Following on from the Virgin Media street cab article, I came across a PCP last week with the doors left unlocked (and wide open to the elements!) I phoned it in to Openreach and it's already fixed, but as I had my camera...
This is a 'vintage' BT street cabinet, so no FTTC VDSL equipment. Still hoping to grab some close-up snaps of one of those, though given the cost of equipment in them I doubt I'd find an open one which wasn't vandalised. Who knows...
Some photos for your nerdy enjoyment:
Interesting to see 237A blocks in there, our local cab has a mixture of the old screw terminals, and the later 'thread the bundles of cable through the holes and use 8A connectors' type. I'm more than willing to send the photos if you're interested
Definitely Martin, I could stick them up on the article for comparison 🙂
That's not a particularly old PCP looks relatively new, and it does have fiber connected to it, all of the connections on the right hand side with the green and blue tops (representing Exchange and distrubtion side) are the ports that go over to the fiber DSLAM and back to the PCP to go back to the copper D Side. The yellow and blue are the jumpers that connect them from Copper E side to fiber D Side through the DSLAM out on fiber E side back to copper D Side. ☺ 🙂
Is it likely that this type of cabinet will be removed when the copper phone network is switched off in 2026?
Is it likely that this type of cabinet will be removed when the copper phone network is switched off in 2026?
I would have thought unlikely at least for a good decade. The copper core might be turned off in 2026 but I think we're going to end up with bridging solutions for a good few years where the copper portion of the voice network is moved to yet another street box - fibre supplying the street box and providing the trunk for voice calls and people's lines only being physically migrated as they gradually get a FTTP product installed.
And once the cabinet is not hosting any live services, just pop a new one down in its place and bingo! More capacity for fibre terminations!