Cabinets that don't have fibre - where does it come from?

[licquorice]

The only company upgrading the cabinet to FTTC would be Openreach. FTTP could be provided by Openreach or other fibre providers.

Physical distance to a node is only one factor in the cost of supplying FTTC/FTTP and doubt it would be the governing factor.

[halfhearted]

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@licquoricewrote:

The only company upgrading the cabinet to FTTC would be Openreach. FTTP could be provided by Openreach or other fibre providers.

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I see. Seems like my neighbours misunderstood. So the basic position is that there's no way round waiting for Openreach to put in an upgraded cabinet that has a fibre connection (either from Mile End or from some other exchange). Once they've done that then there may be other commercial services who will carry out FTTP connection for for a fee. Is that correct?

[CJT80]

@halfhearted 

You may want to have a look here about Fibre Availability - Questions about fibre availability (openreach.com) 

[licquorice]

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@halfhearted wrote:

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I see. Seems like my neighbours misunderstood. So the basic position is that there's no way round waiting for Openreach to put in an upgraded cabinet that has a fibre connection (either from Mile End or from some other exchange). Once they've done that then there may be other commercial services who will carry out FTTP connection for for a fee. Is that correct?

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The 2 things are entirely independent.  FTTP provision is not reliant on a cabinet being upgraded.

[halfhearted]

Interesting. What does it rely on?

[licquorice]

Just fibre infrastructure being provided from the serving node. FTTP doesn't come from the cabinet.

[licquorice]

This shows how.

[halfhearted]

I think I'm mixing up FTTC and FTTP. Am I correct in thinking that FTTC is a hybrid which consists of a fibre connection to an existing street cabinet & then use of the existing copper cable to the premises?

Are you saying that FTTP bypasses this altogether and simply makes a connection from a local serving node directly to the premises?

Does a serving node look like some other kind of cabinet on street level?

[licquorice]

See the diagram I posted. By serving node I mean the exchange containing the optical headend (OLT). The 32 way splitter is just an enclosure mounted on either a pole in overhead distribution areas or in joint box (manhole) in underground distribution areas.

[iniltous]

If your cabinet hasn’t been ‘upgraded’ to FTTC by now, then there probably is a ‘commercial’ reason, why not, upgrading a cabinet to FTTC is undertaken if it’s going to give a return on investment , possible reasons that make a return less likely are, if the cabinet serves very few residential customers, ( this could be if  cabinet mainly serves businesses and only a few non business lines ) or if the cab is in a relatively sparsely populated area, or ( not very common ) another company has already installed their own FTTC cab , ( called sub loop unbundling) it’s the same sort of setup  as OR FTTC, but it means OR cannot provide their own ‘fibre cab’ due to the ‘interference’ that would occur if two FTTC cabs were connected to the same copper cabinet....if this is the case , the only way to get FTTC would be from that other provider.