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."

Comments

Agreed

[Grizzley9]

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.

Re:Agreed

[AmiMoJo]

They look pretty similar to the Virgin boxes that the residents seem to be fine about. Maybe a bit taller.

BT Infinity is made of fail anyway. It's expensive, slow and capped to hell. Rather than do real fibre to the premises they decided to roll out last century's technology.

Re:Agreed

[RdeCourtney]

BC Hydro here allow kids to put murals on the boxes like this and they also wrap a lot of the boxes in flowers and tree photos to blend them into the environment..

Re:Agreed

[MightyYar]

Couldn't they have made them into the shape of the old red payphones? This seems like the company was being a bit arrogant.

Re:Agreed

[icebike]

This type of Infrastructure stays around for 50 years on average, and there's no need to accept such crappie equipment strewn all over the landscape because once in, you are stuck, they will never improve or replace them.

If you don't force them to do it right the first time, it will look like hell forever.

I have a ground mounted transformer, a telephone cabinet , a cable company cabinet all sitting in my front yard, all because the subdivision builder granted them easements. The service companies bitch where I shroud them with Rhodies.

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

If they made them to look like blue police call boxes people would be fighting over having one on their street.

Re:Agreed

[strength_of_10_men]

Here in Ann Arbor, the city has allowed local artists to adopt and paint these types of boxes as well as fire hydrants. It's actually pretty neat. It doesn't quite make them disappear into the background but they're not quite the eyesore anymore.

http://julihoffman.wordpress.com/tag/ann-arbor-photos/

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Our street in Ontario has the same problem. Every 8-10 houses you get three service boxes in your front yard (I'm not a utility nerd, so I'm not sure what's what), one of which is the approximate width and depth of a washing machine, and perhaps two and a half feet high, and painted the same green as the boxes in the BT story. All down the street you have these ugly-ass boxes that have been graffitied by neighborhood kids. They bitch when you plant something to camouflage them, but you can't get the bastards to come out and paint the thing when it gets tagged. I really don't want to look like I live in a crackhouse. Props to Chelsea and Kensington for giving BT the whatfor, because once these things are in you're not going to get rid of them.

Re:Agreed

[ShakingSpirit]

They look pretty similar to the Virgin boxes that the residents seem to be fine about. Maybe a bit taller.

BT Infinity is made of fail anyway. It's expensive, slow and capped to hell. Rather than do real fibre to the premises they decided to roll out last century's technology.

BT Infinity is great, and pretty much the best choice for internet access in the UK, just as long as you don't get it from BT... Plenty of other providers which resell the same FTTC service but without the crappy throttling/shaping. I'm with Zen and get 60down/20up solidly, couldn't be happier to be honest.

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Taek a look at the UK Free Software Network if you want a non-evil ISP.

I live in RBKC. I started with talktalk in March, and it's fine. I have only paid in advance for 1 year's phone line rental (£114), but the broadband is literally free for a year (they gave me a tesco voucher £25 and I used a cashback site which gave me £70 amazon voucher).

Compared to that, BT is really expensive, but then again they currently spend £20 every month sending snailmail spam to every flat in my building. On the other hand, Virgin spends £40 doing the same thing as they use A4 sized envelopes!

Re:Agreed

[ATMD]

I was on UKFSN when I lived with people, but had to switch to a cheaper ISP when I started living on my own. If I could afford it I'd definitely go back, though - proper business-grade ADSL, a /29 subnet, fantastic latency and great customer support (it's run by a geek in his garage).

That was a couple of years ago so it may have changed, but I'd certainly be willing to try them again if I had the chance.

A new paintjob?

[Kozz]

Perhaps if they're painted like a police box, nobody will even notice they're present?

How it really happened...

[3vi1]

In my mind, I like to picture this spat ending with them shouting "INDUBITABLY!" at each other and throwing tea.

Seems justified...

[Antony T Curtis]

From TFA:

... would not use sites that already had unused BT equipment ...

Seems reasonable to refuse on those grounds alone.

Sounds Like SF

[cis4]

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?

Re:Why not underground?

[Bert64]

They are deploying thousands of these all around the country, putting them underground would be considerably more expensive...

It's not just maintenance for which they need to access the cabinet, connecting new customers up requires that too.

Also, these cabinets contain quite a lot of kit that generates heat, that would need to be vented somehow and you can't just put vents in the top because water would get in. If you sealed them such that they were waterproof and insulated by dirt and paving slabs on all sides, they would overheat very quickly... With the above ground cabinets, you can have vents which are angled downwards to prevent rain ingress and the metal case will also conduct heat fairly well and is cooled by fresh air on the outside.

Re:Aesthetics

[MrNaz]

If you are unable to see that aesthetics actually has functional value, then I'm surprised you're actually capable of the emotion of "sadness".

FFS

[icebraining]

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.

Re:They aren't ugly

[FireFury03]

The (rather wealthy) area already has access to *faster* full-fibre technology broadband. Virgin cable is a full fibre service, whereas this is "fibre to the cabinet": BT lay the fibre to these new cabinets, and then use copper as normal, using VDSL technology.

I know Virgin have been advertising "fibre optic internet" for many years, but no, it isn't "full" fibre, its basically just FTTC. The only real difference between Virgin's and BT's network is that BT runs fibre to the cabinet and then VDSL over a copper pair to the premises whilst Virgin run fibre to the cabinet and then do DOCSIS over coax... Wake me up when FTTP gets widespread.

That only works

[publiclurker]

because LA looks like a cesspool to begin with.

Virgin Media

[Vahokif]

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