back to article BT's giant new faster broadband boxes blocked

BT has been forced to put the brakes on an ongoing pilot of faster broadband technology in north London because of protests from local residents, who say its new roadside cabinets are too big and ugly. Haringey Council has blocked BT from installing any further equipment on the leafy streets of Muswell Hill until it rethinks …

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  1. Olly Simmons
    Terminator

    Seinfeld, Ep 116

    NO FAST BROADBAND FOR YOU!!!

  2. MPT

    We'll have it down here

    I know where they can put their new kit if Muswell Hill doesn't want it.

    Down here in Cornwall. Pretty sure residents and businesses down here would love to be at the front of the que for decent infrastructure roll-out compared to the usual last in line for everything.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Muswell hill yah

    My router is small and slim and i can hide it from site, why can't BT do the same.

    Size isn't everything and nones impressed by BT anymore, hide it in an exchange, wtf do I have to pay 50p a month extra for this type of shite.

    And I bet they haven't applied for the proper planning permission.

    F+++ BT, F+++ Carphone warehouse/TalkTalk et al.

    The public own the country not f++++++ some money only whore company who only gives a shit about making the rich richer.

    For a fact TalkTalk only entered the market to make money not to provide a decent connection, BT balked at unbundling, balking now at having to upgrade their own network.

    If it wasn't for the public there would be no BT. At least Virgin/NTL and Sky fund there own expansions, but at a cost it sems their subscribers will pay. BT forces it down your neck, no options.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    and no soup either!

    If they dont want the cabinets, can they delivered up to postcode YO61 please.

    Thanks

  5. Lionel Baden

    WHAT !!!!

    Fuck it they can put 10 of them right infront of my place ...

    Please .......

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Conservation Area Advisory Committee

    Sounds like they don't use broadband.

  7. John Watkins
    Happy

    Gimme gimme gimme!

    If they don't want them, I know a street that does!

  8. Steve Loughran
    Thumb Down

    BT's War on Pavements

    Why is it that BT and other telcos think that pavements are just free space for their boxes and their vans. Here in Bristol, whenever the council widens a bit of pavement to make it safer to cross a busy road, BT or a mobile telco immediately try to take it over, as somewhere big enough for a mast, a couple of boxes and a van is exactly what they want.

  9. Wize

    There are plenty of areas who want their fast broadband

    Are there any complaints from those who want the cabinets?

    All these sort of protests just count the ones who are against it and make them look like the majority. Maybe we should find out who does want them. It may just be a majority.

  10. Michael 28
    Happy

    Lol! All we need.....

    ....is a survey by a group of London based Estate agents , saying that proximity to a fast exchange is more important than proximity to good schools and transport links, in both the letting market and the sales market, for studio flats to 4 bed houses.

    Who knows, it might even be true!!!!

    Might be one helluvan eye opener for the NIMBY residential committees in some areas.

    Maybe they might have to pay "hello money " to BT et al , if it was conclusively found to be true.

    (From the Evening Standard, 07 August 2012) Classifieds

    Lock-up garage, 4mx3m, own metered power supply, telecoms:

    Suit internet hobbyist /seedboxer ,100mtr from main high speed exchange (Muswell Hill)

    £650.00 pcm ono.

  11. codemonkey
    Happy

    Made me laugh..

    "For a fact TalkTalk only entered the market to make money "

    And why else does any other company set up!? Just cause they are kind. What nice folks. Making money is *always* a secondary consideration. From the folks in the Dragon's Den to McDonalds. They all have *us* in mind!

    Welcome to reality dude.

    I'm Connected - The Tea Chain says so :)

  12. JBullet
    FAIL

    @AC 11:49

    The obvious flaw in your "put it in an exchange" argument is... what would be the fuckin point?? These fibre optics are to get the data FROM the exchange to the street level.

    Try thinking before typing.

