BT's giant cabinets: did they not learn from AT&T?

One reader has pointed out the history in the US of the same huge cabinets that BT have been deploying for their fibre trial in Muswell Hill, of which the rollout has been stopped after complaints from residents over the size of the cabinets.

In the US they're known as VRADs, and Wikipedia shows that there has been anything but plain sailing in their rollout across the pond. Presumably the people at BT don't know how to use Wikipedia.

In October 2007 one of the AT&T cabinets exploded in Houston, sending shrapnel flying 50 feet throughout the neighbourhood:
The explosion was due to an internal battery malfunction in the cabinet, and at the time AT&T said:

"At this point, we have not concluded that the Avestor batteries pose any threat to the public or our employees."

In fact over 2 years there were four such cases, including one that exploded on Christmas morning in Wisconsin:
Then AT&T had another blow - Avestor, the supplier of their batteries went tits up, so they needed to embark on an expensive project to replace the batteries in 17,000 cabinets:

"Normally, we would work with a vendor to diagnose problems and develop solutions. We can't do that in this case because Avestor filed for bankruptcy in October 2006 and closed shortly thereafter. As a result, we have decided to move forward with the removal of all Avestor batteries as quickly as possible."

Presumably BT has learnt from this particular lesson and tested the batteries thoroughly, including stress and heat testing - as cabinets can easily overheat in the summertime if there are heatwaves like we had in early June.

Much of the controversy in the US - as it is in Muswell Hill - has been about the size of the cabinets, which has even led AT&T to mount them on telco poles to get around planning concerns:
And it's not surprising that the competition has jumped on the size of the cabinets and mocked them in advertising accordingly. Comcast ran this advertising campaign while accusing AT&T of introducing interference into their cable network:
Which naturally resulted in lawsuits in what is the litiguous capital of the planet, as VRAD cabinets aren't installed at every home. You can see why some are claiming they have reduced property prices though:
Naturally such large cabinets have become a haven for graffiti though, which is something that must also worry BT given how councils tend to require the telcos to keep their cabinets graffiti free as a condition of installing them in the first place:
You'd have thought that BT would have learnt these lessons from the states, but the planning permission news and the fact they seemed to fail to pre-empt it would suggest not. Will be interesting to see how the cabinets settle in within local communities over time.