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BT Fibre Pulls Out of Chelsea Over Ugly Equipment Cabinets
judgecorp writes "The up-market London borough of Kensington and Chelsea has lost its chance for BT fast fibre. After residents objected to the ugly fibre cabinets, and the council repeatedly refused permission to install them in historic sites, BT has said the borough will not get its fast BT Infinity product at all. The borough says it doesn't need BT, as Richard Branson's Virgin Media has got it more or less covered."
I've pulled out of a few ugly cabinets in my time.
But, really you should use a condom.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
TBH, those are fairly ugly. Seems there could be a market for disguising them just like they do some cell phone towers or simply having the city allow it to be put in spaces not out in the open.
Perhaps if they're painted like a police box, nobody will even notice they're present?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Seriously.
In my mind, I like to picture this spat ending with them shouting "INDUBITABLY!" at each other and throwing tea.
I would not use Virgin as an ISP if there was any sort of alternative -- I would rather stay at ADSL2 and accept a lower speed. Virgin: just say no!
From TFA:
Seems reasonable to refuse on those grounds alone.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
We even have very nice looking RBKC covers on the bins, thank you.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/airport-lounge/3067336668/?q=rbkc%20bins
They were designed by William Morris. Take your Land Rover cabinets back to Shepherd's Bush and Hammersmith...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Every time aesthetics trumps functionality I get just a little bit sadder.
Those cabinets aren't ugly, they look like your run-of-the-mill residential power transformers. If the council wants them to look different, they should commission someone to make a better cabinet, or design something that can be put over the existing one. Denying over 34,000 residences fast fiber connections is ridiculous.
This same issue came up over AT&T wanting to install boxes in SF. Google SF ATT Boxes.
As much as I hate NIMBY's, they have a good point here. If you're going to build something on public land, at least make it pleasant, unobtrusive, or both. Otherwise, buy the property and stop relying on the public to subsidize your business.
I still don't get why utility boxes have to be so ugly. How difficult is it to make a box look appealing?
Bitches.
Why not to building underground?
Are they afraid it will get filled with liquid or some crap?
That thing could be made tigh... wait that jokes in bad taste. But really, they could be sealed pretty easily without it being expensive or whatever other nonsense.
Simple example would be tough rubber on the sides of the lid that goes on top of the container. The edges of the lid go over the sides like a pringles can lid.
For any more rain to possibly become a problem, they town would actually be flooded by all definition.
Then if there was tiles, add hooks and place it back down on top. If cement or others, attempt to take the layer off without breakage and place a frame on it and hook it do. If not, make sure you have a few extra tiles backup that you can just slap down to make it look nice and not some beige generic lid.
Either that or you can be all fancy and make a nice lid design to slap down in the middle of a street. They are rich enough to do it, damn it.
It's not like they are building a bloody war bunker or something. Building a few feet under in less than a foot wide in to the ground is so easy a 10 year old could do it safely. (and I'm actually being serious there)
Why are they possibly complaining that their actual product would be safer underground, because they need to spend, what, 5 extra minutes having to remove the lid, disconnect the power from a master switch and lift the entire thing out?
Quite frankly, if they needed to do maintenance so much on something that should be industrial-scale secure and foolproof sounds quite amateur at best.
Eh, I dunno. Whatever. It is only BT. I gave up caring about them when their connection was dying 3-7 times a day for months. Note that 3 minimum. (Worst was it fell once during an Oracle Exam. If anyone has ever done one of those, you'd know they are attempt-based and you get 3 of them. IP reset and had to start again. BRILLIANT GUYS, BRILLIANT. Both terrible companies I wish were gone)
No fiber for you!! Next!!
Cue the people in that area complaining that BT's service is slow, or that they can't get it at all. They'll invariably blame BT, and won't consider that it was their own politicians who prevented them from getting service.
Now I wouldn't call those boxes particularly ugly, but I'm sure if the council was willing to work with BT something could be arranged.
I work for a telco providing fibre service in north america. Our boxes are slightly smaller than that I think (it's hard to get a sense of scale from the photo), and white, they are often hidden behind fences or shrubs, or in back alleys etc. As long as we have access to them, we don't really care what is done to conceal them. In some places they have been treated with a wrap of some form of artwork (one place I really liked was in a touristy part of a city where the box was turned in to a large map of the area, made something that had to be there anyway serve yet another purpose.)
