Muswell Hillbillies force BT to move broadband boxes BT has been ordered to move 20 of the bulkier new streetside cabinets planned to power its trial of faster broadband, after they offended aesthetic sensibilities in leafy Muswell Hill, north London. The local council, Haringey, is also arranging for all the boxes to be repainted black rather than their current green, to "blend …
I don't want my little angel irradiated by these porn mongering internet boxes. They could've at least made them organic. What's even worse is the terrible view given to me by one of the engineers bending over to look into one of these things. Dear little Porscher's eyes burned.
How about sinking the boxes so they are half buried? A hydraulic platform can be implemented to raise the cabinet out of the ground fully when work needs to be done. Sure it might cost BT a bit more, but it's a concept that can be taken further to the point of having the cabinets completely submerged in the pavement unless the equipment contained within requires maintenance.
The only drawback to submersion of equipment is existing utility equipment already buried in the pavement. Suitable sites will be limited because of this.
they are not aesthetically pleasing enough,..
maybe el-reg can do a compertiton for us commentards to design a cabnet that will fit in in Muswell Hill.... or a second comp to design a tramp cover so that the nice folk of Haringey are not subject to endure the reality of modern life..
my design for a tramp cover would be a large brick construction, with multiple devisions, with glass openings to let in light and fresh air.. that can cover up several tramps.... i would build my tramp cover on the site that currently is occupied by Haringey Social services,,,, be3cause we know how useless they are....
Joke alert, because haringay/muswell hill are just that !!
"How about sinking the boxes so they are half buried? A hydraulic platform can be implemented to raise the cabinet out of the ground fully when work needs to be done."
Yeah - that platform would also come in handy to be able to raise it after any rain to allow the water to drain out of the equipment!
It's hardly a miracle in scientific advancement to ensure that a) the cabinet is waterproof and b) there is a drainage channel. Sheesh, if man was able to implement the marvel of London's sewer system in the 1860s then I'm sure that tapping a drainage port between each cabinet and existing roadside sewer channels will be child's play with today's technology.
You do realise that there are a number of existing deployments of submerged infrastructure across the UK that works on the exact principle I described originally? BT's own infratructure across the Highlands of Scotland already uses submerged cabinet structures that rise up when maintenance is required. These were deployed at the end of the 90s in order to eliminate telegraph poles from the majority of the countryside.
I'm finding it dificult to choose which side to be on - one part of me says "F@cking NIMBYs - why give them faster broadband when they obviously don't want it" while the other says "if BT get away with putting these oversized cabinets in conservation areas, you can bet that the mobile operators will be clamouring to get their radiation emitters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H telephone masts put up in the same area."
If these bastards are complaining about slow broadband as well, then fuck 'em. Give it to someone who wants it and do not care if these boxes are the size of an elephant in bright purple with fluorescent yellow spots.
Beer coz it helps me forget
Fuck 'em.
I know many parts of the country that would be happy to have anything this side of a transit van sitting in the street, if it meant they had enough netspeed to watch iplayer or youtube without buffering
Rip out the ADSL2 kit out while you're at it - leave them with a small, unobtrusive 28.8k modem cabinet.
"Fuck 'em.
I know many parts of the country that would be happy to have anything this side of a transit van sitting in the street, if it meant they had enough netspeed to watch iplayer or youtube without buffering
Rip out the ADSL2 kit out while you're at it - leave them with a small, unobtrusive 28.8k modem cabinet."
Well, tell those people to move closer to an exchange and pay BT money. Then they will get their broadband.
So BT, given the WHOLE of the UK to choose from to put it's new Jumbo Cabinets, went for a conservation area with complex planning laws and stuck-up residents who have no problem parking a car the size of the Titanic outside their houses but baulk at the idea of a 1.6m tall telecoms cabinet.
Great work BT!
