Engineers with Umbrellas Protect UK Broadband Cabinets from Heat UPDATE

A number of UK network operators appear to be sending out engineers to monitor and work on broadband street cabinets that have been struggling in today’s heat. This includes everything from upgrading vents and fans, to literally sitting outside the cabinet with an umbrella. Sometimes, the simplest solution works best.

Reports have come in from various locations today where people have spotted telecoms engineers, some of whom have perhaps understandably opted to go fully shirtless, comically pitching themselves outside street cabinets and often using umbrellas to help shade the apparatus (sometimes with the cabinet door left wide open). In other cases, we’ve seen work to upgrade vents, fans and the adoption of D.I.Y style external air-con.

Such interesting sights are rare in the UK, but witnesses report seeing such activity around cabinets that belong to a number of operator’s (e.g. Virgin Media, KCOM and possibly also Openreach). For example, one of the confirmed sightings occurred in Barton-on-Humber yesterday, where a rather relaxed deckchair laden KCOM engineer (can’t blame him) was spotted valiantly guarding a cabinet against the evil sun.

KCOM has since confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that some of their engineers were repurposed to “visit cabinets across the region to aid cooling by shading with umbrellas“, which seems to be working because there have, so far at least, been no reports of heat damage to their network of street cabinets. KCOM said they’re currently still babysitting up to 14 cabinets, which is down from the 20 that they were initially watching and cooling.

Sources within the wider industry say that such methods are sometimes used, but usually only during truly exceptional weather events, like this one. But as these events become more common in the future, then it may be necessary to consider other – more permanent – solutions (e.g. one of the reasons why VMO2 paint their cabinets a cream colour is because it helps to reduce the sun’s thermal impact).

At the time of writing, we’ve only got some limited low-res pictures of this activity and have not yet got permission to post those from the authors. But if anybody does spot more of this activity and is willing to share, then please do remember to take a picture and drop us an email.

UPDATE 20th July 2022 @ 7:27am

We’ve added an example picture to this article, which comes from a Hampshire based FTTP network. The SFP temperature graph for this particular cabinet shows it peaking at 92.9c on Monday afternoon, and you can clearly see the impact that simply opening the door, as well as deploying an umbrella, had on that. This helps to show why such a simple solution can be so very effective in a heatwave.

One of the SFPs on this cabinet had shut down already, but thankfully the other (backhaul) was still operating.

UPDATE 21st July 2022 @ 7:13am

Openreach informs us that they didn’t suffer any heat outages or use umbrellas to protect their cabinets during the heatwave, although they’ve yet to clarify if they took any other measures.