing capacity in the over subscribed cabinet without costing too much then they may well carry out network rearrangement which suits them.

I really wish there was more competition to BTOR, because that attitude of that's all you're going to get so tuff luck is basically sticking one finger up at the customer! It really is about time it stopped being a LEGACY product!

[j0hn]

In circumstances where a copper rearrangement means the majority of those lines can suddenly purchase a more expensive product, or order a product they couldn't before, then it might be worth the cost of doing. For example moving lines that are out of range of FTTC to within its range, or from low FTTC range to G.Fast range. From that rearrangement they could sell considerably more of their products. It probably wouldn't be cost effective to do such rearrangements just to bump current FTTC speeds though. Increasing download speeds to keep the EU on the same product could actually cost more in bandwidth.

I do think that more copper rearrangements should be happening for those areas where it would make a huge difference to hundreds of lines. Over 300 lines pass in front of my local cabinet and travel another 400m to the next cabinet. This takes most of those 300 lines out of G.Fast range.

[TheKeymeister]

Openreach don't work to 'Lovely feelings' though, Keymeister.

What one has to bear in mind, and what most folk don't do .......... is that if they do what you ask for ONE cabinet, ONE circuit, ONE whatever .............. then it sets a precedent for Openreach's ENTIRE cabinet estate !!

It is, and always has been a LEGACY product .......... you get what you're given based on the cable that has always fed your premises. Of course, there will be the odd anomaly, and no doubt someone will mention their sisters, best-friends, antipodean cousin who moved to the UK and got a change of routing .......... but these instances will be in the extremely low percentages.

Feel free to whinge and moan, that is your right  ............ but you have to try and see the bigger picture as I've pointed out above. 

Oh don't worry I understand entirely, as I said I worked for BT up until 2012 and from what I've heard it's only got worse since then...

I fully understand that the chances of my proposal happening are about as slim as a fag paper, and if it was that much of a good idea someone in capacity planning would have already done it.