The borough says it doesn't need BT, as Richard Branson's Virgin Media has got it more or less covered.
Yeah, and who needs competition, we all know monopolies are the best way to ensure low prices and good services, am I right?
I understand that the boxes may be ugly, but that statement is utterly moronic.
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Well some people will complain for the sake of complaining. However for a lot of people the appearance of their neighborhoods is more important then high speed internet. Especially for a technology that within a few years may be obsolete. Say more wireless. where those transmitters are hidden from general view.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I understand their complaint and it's reasonable. Just use a pretty box.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This seems to be as good a place as any to ask this: why are providers going with FTTC anyway, rather than FTTH (fibre-to-the-home)? These large cabinets are artifacts of FTTC -- at some point the fibre has to be broken out into bundles of dozens or hundreds of copper (coax or twisted-pair) drops that then need to be driven with enough power to push the signal for the last few hundred metres. Isn't this already a flawed approach? Moreover, this reduces the total bandwidth available between the local exchange carrier and the premises.
As I understand it, FTTC permits the provider to deliver high bandwidth services (at least by today's standards) at lower infrastructure costs then FTTH. However, this seems to be 'kicking the can down the road', to use the prosaic expression.
So, how much are the providers saving? For example, I've read it costs the National Grid on average 13 times more per mile to run 400 kV transmission lines underground as it does via pylons. Is there a similar figure that can be cited for the difference between FTTC and FTTH?
We seem to be living in a golden age of infrastructure underinvestment.
It is rather ironic, BT is the ex-monopoly and Virgin a private competitor.
because LA looks like a cesspool to begin with.
Or, from what I've been hearing (allow for a dump truck full of salt whenever "gloom and doom" meets "internet") it might go the other way, leaving those historic district types with a historic lack of access.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/spectrum-crunch
they are worried that the nanny wont be able to push the giant All Terain prama on the pavemnet (side walk) :-)
Richard Branson's Virgin Media has got it more or less covered
As a Virgin Media customer in Kensington, I can say that's a load of horsesh
I both of your assertions are incorrect.
Firstly, fibre doesn't become "obsolete", seeing as endpoints can be upgraded. You ignore that the speed of light is the universal speed limit. I'd really like to know how you can get 1Gbps out of 4G.
Secondly, for decent "wireless" (I assume you mean 3G/4G), you need towers that are quite visible. This doesn't even address the limitations of 3G/4G networks under heavy subscriber numbers.
The same faulty rationale is being used here in Australia to argue against the National Broadband Network.
A rich community and a rich company both not getting what they want.
I love it.
By the way, for people in the US, the _average_ house price in Chelsea is about £1.5 million, so well over 2 million dollars. The average semi-detached house price is £12 million. It's not a normal part of the the UK, by any means.
Sounds like AT&T uVerse to me:
If so, then some feedback from a (former) customer:
1. Your 'slightly smaller' white boxes are still too bloody big and too numerous, oh and a few of them actually blew up.
2. Your speeds and prices aren't actually all that competitive against Comcast, still claiming caps, still trying to bundle when all I want is internet.
3. Your TV service was absolute rubbish when I saw it. The main issue seemed to be the horribly designed Motorola DVR's running the Microsoft MediaRoom software internally... the remote was next to worthless, responsiveness was atrocious, on and on.
We ended up canceling and switching back to Comcast for internet and DirecTV for television... uVerse was so promising but the implementation is horrific.
The case discussed here, as well as the extremely similar issues that continue to plague the AT&T uVerse rollout here in the states, underscore why I STILL believe it is necessary to have a separate INDEPENDENT data infrastructure.
It's so obvious and simple yet the entrenched providers and clueless, self-serving politicians make it seemingly impossible to achieve.
My ideal setup would be the creation of a not-for-profit entity to build and manage a FTTP last mile infrastructure. This entity would be responsible for maintaining the lines themselves as well as the regional nodes (sized based on population density). This organization would be explicitly forbidden from offering any actual services to the end users. They would be paid out of fees to the companies which can "light up" the connections at the regional nodes. I'm ready and willing to pay for the creation of this network via my public taxes, as long as it provides open and shared access in terms of selecting providers (anyone willing to put kit in the regional node office).
