Are Street Cabinets Such a Good Idea ?

21 Jan

Numericable Cabinets As you will know, I have been skeptical about the potential of Fiber to the Cabinet, mostly due to what I perceive as a lack of future-proofness (yeah, I know such a word doesn't exist…) of the deployment. One aspect that I honestly haven't investigated much is the impact of having cabinets in the streets. After all, I thought, cable operators have had them forever…

I guess I should have looked more closely at some of the posts James put up on eurotelcoblog. The photo on the right is a photo of one of Numéricable's cabinets in Marseille. Last year, a group of people went through several districts of Marseille and tracked down cabinets to photograph them. The results are here for the 14th district and here for the 3rd district.

This is truly frightening stuff. And the worse is I see no reason why this would happen to Numéricable and Virgin and not to others, including FTTC deployers. If you see similar sights, please send me photos!

  • http://profile.typepad.com/mduchesn Marc Duchesne

    @Benoit : such a problem is not specific to Numericable, nor to FTTC/FTTla operators. Whatever the network, you’ll get broken/sabotaged street cabinets. It’s a human being’s behavior thing.
    I’ll publish a bunch of photos I took in Pau: you’ll be surprised. Some are just a pure nightmare for Fiber guys like you and me.
    Fact is, FTTH network design requires streets cabinets. There’s no option there. So, we must cope with stupidity.
    Maybe there’s a niche market for a fancy entrepreneur : integrate the Taser onto FTTH outdoor equipments…

  • http://profile.typepad.com/benfelten Benoît FELTEN

    I respectfully disagree. The structural difference between FTTC / HFC and FTTH is that the latter does not require any active equipment in the field, which in turn means small or buried cabinets if necessary (and in some cases nothing).

  • http://profile.typepad.com/mduchesn Marc Duchesne

    @Benoit : I’d be glad to spend a couple of hours with you, to explain why we need street cabinets even for FTTH. Think “flexibility”, for instance.
    A few hints :
    1. No “buried” cabinets, because optical connectors don’t like manholes…
    2. It’s a given network designers put “indoor” as a Wish, yet actual surroundings sometimes force them to use outdoor boxes.
    3. Keep in mind Pau and its ActiveEthernet network.
    DM anytime, for a beer or two somewhere nearby La Defense !