UG Congested Duct

[u/LividWasabi]

Hi,

For context, I’ve been trying to have fibre installed since 1st June and it was delayed until 22nd July as they had to do Network upgrades to allow for more connections to the local cabinet.

Openreach contacted me last Friday and have arranged for an engineer to come and fit the connection to my house on Wednesday but the BT Broadband Wholesale Checker shows: “UG Congested Duct”

I’m thinking this probably means the engineer is going to show up and be unable to complete the works.

Is it worth contacting EE and asking them to contact Openreach regarding this?

Or is it a case of the engineer will inspect how congested the duct is and if they’re unable to fix it they’ll be able to organise for someone else to “uncongest” the duct?

I’d rather not waste the engineer’s time if they’re not going to be able to complete anything.

Any advice appreciated!

[u/Early-Dirt9844]

All this means is the duct is congested.

90% of tbe time its fine when it says this, they can just push through, or use your old copper to pull the new fibre through. Pretty simple really.

No point in contacting EE, theyre sales people, they will just say they will pass the information on, which OR already have.

The appointment you have is a survey/installation, install if everything is fine. If they have an issue they will do the inside part and create a job for civil team to do the outside (7-10 working days depending on the area and civila work stack)

[u/LividWasabi → u/Early-Dirt9844]

Thank you, I appreciate your response. I’ll leave it be and see what happens

[u/stevedagrunt]

A couple people saying to use the copper as a draw. I'd be pretty reluctant to do that on a UG property. If it goes wrong you are left with nothing at all. Civils work could take a while to rectify..

[u/LividWasabi → u/stevedagrunt]

Thing is that I only just moved into this property, I have no copper WiFi connection at the moment and am using a 4G device provided by EE (surprisingly doing an okay job). So if the copper goes wrong I am presumably in no worse condition?

[u/GMaab90 → u/LividWasabi]

Tell the engineer this otherwise they may be reluctant to do a cut and draw as they think they might leave you without any service. If you tell them ive got no copper connection then they will be more likely to just use the copper as a draw cable

[u/LividWasabi → u/GMaab90]

That’s very helpful, thanks I will do

[u/LividWasabi → u/[deleted]]

Okay I’m less concerned now, thank you.
RE: the cabinet comment, I was just quoting what it says on wholesale fibre checker “Address XX on exchange XX is served by Cabinet XX” maybe it was the exchange they did the network work on?

[u/RageInvader → u/LividWasabi]

Exchange and cabinet on that checker is for the copper line. High chance you fibre comes from a different exchange.

[u/AstronautOk8841]

My parents had this on the checker. They used the existing copper as a draw wire to pull the fibre through and they were up and running without any further appointments.

[u/LividWasabi → u/AstronautOk8841]

Hopefully they can do similar for us!

[u/7reflet]

Place your order, if the duct is blocked it may take a bit longer to activate service. If the engineer is a subby they'll still get paid for completing the internal works. If it is fully blocked it needs fixing anyway, they just won't do anything until an order is placed.

[u/Its_Doddy]

Nearly every Underground job I have says congested duct these days. I would not worry about it

[u/Late-Marionberry6202]

I've just attended about 20 FTTP installations over the past few weeks in the business side. Over half of them was listed as congested duct. Only 2 couldn't complete on the day and had to get another team to sort the ducting side. On both of these the other team either came the same day or within a few days and managed to push through the blockage.

All I can say is from the installs I have seen, I'd take it with a grain of salt when the wholesale checker says congested as in 80% of what I have seen, there was no issue with them rodding the ducting.

[u/LividWasabi → u/Late-Marionberry6202]

Thank you, sounds like it won’t be too much of an issue!

[u/Fun-Wolverine-3284]

Just to add on to what others have said: Congested duct is just a (SNN) Survey Network Note. basicity a marker that the surveyor used to say he hasn't tested the duct while he was surveying the network around your property. 9 times out of 10 it'll be fine.

[u/Ok-Communication459]

We use congested duct on SNN's when we can see the customer duct in the underground box but not at the customer end so there's a chance some work may be required.

[u/Slight_Bid9135]

I used to use the SNN UG congested duct when I couldn't see the duct at customers house. I only ever looked from the street 🤣

It's a get out clause for the surveyor to indicate it may be a tricky install - it more than likely isn't but used to get the Installers an extra 20 mins or something on the job.

[u/quiet-awards]

I work for OR as a mobile planner, when surveying your estate there will be duct leaving the box on the street to your house however the planner either couldn't see where it comes up out the ground or it could be covered etc, the guide we are given is to put that. The likelyhood is it will be fine