This last 6 months i have had to learn an awful lot about the reasons behind which BT cabinets are being enabled for FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet).
Living in the Cotswolds has proved to be an interesting learning curb about the problems that are faced in making your nearby cabinet enabled for fibre broadband.
What is fibre broadband and how does it work?
Many of my customers do not understand the basics of how will being superfast broadband to your house.
Simply put a fibre optic cable has to be linked to a new larger fibre cabinet near to the original cabinet where your existing copper line is routed to.
Your existing copper lines then carry the new superfast broadband to your house, using a new type of router (Vdsl) to connect to the new fibre service.
The fibre can either be connected to a phone exchange or a main route of fibre cable nearby that BT own. Many main roads have had fibre cabling in them for years and this can mean that if your village or town has easy access to the road it will be cheaper to connect to that using splicing equipment than link to the main phone exchange.
Why is my cabinet not being enabled with fibre?
This can be quite annoying when you find out that your cabinet is not getting fibre broadband. These are reasons that i found out so far.
In the Cotswolds all projects are council funded with the BDUK scheme.
They may see that there are just not enough clients on the cabinet and it is not worth doing.
The cabinet could be just to old and not enough expansion capacity therefore proving to expensive to upgrade.
There is no easy route for fibre to get there with no ducting underground etc.
I have been told i have an exchange only line and wont get superfast broadband what does that mean?
If you have an exchange only line (eol) that means there is no cabinet for your phone line, it links straight to the telephone exchange. This means in council funded projects that you have to hope they are going to cater for exchange only lines and will put in an cabinet near to the exchange.
We are not getting funding from the council we wont get superfat broadband?
If you have exhausted all avenues and there will be no funding for your area, dont give up, maybe residents in your area share the same interest and you can raise enough finances to contact the BT private funding dept. They have the ability to install FTTC funded directly by you.
My neighbours get superfast fibre broadband why cant i get it?
They can be on a different cabinet to you, their cabinet may be enabled and yours is not. Enter your phone number into this line checker to find out if you are on a cabinet, which cabinet number or if you are an exchnage only line.
http://dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput
I am to far away from the cabinet to get FTTC?
Alas you will have to wait for technology to get better over a longer distance.
Fibre seems to work safely about 1500 meters to maybe 2000 meters after that it fades away.
I cant find information about my area for fibre broadband?
If you are not happy with what your local council or fibre broadband info website, then just email the council, they will have all the cabinets listed and a rough time of how long before they get enabled.
I spent many weeks tweeting my local fastershire website and i was not happy with the answers they gave, they always seem to just say refer to the website, you can check on the BT when and where website too. I found the answers directly from the council were a lot more informative.
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
Good luck to all with their hopes of having superfast FTTC broadband.
