Cabinet full

[williaa68]

We have been out of our main residence for about six months doing some building work. We moved our phone / broadband to a rented property, which is about 400m away from the main one.

When we got in touch with BT to arrange the move back they told me the the cabinet was full and they would have to downgrade me from fibre to ADSL. I am hoping that my current broadband at the rented place will free up a slot when we move but does anyone have any suggestions please? 4G signal is patchy, giving about 5mbs even with a decent mobile router so that doesn't look like an option.

thanks in advance

[Longtime Lurker]

Have you tried other providers?

When we moved house SKY couldn't supply fibre as the cabinet was full but we could get it direct from BT.

Not sure how it works but worth a try, maybe so many reserved for BT and so many for others?

[williaa68]

I have. It seems the only people who dont use open reach are vodafone but they say they can't offer anything other than ADSL either....

[random_username]

If you put your details into:

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadb...

That should list out all of the other providers who may be able to provide you with services - one of the LLU providers may still have some space on their kit...

[sjg]

Had this earlier this year, moving from Virgin back to VDSL. Ordered with Vodafone but they had to cancel as couldn't provide.

Try the BT wholesale checkers which will tell you the status of your local cabinet. In my case they had "waiting list" under "WBC FTTC Availability Date".

https://my.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?... - use the address one if you don't have an active phone line there.

Openreach told me it was a temporary capacity issue - within a week the checker had gone back to "available" and I got an order in straight away.

From what I've read elsewhere there is higher capacity kit now that they can install into existing cabinets if demand gets too high - although if your local cabinet has already had this upgrade and is now full then it may be a longer wait for them to install an additional cabinet alongside.

[Bikerjon]

If the cabinet is full then it doesn't matter which internet provider you contact - they will all face the same problem. All you can hope is that an additional cabinet is installed somewhere that frees up some capacity. Either that or hope that fibre to the home is implemented.

Have you tried all the mobile networks? 4G really can help in these kind of situations.

[williaa68]

Thank you. Vodafone, EE and Three. Is there anyone else?

[WinstonWolf]

williaa68 said:

We have been out of our main residence for about six months doing some building work. We moved our phone / broadband to a rented property, which is about 400m away from the main one.

When we got in touch with BT to arrange the move back they told me the the cabinet was full and they would have to downgrade me from fibre to ADSL. I am hoping that my current broadband at the rented place will free up a slot when we move but does anyone have any suggestions please? 4G signal is patchy, giving about 5mbs even with a decent mobile router so that doesn't look like an option.

thanks in advance

If both properties are fed from the same cab it should just be a simple pair shift.

[williaa68]

Yes I am hoping that is right (and they are from everything I can tell) but it seems to be a case of computer says no at BT...

[WinstonWolf]

williaa68 said:

Yes I am hoping that is right (and they are from everything I can tell) but it seems to be a case of computer says no at BT...

It will as you've got one of them. In theory the engineer should just be able to swap it back for you.

[Mr Pointy]

williaa68 said:

Yes I am hoping that is right (and they are from everything I can tell) but it seems to be a case of computer says no at BT...

There may be other people ahead of you in the queue though.

[Mr Pointy]

Any chance you have Virgin available in your street? They use their own cabling.

[williaa68]

Sadly no virgin and yes being bumped in the queue is something that has occurred to me too!

[Bikerjon]

I misread the distance between houses. I agree, you would think this is technically just a cable swap at the same cabinet, but I suspect some bonkers procedure will get in the way!

[shtu]

williaa68 said:

When we got in touch with BT to arrange the move back they told me the the cabinet was full and they would have to downgrade me from fibre to ADSL. I am hoping that my current broadband at the rented place will free up a slot when we move but does anyone have any suggestions please? 4G signal is patchy, giving about 5mbs even with a decent mobile router so that doesn't look like an option.

DSLchecker.bt.com will let you feed in postcode(s), then select the address(es), and you'll see which cabinet(s) are in play here.

If both addresses are in the same cabinet, a move really shouldn't be an issue.

If you are on different ones, you may have to live with the downgrade short-term, then keep placing upgrade orders - as soon as one is refused for cabinet full, place another, wait for refusal, place another, etc. I don't believe there's any "queue" concept here (never used to be), just catching things when the cabinet has capacity.

Bear in mind that depending on distances, "normal" ADSL can still be 20+ Mbps, so it may not be as bad as you think.

[williaa68]

Thank you. Both addresses come back with Sevenoaks Cabinet 13 so fingers crossed. This is what it says under availability:

VDSL Range A (Clean) 57.3 39.7 12.1 7.4 35 Waiting list Waiting list
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 55.3 35 11.9 6.8 28.7 Waiting list Waiting list

ADSL it says 5.5-12.5. My kids will think that is a violation of their human rights!