Conservation area or not, BT has a blatant disregard for the environs when it installs boxes - new or old - and that monsterous green colour should have gone years ago. I don't see why residents shouldn't have a say in what they do to the area, especially since this a trial and BT should now be more aware when it rolls it out elsewhere.
Or maybe where you all live is already an ugly shithole so you don't care?
Can't really see how what manner of boxes telcos choose to install would improve civic beauty in any sufficiently decent-looking suburb, since they're all so crowded with cars and 8 foot high 4x4s that you can't see the bloody street anyway. If you want to nominate something offensive and pointless to get rid of which will pretty this country up a bit, try the all-pervasive motor car instead of some inoffensive green boxes that actually provide a service rather than choke the place up.
Well that accounts for all the major population centres, and the rest of the country can whistle... as we currently do for Cable, LLU etc. etc. etc.
Forgive me, BT, if I am not overflowing with excitement at the prospect of FTTC - especially as I will be paying for it through my land line tax (thank's so much Darling) as well as line rental and definitely not reaping any benefit.
So put a drainage hole in the exterior hoist housing and make the electronics cabinet water-tight. Not exactly difficult.
While you're about it, make the lifting mechanism hydraulic/compressed-air operated using a compressor on board the service vehicle to prevent the local scrotes from opening the thing and nicking the insides.
Why do they paint them green anyway? To blend in? So you can walk into them?
Along Balefire's lines, I'd modify it to cow- or hippopotamus shaped,* and just let local artists paint them as they like. As was uselessly done by the Cow Parade people. Or assorted animals, totems and food objects --- will help a lot of people, from misplaced tourists to small children. "You go right at the icecream, until you see the penguin, then bend left to where you see the unicorn, and ask again," and the bobby can help the crying infant that knows she lives close to the carrot.
*cables to be routed through legs, hence possibly second preferable.
Well, a fence within a metre of a public roadway needs planning permission over 1m height because of visibility issues for road users. So (1) these boxes will no doubt be bigger than some people's garden walls and (2) they will add various blind spots to the roads. Well thought out there, BT. Why not put them underground or make them low and long?
lower and longer than me, I want it caught and shot. I have a reputation to uphold you know.
In all seriousness, though, can you imagine a repair engineer crawling along on his hands and knees alongside one trying to find the bit he has to fix? It would be a bugger to work on.
Perhaps staff at Haringey Council should spend their time looking after the child services division instead of worrying about the size of BT's street boxes.
If I was the BT person liaising with the Council I would have told them to fuck off and make sure they didn't let anymore baby killers slip through the net.
This is a disgraceful waste of council time and money when they have higher priorities.
Sounds to me like that Haringey Council woman is basically making a bit of noise for the benefit of the granola munchers. Wouldn't surprise me if the council and BT already had it all tied up behind the scenes before the NIMBYs* started jumping up and down about it. Fits with the BT statement anyway, which itself reads like a roll of the eyes.
We've been able to hear the loud transformer buzz coming from some frankly enormous ADSL2 cabinets at the end of our street for the last year or so, but sadly we don't live in a conservation area (nor is our street populated by self righteous tits) so nothing gets done about it, despite the fact they block more than half the pavement. I really feel sorry for the folk whose house they back on to; must be like sleeping next to a diesel generator.
* How do you pluralise NIMBY? Is it NIMBYs? NIMBies? NIMBYies? Oh no hang on I've got it... Twats.
> I am sure that 99.99% of the country would kill to be on a trial
I rather suspect that a majority of the actual population of the country doesn't give a damn about faster broadband. Latest stat I can immediately spot suggests that only about 65% of the country has broadband at all, so all the occupants of the remaining 35% of households obviously won't care. Then what percentage of the remaining really want faster broadband? All those under 5 won't care, all those who just use the net for email and some web browsing probably don't care - I certainly don't... I reckon that's going to be easily half the population of the remaining households...
