Openreach will provide FTTC from 30,000 cabinets by end of 2014
Thursday 29 March 2012 10:04:21 by Andrew Ferguson

The Openreach FTTC investment programme should by completion at the end of 2014 reach some two thirds of the UK, and is expected to pass some ten million homes in 2012. This commercial investment programme while ambitious is generating some resentment by those who live in areas that have an FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) enabled exchange, but their specific cabinet has not been enabled. Something similar used to happen back in 2003 to 2005 when people keen to get ADSL for the first time, would complain that the neighbouring exchange offered ADSL, but theirs did not.

The scale of the task in rolling out FTTC is revealed by the following facts, Openreach has some 85,000 street cabinets spread around the UK providing telephone service, and it estimates that the FTTC programme will mean 30,000 FTTC cabinets are installed in around 1450 exchange areas. The amount of fibre installed to serve these cabinets is calculated as being 50,000 km.

In theory if your cabinet has not been enabled while others on your exchange have, then showing a good level of demand, i.e. 50 to 100 people committed to signing up to the service on a cabinet may help encourage Openreach to revisit an area and enable a cabinet. Also if your local authority is canvassing residents about its BDUK project, ensure that people in your area have filled in the survey.