Cabinet hunting

Looking in the bushes around Wansford and the A1 is not without its moral hazards, but yesterday I found the elusive Cabinet 4 of the Wansford exchange on the slip road off the A1 :-

Note the footway box cover in front of it. This serves Wansford, Huntingdonshire or Stibbington North or whatever the correct term is for the bit of what we all call Wansford that is South of the river. The Post Office, Chapel Court, London Road, etc all show up as served by Cab 4 on the BT Line checker, as do the houses up on Elton Road Stibbington cum Sibson, the Stibbington truck stop and Nene Valley Railway. Cab 4 appears to serve the whole area to the south of the River Nene that is connected to the Wansford Exchange.

Previously we noted that Cab 5 at Yarwell crossroads serves the village of Yarwell, Cab 2 on Parkway / Station Rd Nassington serves Nassington including Mill Road which means they have a fairly long run to the cab and a double-back from the exchange. Suttons garage is also on Cab 2 with a cable run of 1.9km so it will be interesting to see what uplift in speed is possible there.

Sutton village is the home to Cab 7 on The Drift at the junction with Nene Way. A summary so far..

1. TBA
2. Nassington
3. TBA
4. Wansford south, Stibbington, Sibson.
5. Yarwell
6. TBA
7. Sutton
8. Wittering

Wansford exchange "under evaluation"

The BT Openreach "when and where" site has Wansford listed as "under evaluation" for fibre based broadband, as a consequence of Connecting Cambridgeshire BDUK project.

Castor and Elton are also listed, but the Northants exchanges haven't popped up yet.

To benefit from the fibre to the cabinet service your phone line needs to be fed through a cabinet, as many are in Nassington, Sutton, Wittering, Yarwell etc. Many in Wansford are fed from the exchange direct, and won't benefit, but they already have fairly fast service available. At some point there may be other solutions for direct lines, depending what the local projects choose to do.

Being on an exchange with a fibre capability doesn't guarantee you a fibre based service, as the people of Water Newton know - they are a long way from their exchange (Ortons) and do have a small cabinet but the number of properties is small and so far the BT commercial rollout has passed them by. It will be interesting to see if Connecting Cambridgeshire addresses Water Newton - a slow spot with less than 2M broadband on a commercially enabled fibre exchange.