ThinkBroadband covered this a while ago:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4011-aaisp-connects-first-business-on-bt-fibre-to-the-cabinet-pilot.html
Some people that work on it:
http://modular-solution.com/2009/03/27/next-generation-broadband-fttc/
And here's something similar by Rutland Telecom - who's name sadly for them made me immediately think of an ISP subsidiary of "Rutland Weekend Television". They appear to be providing "Fibre to the Countryside". There box actually seems neater than BT's own solution.
http://www.rutlandtelecom.co.uk/lyddington/
A couple of points here relating to my experience working 10 years for Telewest / Virgin Media.
Black paint: Yeah that will keep things cool. Come midsummer everyones broadband will die on a hot day.
Underground boxes: Susceptible to all kinds of issues water being the least of them. Flooded boxes keep working its just servicing thats an issue. All the kit including power supplies used in subpavement kit is water resistant its just a bitch to service a bx thats flooded. To all those saying make it water tight - its not as easy as all that. Even if you make it water tight on day 1 it won't be after 10 years of subsidence, traffic vibrations, roadworks, etc. Also you want it to be relatively cheap to install or the service you're offering becomes uncompetitive.
The biggest issue with underground boxes in my experience is vermin. Try getting a problem fixed when theres 50 rats cuddled up to the nice warm power unit . . . with all your nice neat cabling chewed up and used as nesting material . . . .
Well, please just send the boxes that Muswell hill doesn't want down to Basingstoke, where we have a paltry 77 cabinets planned for FTTC, rather than blanket coverage. I am about a quarter of a mile away from the covered area, which has left a lot of us fuming at BT.
http://www.jasonrivers.co.uk/2009/12/01/basingstoke-fttc-trial/ is another person who's ranting about this. Come on BT!
Best regards
Tim Robinson
www.txrxcomms.co.uk
I think BT should take the cabinets out and give some more deserving areas access to faster broadband (I'm sure sticking a cabinet like these inbetween some of those longer lines might help some folks actually get some broadband rather than no broadband).
Rob (who counts his lucky stars he can get a reasonable-ish broadband connection)
Hang on, someone in London is complaining about a green box on their street? Now I've been to London, there's f*cking houses everywhere and people are complaining about a 1.6m high green box on their street!! You'd think that years of seeing nothing but buildings out there bleeding windows and navigating round dog turds would have trained them to ignore the odd green box here and there.
I live in this area and have actually seen these boxes. They are somewhat unsubtle.
Queens Avenue (and the surrounding roads) are mostly turn of the century houses backing on to Alexandra Palace and park. There are (possibly surprisingly) very few 4x4s here, and in general it is quite a pretty area. These boxes are like having a tall, green fat bloke permanently parked on the street corner, while I do understand the need for extra space (having seen the inside of a normal cabinet) BT could have at least tried a bit harder to blend them in a bit.
..so they can cry if they want to.
Everyone has the right to complain about changes to street furniture in their area. The fact it's a conservation area makes that even more valid. It's also nice to hear of a council that actually listens to its residents and acts on their complaint.
Our council dumped a kid's playground on us despite our complaints and warnings that there was no suitable parking. So now we put up with dangerous parking from lazy parents who think that walking an extra ten metres is just too difficult for their offspring and at night we get to hear their older siblings f'ing and blinding at each other.
So yeah - more power to the residents.
We'd be grateful, and as the oil price is going up we'd be able to pay for the premium services too!
Also, could I suggest to BT that- if the boxes can't be redesigned to lower their volume- the boxes are re purposed to become streetlight bases (giving a large chimney-like structure (lowering the heating loads and with a pretty big internal volume) as well as providing a BT-owned pole for any Wireless rollouts/snooping they decide to do in future) or just bent round a corner? I doubt anyone would object as much to a lower, wider box going round a corner- and if they were made to look like they were made from cast iron it'd fit in better with a protected-age neighbourhood.
Saying that, BT really need to be fined into the ground for their constant refusal to follow rules on privacy, planning and... well, the rest of their operations.
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