  13. Mike Watt
    Boffin

    Simple Solution

    "A BT spokeswoman said the new cabinets had to be larger because they needed powered electronics to convert the light signals transmitted over fibre optics to electrical signals to be transmitted to and from homes, over copper."

    So just replace the copper to the home with fibre, too. Screw 40Mb/s, let's all get 100Mb/s and up!

  14. Tom 15

    That's the flaw...

    That's the flaw with FTTC, maybe they should rethink FTTH ;)

  15. WinHatter
    WTF?

    No ugly

    Can we see the face of the conservationists ??? So I can decide if they are un-ugly enough to walk the streets of Muswell Hill !!!

  16. Damien Thorn
    Boffin

    the mind boggles.

    There is a very simple solution that the post office solved nearly 100 years ago.

    Dig a hole, 0.8m, put connections and stuff that doesnt need checking/altering there, and then put the accessible stuff higher up, thus cabinet is 1.0m off ground.

    Width issue - muswell hill has narrow paths, but all the boxes are right on peoples gardens, just give the home owner free fibre broadband and put the box back a foot into there garden solved.

    And where its not possible just do what they have done since the war - use 2 boxes side by side.

    As for the prams, well thats the internet faster internet = more prams roflmao.

  17. Sceptical Bastard
    Flame

    Bloody typical!

    Britain tries to drag its telecoms infrastructure up from third-world status and what happens?

    Some bunch of poncey monied NIMBYs (who probably think dial-up is fast enough as they only use the internet for petitioning their local council) deny their neighbours a vital step in faster online access.

    Come the (technological) revolution, those bastards will be lined up in front of their bloody Chelsea tractors and gunned down like the selfish scum they are.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @Muswell Hill yah

    RE: "hide it in an exchange".

    They (BT) are trialling Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). Putting the cabinet in an exchange is the opposite of the point of the trial.

    You then swear all over the place, making fairly pointless arguments.

    Cock.

    That is all.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Anonymous Coward 11:49 GMT

    Be quiet fool

  20. Jelliphiish
    Coat

    ref the property values

    if a customer speaks to me and has exceptional bb speeds, i often pop them a spot of advice about adding such details to their property advice pack or whatever they callt hem. it would certyainly be a question i would ask when viewing property..

    as muswell hill: pah, who cares. conservation area? does that extend to the typw of car you are allowed to drive? ge trid of those ugly modern cars..pre 1940s models only to suit the rest of the borough's mentality..

  21. MnM

    Put the cabinets in Starbucks

    If you don't have a starbucks near you, it's the life you chose

  22. AchimR
    Thumb Up

    Alexandra Palace

    Would be a good spot for those cabinets *laugh*

  23. Ocular Sinister
    WTF?

    I live in Muswell Hill....

    ...and apart from an obscene amount of roadworks, I've not seen any sign of this fast broadband. I guess I have to be a BT Broadband customer to benefit. And they are more than welcome to stick a big ugly box outside of my ugly little box flat.

  24. Dobs
    Black Helicopters

    oh dear

    I live in Muswell hill and this doesn’t half make me laugh. I can see the yummy mummies stampeding up the streets, getting stuck on the street furniture with their stupidly oversized push chairs...

    I gave up on BT years ago...

  25. Dr. Mouse

    Is it just me?

    I know that there ould be some issues, but...

    Why not bury it? Cab is 1.8m tall, dig a hole 1.8m down and big enough that a person can get in too, cover as per manholes, put a small cab on top to deal with cooling. Simples.

    I know it's not as simple as that, but it's a good solution IMHO

  26. this
    Happy

    Why not make it look nice?

    You know, thatched roof, mock tudor beams etc. Lovely.

  27. Karnka
    WTF?

    Virgin Media...

    I'm thinking of the famous 'Telewest' green street cabinets here... They've been around for > 10 years and are the end points for their fibre.

    They're not 1.8m tall.

    Am I missing something?