You get a nice fat fibre connection to your premises (house, business, apartment complex, whatever) and then you can purchase services from anyone willing to install kit into the regional nodes, including multiple separate services over the same line. Technically this is extremely easy to implement, politically not so much.
That would foster TRUE COMPETITION so you know it will never happen.
Transmitters hidden from general view? Yeah right.
The NBN wireless towers (for areas not covered by fibre) in Australia are being made 40 meters tall and hidden they are not.
I swear there's a joke somewhere in the headline, but I'm missing it somehow.
Welcome to the world of Australian digital loop carrier boxes getting an adsl2+ upgrade.
This is a cabinet:
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t44/kimmys34/IMG_0362.jpg
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t44/kimmys34/IMG_0359.jpg (side on)
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t44/kimmys34/IMG_0357.jpg
Photo credit:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1723486
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Sounds like AT&T uVerse to me:
Wrong. not even the right country.
1. Your 'slightly smaller' white boxes are still too bloody big and too numerous, oh and a few of them actually blew up.
Our fibre boxes are just under 3 feet tall, about the same width, and about 2 feet deep. We need one box for every 900 homes (approximately) They are a completely passive device, and as such can only "blow up" if someone places explosives in them.
2. Your speeds and prices aren't actually all that competitive against Comcast, still claiming caps, still trying to bundle when all I want is internet.
We compete quite well with our local cable company, every service has caps, but ours are large enough that the vast majority of customers never manage to reach them (500GB/month on our 25Mbps plan). Bundling is optional, if you want just internet, you get just internet. Bundling will save money over having the 3 services individually though ($5 discount per month per service you add)
3. Your TV service was absolute rubbish when I saw it. The main issue seemed to be the horribly designed Motorola DVR's running the Microsoft MediaRoom software internally... the remote was next to worthless, responsiveness was atrocious, on and on.
We ended up canceling and switching back to Comcast for internet and DirecTV for television... uVerse was so promising but the implementation is horrific.
Well first of all you haven't seen it, secondly we don't use Motorola DVRs, we use Cisco ones. Yes we do use Mediaroom, but independent tests have shown our picture quality to be at least as good as our major cable competitor (in fact better in most cases) The remote, well I'm used to it, but I find it much nicer to work with than either our cable competitor's remote, or either of the 2 satellite companies ones. Our system using mediaroom can also do all sorts of things that the local cable company hasn't figured out yet, such things as recording a show on one TV and watching it on another, controlling your recordings from your smart phone when you aren't even home, accessing facebook and twitter from the TV, recording 4 shows at a time, and many more.
Fibre obselete???? Good joke there.
As wireless spectrums get more and more crowded, the enormous bandwidth capabilities of fibre will contine to improve through minor tranceiver upgrades.
Nothing beats having a cable.
Sounds like AT&T uVerse to me:
Wrong. not even the right country.
Dude, you could have stopped there. You don't need to defend yourself (/ your employer) from an attack against a totally unrelated competitor in a different country.
On another note:
Cue the people in that area complaining ...
Nice to see someone getting 'cue' right; it's a bit painful seeing people say 'queue' all the time.
Firstly, fibre doesn't become "obsolete", seeing as endpoints can be upgraded. You ignore that the speed of light is the universal speed limit.
Haven't you heard that someone in Australia has developed infinite spectrum faster-than-light neutrino wireless technology?
The same faulty rationale is being used here in Australia to argue against the National Broadband Network.
Oh, I guess you have.
My city had an artist similarly disguise a pair of traffic signal boxes after he'd painted the city's 150-year history on the side of the building the boxes sit next to. He painted the smaller one to look like a crate with (depending on which side is being viewed) a puppy, kitten, or bunch of little chicks, and the big box as a stack of egg crates with a woman in historic (1800s?) clothing dragging her kids away from the animals. He posted the only photos I can find online at the moment: Petaluma signalbox mural.
Apathy Sucks, Nobody for President!
I've noticed no capping, I get a constant 75Mbps down and 16.3Mbps up. I'm no BT fanboy, their billing sucks, but I am happy with the reliability and speed of infinity. I do a speed test about three times a week, often at peak times, I've only seen it drop twice, and that was to around 64Mbps.
The only capping I've heard of is on torrent traffic, does not effect me because I don't use torrents.
Hope that helps.
I speed test I just did:
http://speedtest.net/result/1984586986.png