"Unfortunately not. We can’t move a line that’s already connected to a home or business from one cabinet to another."
From personal experience, I can say that this is not strictly true - although I may have been very lucky!
I have had FTTC since it became available in my area. Unfortunately, due to the build history of my estate my line was served by a cabinet over 650 metres away, via a couple of notoriously bad joints, and with a lump of aluminium cable in the middle! My best sync speed ever was around 44MBits, but it was never stable and forever cutting out and going really slowly. Openreach were regular visitors to me to try to resolve the problem, but one of them told me that to fix my line he had to open up one of the bad joints which would probably knock someone off in the process. Sure enough, a few days later my line would go bad again and the process would cycle round.
This went on for over 6 years, and did not seem to have an end in sight. I regularly pointed out to Openreach that there was another cabinet, (same exchange), 50 metres from my front door whose fibre cables went through the footway box directly across the service road from the end of my drive. All it would take would be for them to dig across the service road and up my short front garden and the problem would be resolved permanently. "Can't be done" I was always told, "that will never happen". Until one day I was talking to the latest Openreach engineer to come out to resolve the ongoing issue. It transpired that he was some sort of super engineer, (or whatever they call them), who was able to delve deeper in to repeat faults, with the authority to make recommendations within Openreach. After lots of testing, including for radio interference, he said he would put in a proposal for a "lift and shift" of cabinet. Surprisingly, this was accepted and the work was completed just before the first lockdown last year. I now get stable 80/20.
I did wonder though if Openreach's final decision was influenced by the fact that a couple of weeks earlier, CityFibre had installed in my area and dug across the service road right next to where Openreach's duct went!