  28. Alex Rose

    @AC "Muswell hill yah"

    To describe spelling as utterly retarded would leave me no with adequate description of your ability to actually read and comprehend the article in question.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    @ The Muswell Hill yah muppet.

    "My router is small and slim and i can hide it from site, why can't BT do the same"

    Well take you router + power, multiply by 100 or more (number of houses it will serve). How samll is it now?

    Size isn't everything and nones impressed by BT anymore, hide it in an exchange, wtf do I have to pay 50p a month extra for this type of shite.

    As mentioned before. This is the opposite end of the exchange, i.e your mummys home end

    And I bet they haven't applied for the proper planning permission.

    Don't have to. Only becuase it's a conservation area is there a problem.

    F+++ BT, F+++ Carphone warehouse/TalkTalk et al.

    So who do you use for phone line 9sorry who does your mummy use?). Or has someone been disconnected for making calls to the old lady down the road?

    The public own the country not f++++++ some money only whore company who only gives a shit about making the rich richer.

    Actually, here's the shock, the people do NOT own the country, the vast majority of land is not owned by the public. If you belive otheriwse, can we come and shit in your (moms) garden, after all, we own it, so why not?

    For a fact TalkTalk only entered the market to make money not to provide a decent connection, BT balked at unbundling, balking now at having to upgrade their own network.

    Wow private business wnats to make money. Shock horror!

    If it wasn't for the public there would be no BT. At least Virgin/NTL and Sky fund there own expansions, but at a cost it sems their subscribers will pay. BT forces it down your neck, no options.

    And how do your think NTL and Sky talk to the rest of the population? Magic pixie dust? How much do you think your subscribtion would be if Sky / NTL actually paid for every mile of copper BT own that they use (they pay flat rates regardless of where the call is routed? How much do you think it would cost if these actually moved out of the large, high density, profitable cities and into smaller towns and villages? I reckon a few hundred quid a month.

    So go crawl back under your stone, do some reading up and come out to play when you can string a comprehensive argument together.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Wrong point of view

    BT are placing large boxes in the public foot path without regard to the feelings or desires of the residents.

    Yes the residents want the service. No they do not want their paths taken over by big green BT boxes. These paths are for the daily use of the residents, and that includes prams pushchairs and wheelchairs.

    My wife uses a wheel chair and I have had enough of having to push her along the road because some mindless idiot has blocked the pathway. Whether that be with a Comms box, Pile of sand, parked car (get loads of scratches on those), skip, rubbish boxes / bags, etc.

    The residents have accepted the smaller boxes so why didn't BT model the new kit on those? So BT shrink your street boxesand every one will be happier.

  31. Andrew Culpeck

    Dig a whole..

    .. may be the answer but it may not. First off their is the question of what is the ground under the box. Most streets are full of pipes and wires. secondly their is the problem of what goes in the bottom of the cabinet. Thirdly their is the question of how you maintain that which is in the bottom of the cabinet. Having sead this I dont know why they cant lie the cabinet on its side. 1.8 meters is very tall! There is also a coserted effort to reduce street architecture so I simpavise with the residents on this.

  32. Jasmine Strong
    FAIL

    "why can't they make it small like my router?"

    Because your router doesn't have to handle lightning, homeless people, vandalism, floods, hot summers, freezing conditions, the occasional car crash, or, oh, fifty subscribers worth of pirate movies and pornography.

    Just you, which only counts as "vandalism" and maybe two or three normal people's allowance of porno.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Harringey

    If they'd actually done any research into their trial area at all before building these things, they would have found out immediately that parts of Muswell Hill are mostly populated by well off busy bodies who spent large amounts of time objecting to anything and everything. Quite amusing really since Muswell Hill is in Harringey, a borough which is notorious for dreaming up expensive hair-brained schemes aimed at improving the lot of its residents but which would normally have the opposite effect. (case in point, its intention to turn the entire borough into one great big CPZ, which we in nearby Hornsey have fought off twice now)

    Usually these things are stopped at the last minute by furious objections from Muswell Hill or Crouch End, but not before the council has blown loads of money on the scheme first. In a way I love that the people won't just bend over and take it from the local authority or companies with dubious intentions. Sometimes justice is trampled anyway, as was the case with the recently green-lighted concrete factory to be built in a residential area near schools thanks to the proximity of a railway siding.

  34. Tim 35

    Technology need not necessitate ugliness

    Advances in technology shouldn't just make the place look like a dump. I guess people objected to the red phoneboxes when they came out but they definitely look a fair bit nicer than the exchange boxes. And people are prepared to deal with the hassle of digging up roads so that we don't have a mess of cables running over our heads.

    If you're upgrading the infrastructure you might as well spend a bit of money on digging holes to hide things and employing some designers to make what does stick out complement the scenery rather than a necessary evil.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @NIMBY people

    Speaking as someone who lives in a conservation area, you have to accept certain disadvantages (no sat dishes in view, you can't do what you want to visible parts of the house etc) for the overall advantage of living somewhere that has been selected for it's niceness.

    I hardly think it's NIMBYism to to not want the front of your grade two listed building (or preservation ordered building) to not have a large out of place green monolith placed outside it. The streets in the area where I live do have a single small greenbox, it's not particularly offensive, but if it were 1.8m tall it would block light out of the nearest house and be pretty ugly. Not to mention taking up a large area on the very narrow footpath. Like someone mentioned above, a little lateral thinking on the part of BT and placing the box as much underground as possible would probably be a good solution, it's not as if conservation areas are rare.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Deliver one to...

    KY11...

    We (or more so me..) will happily have on in my back garden if it means faster broadband!

    I for one welcome our 1.8m tall faster broadband delivering boxed overlords... (had to be said)...

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm, wonder if this argument will work in Brighton's conservation areas?

    BT boxes? No, BHCC's bins.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @Karnka

    Exactly what I was thinking. There's a green Diamond Cable cab across the road from me, it's not that tall.

    This smacks of BT being shite as per usual - swing and a miss.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bring them up north

    You know, where we have ample sized pavements and plenty of trees to hide them amongst and would enjoy getting more than the pathetic 512kbps - 1mbps we're allowed at the moment.

  40. Anonymous Hero
    FAIL

    @AC - 11:49 - "Muswell hill yah "

    Jeez....what hole in the ground did you crawl out of. Bozo and Retard bit's flipped for you my boy.

    "My router is small and slim and i can hide it from site, why can't BT do the same." - *facepalm*.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    dig a hole

    and then put the gubbins on a little slidy thing, like those power points you see in new kitchens and in the middle of meeting room desks. It would look pretty cool.

  42. Chris Mears

    Better things to do

    Hmm, Haringey district council. That name rings a bell. Shouldn't they be focussing their energies on child protection not street furniture.

  43. MinionZero
    Happy

    1.8 metre-tall cabinets

    Dig a 1 metre deep hole, problem solved.

    Also considering how bad my Internet connection is as home currently, then I wouldn't mind them building it 18 metres tall and I live inside the cabinet!.

  44. Annihilator

    @AC "Muswell hill yah"

    In addition to all the other people who rightly point out you've got poor logic, read up on who paid for the NTL/Virgin infrastructure ultimately. It may surprise you. As for Sky, it doesn't own it's infrastructure. Its sats are owned by Astra, it's broadband is provided over BT infrastructure, and it's unbundled some of the local loops - much like a whole host of other ISPs.

    An idea, a little knowledge and a keyboard - bad combo it seems

  45. Hardcastle
    Welcome

    Whiney little richy biznitches...

    ...in an uppity neighborhood whining about having a 5 foot tall box of fiber-to-copper kit close by; I just wasted a perfectly good mouthful of coffee upon reading that shite. I'm in that gray zone between exurbia and boondocks where you're just glad you're within the zone to get 1.5 Mb DSL. I would be thrilled to cordon off a sector of outyard for my ISP to put in a fiber-fed node and the building/shed to house it in exchange for a gratis FiOS connection and service, and my chow says that he would keep the vandals away too. There again, maybe the best bet is to just let these crybabies take the piss over these boxes while the vast majority who would welcome the faster connection contacts the ISP to let them know where the boxes would be welcomed with open arms.

  46. Julian 3
    FAIL

    Luddites Live Again

    Bunch of fucktards. Switch them all back to dial as punishment!

  47. Hywel
    FAIL

    Typical Muswell Hill A*ses

    Typical from the yummy mummies and liberal media dads who litter the streets of Muswell Hill! After all, Muswell Hill is not exactly attractive, is it? And it's stuffed to the brim with BMW X5s, off-road pushchairs and double decaf lattes. Although the Chinese Takeaway next to the cinema has always been pretty good.

    'FAIL' because NIMBYs are good at standing in the way of improvements in the world. I suppose they'd rather the exchanges were replaced with Agas.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This article is useless..

    ..without a picture.

  49. Mike Bird 1

    new skin

    Give them a nice fashionalble "brickwork" skin.

    That or paint them green.

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yeah, well....

    I think North London residents are big and ugly, now gimmie some superfast broadband!

  51. Bernie 2

    Anything that makes it hard...

    for career mums to push those articulated lorries they call prams down the street is a good thing in my book.Make them 100 meters tall and 3 meters wide with a big middle finger drawn on the front.

    If people can have a selfish "my baby is more important than everyone I inconvenience on a daily basis" attitude then BT can have a selfish "decent internet speed is more important than your baby" attitude.

    QED

  52. Dave Jewell
    Happy

    Thermionic broadband?

    1.8 metre high cabinets? What are BT using these days - valves? I suppose the homeless could cluster round the cabinets on a cold winter's night to keep warm..... ;-)

    Dave

  53. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Karnka

    Telewest solved the problem by putting a box every 6 feet or so (ok maybe an exaggeration, but they put them on nearly every street corner). The cable companies also had a lot more money to spend so in some places could afford to bury the kit. As most of them went bankrupt (some more than once), you can see the success that business plan had.

    BT PCPs usually number far fewer (most places have less than 10 per exchange area), so they have to handle more far more lines. It is difficult to make the technology smaller as an engineer still has to be able to get his chubby fingers in the kit. Add to that the usual anti-vandal countermeasures, and the kit starts to become pretty sizable.

    As most people think that £20 a month for broadband is already too expensive, you can see why it can be difficult to double the installation cost...

    FTTH isnt without its problems either, you have to put a powered box in the customers home, which means either using their power (not allowed under universal service obligations) or providing power via copper wire. The latter method combines all the problems of copper wire vs fibre technology.

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    hmmm

    They really dont understand that fibre is better for the enviroment than copper then??

    I do wonder how people like this think that the world is going to develop. a slightly larger greenbox next to another is hardly going to kill anyone. Maybe they still send letters and use that ceefax thing?

    I say shoot the fakoors. I wish i could get the FTTC in my area but even with the accelerated SYDR program i have to wait till 2011 :(

    However the idea above of plonking the cab in my house sounds like a good one, i would give up a bit of my front lawn for a nice green box at the edge of my land for free tinterweb at full speed as well. ahhh i love day dreams....

    Paris, cos just like her common sense doesn't come to these hill billys and BT....

  55. Hector K Spankthrust III
    Flame

    Ah yes we have a lesser spotted Brighton nimby on here

    To the AC at 12:53.. So you are the kind of person that was agains the bins and preferred the rotting food, nappies and seagulls troughing on old jam rags on Brighton's streets then, good for you.

  56. Baldychap

    For those who suggest digging holes...

    When it rains, these holes tend to fill with water. OK for some copper wire in sealed casings, probably not so good for powered fibre optic stuff.

  57. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Damien Thorn re: the mind boggles

    Yes, there's that, and there's the option of BT 'renting' the tiny bit of land that they use for their new boxes from those who are happy to have a box by the fence (on the inside).

    BT goes for the path of least resistance first, i.e. public land, even if the land owners were to say 'yes please', they are also bound by the conservation groups (when you buy in a conservation area you have to agree to the covenants that are demanded by the conservation groups).

    So even if you were to own your property, you'd still have to do it the way the conservation group wants it, and if they don't want the box, there's nothing YOU can do about it (other than drag it through the courts).

  58. Adam T

    40Mbps?

    They call that next generation? at £1.5billion

    /laugh

  59. Blue eyed boy
    Unhappy

    Haringey council eh?

    Presumably checking out the proposed boxes and making rulings thereon, took a higher priority than protecting Baby P.

  60. Pheet

    Maybe they've a point...

    Conservation areas mean restrictions mostly on residents. Boris Johnson had to get rid of his shed on the balcony pretty sharpish recently.

    If people are restricted in what they can do with their own homes, then similar rules should also apply to private companies wanting to build in the area (What's good for the goose, etc.) . BT isn't motivated by altruism, after all.

    The solution is for BT to design a new box * that matches the area (Victorian or whatever), and for the extra cost to be (partly) shared equally by the residents . The area remains conserved, people have access to faster internet, and BT aren't too much out of pocket. The alternative design can be reused in other conservation areas of a similar period, so it would make sense in the longrun.

    *

    (The contents of the box is the expensive part, and that doesn't need to massively change. )

  61. Paper

    uhh?

    Yes 1.8 m is too tall to have in the middle of a street. Can't we just lie them on their sides against fences? Otherwise couldn't they just bury 0.8 m of the box?

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Simple.

    Put flowerboxes on top with the sort of plants they put in hanging baskets. No idea what they're called, but the locals will love them, looks all rustic. Additional benefit is it encourages bees and delivers the little stinging insects neatly at head height to those pesky locals and to BT engineers. What's not to like?

    Alternative is to do what they do with mobile phone masts in forest parks and disguise them as something already in that habitat. In Muswell Hill that means paint the broadband boxes to look like crappily parked G-Wizzes and no one would ever be able to tell the difference.

  63. Karim Bourouba

    Silly

    Can't BT just paint lovely pictures on the boxes, or get someone else to do it so that it becomes civic art or something?

  64. james newcombe
    Thumb Up

    Jasmine Strong

    That was a good answer, ha ha ha

  65. Richard 20
    Megaphone

    Other ugly boxes

    I don't get it. If these people are Luddite enough to block the cabinets in their area then why don't they organise a campaign against those other ugly boxes on four wheels which are habitually parked at the kerbside.

    Personally I'm against the nasty Euro-boxes blocking my view of some perfectly formed telco cabinets usually decked-out in a rather snazzy battleship-grey.

  66. Bod

    Re: Virgin Media...

    Those old cable cabinets were only designed for analogue TV + phone line though. They still are like that, which is why some people find Virgin (formerly NTL, formerly... etc) connections can be tremendously unstable when digital TV and broadband is applied.

    Unlike BT's copper to home, the connections from cabinet to consumer in terms of TV and broadband work by essentially a big coax cable of the old thick-ethernet style, complete with noise, interference, and is affected by neighbouring connections, especially unterminated ones (much like thick-ethernet).

    The best solution to connect to houses for digital is fibre, next best is dedicated copper / twisted pair. The worst is noisy coax, which is what cable companies use from cabinet to home. Great for a crappy analogue TV picture. Rubbish for digital.

    BT's cabinets likely have a lot of electronics in there that the old green cable cabinets have, and a dedicated connection to every house. Cable cabinets only have dedicated phone lines. The coax is shared in a loop with spurs essentially.

    Anyway, how are BT going to stop the kids kicking the crap out of the boxes like they do with the cable cabinets?

  67. Andy Neillans
    Boffin

    Pics

    The missing pics.

    http://modular-solution.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/fttc-ipswich-1.jpg

    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4011-aaisp-connects-first-business-on-bt-fibre-to-the-cabinet-pilot.html

    Personally I wouldn't be bothered if they wanted to stick one on my road - it's no bigger than some of the other stuff lurking on our pavements!

  68. Rob Beard
    WTF?

    Sod it

    Sod it, I say take the buggers out, leave the ungrateful sods with slow broadband and then redeploy them out to the rural areas and to areas where there are folks who can't get decent speeds and are crying out for something like FTTC.

    Rob

    (Happy with his 20 Meg Virgin broadband, who has real sympathy for those who are on slow connections)

  69. Frank Bough
    WTF?

    Hello Cretins

    In case any of you don't understand what a Muswell Hill street looks like, have a a watch of Shaun of the Dead and then inform us all EXACTLY where you can plant something as big as a 40U rack on those pavements without COMPLETELY fucking up their utility. And BT want to do this to install pornband inadequate for the needs of today, let alone tomorrow.

    I get 50Mbps via Virgin right now and the cabinet is about 1x1x0.3m.

    WTF is wrong with BT?

  70. Mark Milaszkiewicz

    i'll have one

    1.8m tall box... put it in my back garden if i can get 40mbps

  71. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    1.8m tall?

    The new cabinets aren't that much taller than the old ones & they're definitely shorter than I am, maybe 1.5m? They are wider though (to cope with the powered electronics & battery backup.

  72. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @ Rob Beard

    Presumably you are happy to have an electricity pylon and phone mast in your garden.

    No? Then no electricity or mobile phone for you.

  73. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    conservation area?

    just an excuse to moan?

    if they really wanted to restore the area to its natural or original state I assume they would be demanding the removeal of

    Road Services

    Sewers + Sanitation

    Electritiy and Gag

    Telephone Poles

    Post boxes

    the list goes.....

    of course take this to its logical conclusion should there be a policy to revert back to its natural state of farm land, heath land , wood land etc?

    They could put these up in Elmbridge District Council Area, we dont use paths - we drive everywhere in 4x4s even to teh end of our driveways (which you couldnt see the box from anyway!)

  74. Bob H
    Boffin

    FTTP

    What about fibre to the pole, means more digging but you can probably get round the complaints by putting a modest size shoebox at the top of each pole in conservation areas?

  75. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the Answer

    Couldn't they compromise... on mock-tudor connection boxes?

  76. Robert E A Harvey

    @Karnka

    I suspect that the old 39" tall BT wire cabinets would be banned these days under Health and Safety - Engineers having to bend down or sit on the pavement is just asking for days off with back pain.

    I suspect that the 1.8m cabinets aer so they can work standing up!

  77. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TTIUWOP

    TTIUWOP

  78. Ben Tasker
    Joke

    AC @ 15:40

    "Electritiy and Gag"

    Didn't know they were into that kind of thing round there, thought it was more a conservative Missionary only

  79. wolfmeister
    Thumb Up

    typical muswell hill

    All BT needs to do is just start a rumour in the area that fibre connection increases your property price and the muswell hill brigade will be baying for 6 meter tall cabinets outside their property, trust me on that :)

  80. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Send 'em up to Milton Keynes

    I'd like ADSL up to 40 Meg instead of the cruddy 1 Meg and under I get at the minute as I'm so far from the exchange

  81. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    put them underground.....

    okay, if they have to convert the fibre to cab into copper rather than just going the whole hog and doing fibre to the home (FTTH) why dont they 'bury' the cabs below street level?

