Fibre To The Cabinet - FTTC

As part of BT’s modernisation plan, they have upgraded many areas to ‘Fibre to the Cabinet’ (FTTC), aka ‘Superfast broadband’.

• The cabinet is linked to the exchange via Fibre Optic cable, which has no loss of signal over distance.
• If you are provided internet via FTTC, you connect to equipment in the cabinet, not the telephone exchange.
• As the length of ’lossy’ cable between you and the exchange is much shorter, in theory your internet connection should be much quicker – up to 80Mbps
• The technology used means the signal drops off much more quickly over distance between the cabinet and your house compared to ‘old fashioned’ ADSL.

The reality of FTTC for Little Somerford

• The cabinets that provide the phone lines for Little Somerford are all a way outside of the village:
• The Malmesbury cabinet is by the Lea turn off on the B4042.
• The Seagry cabinet is in Great Somerford.
• The Brinkworth cabinet is in Brinkworth.
• This means that although all of these cabinets are ‘Superfast’ enabled, only those on the very edge of the village are close enough to order, and none get the ‘80Mbps’ that BT say, the reality is closer to 10Mbps!
• Those further into the village cannot order these services as they are too far away from the cabinets.

Further complications

• BT’s phone network is designed to run over copper cabling.
• Some of the cable in use in the village is actually aluminium, not copper.
• Aluminium was used in the 70’s/80’s as copper cable was too expensive.
• Aluminium corrodes and is brittle.
• Crackly lines and bad joints between cables (high resistance faults) all affect your internet connection.
• The problems get worse the faster the internet connection, as it’s more susceptible to line issues.
• The cost of replacing all of the cable with copper would likely be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds!