Is it possible for a exchange / cabinet to be "full"?

[cocksy_boy]

Evening all,

I've recently moved house and was still in contract with Sky broadband so moved the package with me. I had fibre at my old house (albeit not very fast), but was told it was not available at my new house. I looked into it a little when I moved but decided to just stick with sky until the end of my contract, which I am now.
I looked into virgin media, as my friend who lives about 200m away can get full speed virgin, but they don't do it to my house, even though it's only 10 years old, and significantly newer than the street he lives on! No one else on my small cul-de-sac or the other new one next to it can get virgin either, which is slightly confusing, but never mind.

So looking on Uswitch and a bunch of other comparison sites, openreach fibre is available at my house. But when talking to sky, they said its not. So after some digging, the assistant advised there is no space in my cabinet; I was told "its full". So my questions are:

1. If the cabinet is full, will that just be Sky's allocation of fibre slots, or will that be all allocations in the cabinet? i.e. if I go to another ISP could they have additional "slots" or is it that once the cabinet is full, its full to all ISPs?
2. Is there any way to check this and / or get notified when there is space - the Sky rep said there was no way I could do it with Sky - is there any other way I can do it?
3. Is there any way to request more "slots" at the cabinet?

This all seems a little odd and not very 21st century, so just wondering if I've been told a fast one to get me off the line, or is there really is nothing I can do about it! Cheers.

[peterb]

It depends who 'owns' the cabinet. If its Sky, it may be that there is no space for an additional line interface card. If its an Openreach cabinet and Sky are renting space in it, again they may have used up all their space. If it is an Openreach cabinet, other ISPs might have a fibre service available, provisioned by Openreach. Your contract would be with the ISP, of course.

One way to find out is to see if BT could supply a fibre based service.

[BobF64]

The BT checker ( http://dslchecker.bt.com ) might tell you. When I moved house, it showed that Fibre was "unavailable", then that there would be more capacity installed in the cabinet from a certain date, which slipped, then it became available.

It could also be that your cabinet hasnt been upgraded and is just showing up as full, for example if it was installed for a new estate with few houses on it.

[cocksy_boy]

I've checked a bunch of sites and found that BT and Plusnet said they both had space and could give me fibre, as well as a number of others.
What are people's experiences with BT / Plusnet?

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[ik9000]

I looked into virgin media, as my friend who lives about 200m away can get full speed virgin, but they don't do it to my house, even though it's only 10 years old, and significantly newer than the street he lives on! No one else on my small cul-de-sac or the other new one next to it can get virgin either, which is slightly confusing, but never mind.

it's not unknown for cul-de-sacs to either 1) be private streets not local authority or 2) have applied vetos on when resurfacing is permitted (due to only one way in/out).

TLDR = culde sacs and private roads, not uncommon for virgin to not touch them. More details below:

If 1) then the utility company cannot just rock up and dig it up - it needs consent of the owner. In some cases this responsibility is split between the homeowners, and they have some sort of committee to deal with it. If a more recent development it's not uncommon to find this is a private company. And if so, and they're not on the ball, good luck trying to get anything done. They'll happily take your ground rent and then often do SFA to help you with stuff like this. Unless of course they sign an exlcusivity agreement with one of the providers so they can get paid a nice fat royalty. Then they just force the work on you - and charge you for repairing the road at the same time.

I used to live on a private (council HA owned) road and virgin couldn't touch it. 217 flats, they wanted to target but HA had signed deal with sky, so no BT fibre or virgin cable allowed. Despite my flat being right by the road (so wouldn't have to had used the internal service routes in the building) Virgin could not do anything to the private road without consent. Ergo no-go.

if 2) then it often dates back to when the last work in the cul-de-sac was done. My friend has another 2 years left before any work can be done in their street since it was resurfaced relatively recently. The water authority has been told it cannot even install water meters. the main street has them, but they have to wait until 2019.

If it really bugs you check the deeds and terms of your lease(if applicable) and see who has responsibility for the road and its maintenance. Contact the local authority and find out if the road has been adopted by the local authority as a public highway, or whether it is classed as a private road. It sometimes even states this on the street sign.

[ik9000]

The BT checker ( http://dslchecker.bt.com ) might tell you. When I moved house, it showed that Fibre was "unavailable", then that there would be more capacity installed in the cabinet from a certain date, which slipped, then it became available.

It could also be that your cabinet hasnt been upgraded and is just showing up as full, for example if it was installed for a new estate with few houses on it.

yeah same story with me. Virgin was only option when I moved in (other than ADSL). Sadly, the speed of any fibre other than Virgin is 1/3 of what I currently get so not really inclined to move, despite the annual price hiking.

It depends who 'owns' the cabinet. If its Sky, it may be that there is no space for an additional line interface card. If its an Openreach cabinet and Sky are renting space in it, again they may have used up all their space. If it is an Openreach cabinet, other ISPs might have a fibre service available, provisioned by Openreach. Your contract would be with the ISP, of course.

One way to find out is to see if BT could supply a fibre based service.

In the old flat when I couldn't get virgin I tried to go with Be but was told they couldn't help as the exchange was full. And it was. No point even trying to use adsl - over subscribed as anything. We went 4G in the end as it was the only way to get anything half decent. Data capped but better than poking sticks in your eyes.

[cocksy_boy]

Thanks for the replies.. currently looking like I'll change to BT and just making sure my sky q mini box will keep working with BT. Think it will but won't work as an access point which is a little frustrating, but never mind

[mycarsavw]

Belated answer...

I recently lost one of our ISDN lines. After a lot of panic and checking of internal equipment I called our provider, who called BT, who called OpenReach who, it transpired, had run out of available pairs in the cabinet for a new connection on a Saturday and decided just to unplug some (ours!).

[cocksy_boy]

Belated answer...

I recently lost one of our ISDN lines. After a lot of panic and checking of internal equipment I called our provider, who called BT, who called OpenReach who, it transpired, had run out of available pairs in the cabinet for a new connection on a Saturday and decided just to unplug some (ours!).

Well that was nice of them! I managed to change to BT Fibre (not sure they are the best provider, but the deal was good) - I should be switching over in a couple of days.

[spacein_vader]

Belated answer...

I recently lost one of our ISDN lines. After a lot of panic and checking of internal equipment I called our provider, who called BT, who called OpenReach who, it transpired, had run out of available pairs in the cabinet for a new connection on a Saturday and decided just to unplug some (ours!).

They did that to us. And by us I mean the local councils leased line. We weren't amused.