    when last in rural Spain i was out late after a long Tapas session and when i went back through

    the town square I saw a remarkable site...2 lorries emptying the bins...but the bins were fixed to the

    street..the street had actually been raised to expose big wheelie bins underneath street level...which then got emptied into the trucks.... not only were bins buried in the ground ideal for anti-terror (bomb wouldnt be above ground in metal bin) but smell etc vastly reduced.

    i can envisage datacabs being put into such underground raisable cavities....with looms of flexible copper and fibre to connect them (i cant find a decent picture or video of the underground cavity bins)

    oh, and heres another slightly simpler option...imagine the wheelie bins being a fixed cab instead.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-451172/The-bins-disappear-underground.html

  82. This post has been deleted by its author

  83. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    dialup was ok

    All this rabid obsession with destroying our environment just so people can get movies and porn quicker.

    well done Muswell hill.

    Shame there wasn't more objections when the streets and pavements were torn up to put cable in.

    The joke here is that by the time 100mb is commonplace the download of copyrighted content will be punishable by death.

  84. Alan Lewis 1
    FAIL

    @Jasmine Strong

    "Because your router doesn't have to handle...oh, fifty subscribers worth of pirate movies and pornography."

    Oh less of the piracy/porno attitude. High speed subscriber access is needed for many reasons, not least the increase in the number of simultaneous connections per household. Wherease 10 years ago it was just one, its now likely to be 3, and with the growth in IP video services and the number of Tvs shipping with ethernet and pre-programmed internet content retriveal, will increase further. Whats more, whereas in the past content has been sub-broadcast quality and at SD or less, 720 and 1080 HD services are available. Except in the UK, where even ADSL2 is insufficient to guarantee faultless viewing, of a single channel with no other inernet access. Add another family member wanting to watch another channel, and the demands grow.

    And of course BT will increase backhaul capacity to match. Not. The current infrastructure cannot cope with the demands of the current <8mb service (avg 3.5mb). What hope it would cope with, the current number of subscribers at 40Mb, let alone 100Mb, or god help BT an increase in access bandwidth *and* an increase the customer base.

  85. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    conservation.....

    well, if they are having that much of an issue over installing new technology... why not just rip out the whole telephone network.... and replace it with what ever communications technology they had at the time the area was built...

    there again.... they will complain about all the pigeon shit !!

  86. N 1

    Take a closer look.

    Doesnt look 1.8 metres tall to me from that photo. Thats as tall as me stood up. Id say more like 1.2 metres.

  87. This post has been deleted by its author

  88. RightPaddock

    Should have used FTTG

    The problems of providing power to the cabinet/node has been known for years. They should take the fibre to the gate. Then each premise can provide its own power to convert the optical signals on the fibre to/from electrical signals on the premises copper circuits. Also means you don't have 1,000's of cabinets strewn across the entire country for vehicles to drive into, goths to vandalise, burst water mains to flood etc etc.

    As for Muswell Hill, about 40 years ago Joni Mitchell wrote those immortal words "they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot", there's no reason not to do it again, is there?

  89. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ RightPaddock

    Requiring a user to provide their own power breaks the terms of BT's obligations under the Universal Service Obligations.

  90. Fandango
    Coat

    Seems a shame....

    Seems a shame to put these big ugly boxes in the street just so a few more people can surf for grot, post yet more 'hilarious' drunken photos on social-tard sites and get ripped off by websites selling fake trainers.

    Has anyone cottoned on to the possibility that all this extra bandwidth is in demand because so many of us are downloading acres of copyrighted material?

    At the risk of sounding like Bill with his 64k quote, I find 4mbps does me quite well thanks.

    This is just the sort of shit that PC World get up to, selling folk PCs with 40000000GB of RAM, 82-core processor, 9000TB drive just so they can check the sports results and rub one out when 'the missus' is down the bingo. Sigh.... has anyone seen my sheepskin?

  91. PenguinGoth
    Linux

    @RightPaddock

    <snip>

    goths to vandalise,

    </Snip>

    All I have to say really is - Prat!

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