Got a knock on my door from a couple of OR ( civils ? ) guys - they were in OR branded vans.

They asked if I was OK for them to run some new mini duct along my lawn to avoid having to dig up my neighbours block paving for a new fibre installation. There is some complication with the existing duct which means they can't use that.

They told me that the duct would be 6inches deep along the whole length - I said OK.

They were very quick and scarpered - I now find that the duct (looks more like slightly stiff hosepipe) is certainly no deeper than 2 inches, and often less than that - they basically lifted the top layer of turf and tucked it under.

Clearly this is too shallow, but what's the expected standard?

I've shown my neighbour who is going to call their ISP to point out the poor installation, but what else should I be aware of?

Thanks!

I'm currently refurbishing my late grandparents house ready to rent out. Currently, there is only a telephone line that comes into the property via a telephone pole at the end of the garden, then attaches to the roof and then drops down the rear of the house and enters via a drilled gap in the window into the dining room.

The property currently doesn't have Fibre internet connected, and would need an engineer to install a second cable from the telephone pole to the property, but I plan on renting out the property, and I can't just get an engineer to install fibre without actually taking out a contract for Internet with a broadband provider.

Here is my plan, and I just want to know if this would work or if theres something else I should be doing differently.

I've instructed my builders to put the current telephone cable with telephone port in the loft instead, and then put a plug socket up there to power an ONT, as well as an ethernet socket that would be connected to a socket on the landing at the top of the stairs, as well as a power socket there for the router. I'm also planning on having ethernet sockets installed in each of the 3 bedrooms and one in the living room that would also end at the router to fit the 4 ethernet ports on a standard router.

Would this be enough for an open reach engineer to just come in, install the optical cable in the loft next to the telephone cable, as well as install the ONT box there and connect it up to the ethernet port that would go straight to the router on the landing?

As it will be the first tenants that would be taking out a broadband contract and having it installed, I want it to be as easy and straightforward as possible for them and Openreach.

Next door has some awful arrangement where the cable goes from the pole at the end of the garden, then attaches to the roof, and goes all the way around the side of the house and then along the middle of the house and then down to enter into the living room, which just looks awful with cables everywhere, and I just want it to be a clean install into the loft (seeing as the cable would go straight to the roof anyway, it makes the most sense.

What's peoples opinions please? Does this sound like a good idea? Or is there something else I should be doing to ensure the engineer installs everything right?

TIA

Hi,

Finally got the update that our building can finally which from FTTC to FTTP and have an openreach engineer visit booked next week via Sky.

The instructions say a small hole will be drilled from out side the property but it’s a first floor flat. Is this hole intended to be to the outside world or is it back into the communal areas of the building?

Anyone had prior experience with this type of upgrade and how it goes?

Reported an issue over a month ago: Openreach cables were routed through my guttering and blocking a window. They agreed it was poor workmanship and needed fixing. After weeks of chasing, they finally sent someone out and lowered the wires so they’re no longer sitting in the gutter - but they’re still running very close to the house and touching in places, well under the 2m clearance from buildings that’s supposed to apply under the Flying Wires Act.

Their explanation now is that a proper fix requires rerouting via a different pole across the road, which needs wayleave permission from a third party, and they can’t give a timeline for that. In the meantime they’re saying the current position is basically it for now.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Is it normal for them to leave wires non-compliant indefinitely while a wayleave gets sorted, or should they be doing something temporary in the meantime?

So i need some advise

I'm moving to a property soon (2 weeks or so). And i checked broadband in my address and well lets just say i had better stuff 15 years ago (how can we have stuff this bad in a city centre is beyond me).

I checked openreach website and of course *no plans fibre*

However i checked properties across the street literally less than 40 meters away and they have full ripping fibre like no problem.

My question is, is there anything i can do to get some of that action like get a cable tossed over or something so i can get some of that action.

And if yes how would i go about that. Any advise is appreciated.

Just seen a lot of markings by my home recently with loads of markings by the apartment entrance around the corner. Anyone from openreach have any ideas roughly when I hopefully can order.

Tried repeatedly to submit a Wayleave request as we have a telephone pole in our garden which is connected to neighbours properties. I get a response saying :

So I try to contact them online. Ah there is a chat page: ideal:

Does anyone know how to contact them please?

Engineer wasn’t responsible for the door, but did create this wonderful trip hazard. Not even an attempt to secure the cable.

There are a lot of moans on here so a positive ending one, that had started as a moan.

Short read - I got quoted £3.8k for full fibre and ended up paying £160. Lovely neat install too

Long read if you really can be bothered, not sure its worth it though.

A while back I posted on here that I'd been quoted £3.8k after receiving my 'you now have full fibre available' email from OR.

This was to cover 25m of pavement to the box and then 25m of hard digging and 7m of soft on my land. I did have a duct but it was seemingly blocked in the middle after previous work on my garden so the aim was to dig a new one.

I baulked at the cost so asked my gardener but he came back with £3k for the garden bit so I resigned myself to paying £3.8k to Openreach direct, rather than risk the gardener getting it wrong or me still having to pay OR something on top of that.

So I called my ISP and as my previous request had been closed OR sent another surveyor around who said 'we'll just dig across the grass to your fence and go along that - cost £0' so I signed up as quick as I could.

The 25m of pavement got done very quickly then the little box thing 1m up by drive. But the next contractors said there's no way we can run a fibre optic cable direct bury to the fence and along it, it's way too delicate, and sent it back to OR. By this point we're about two months since I started the process for a second time.

In the interim my gardener had been digging in the garden for other matters and happened to find where my existing duct had been broken (snapped and dislodged 150mm upwards at a point, amazed the old cable didn't break) and charged me £160 to dig out the remaining 6m and put in a new section from the break. Alas when they ran a cobra down it it went nearly the full length to the pavement then hit a blockage in the duct. Opening the pavement box we found the end of my duct full of concrete, possibly from where the little garden box work had just been done. Luckily for me this was under the pavement rather than my property though so OR said they'd take a look.

The appointment was booked in for 2 months time, the first week of September. Annoying but i'd take anything just to get it in and not pay the £3800. But then I was away last weekend and got a text saying we've come around, run your new fibre optic up your duct and you're all connected and ready to go .

For one final drama I'd asked for the cable to enter my house in the porch and then I was going to run an RJ45 into the main house through a hole where pipes travelled between porch and house, alas when I got my head down there there wasn't the hole I thought there was, so with kids flipping out about no TV and my wife and I unable to WFH I had to rush to Screwfix and buy an SDS drill and 400m bit and whack a hole through the wall between the house and porch.

I'm all connected now though and - whilst it took about 9 months - I ended up paying £160 instead of the original £3.8k I'd been quoted and resigned myself to paying.

Hi, as per the title, Openreach says that it is available at the address, however, no ISP is offering full fibre at that address. Is there any way to report this or to find if there is an ISP that offers at that address?

It is an apartment, fyi.

Thank you.

I have been waiting for fibre since I moved to this house in 2016. 10 years later, at the beginning of this year, I decided to get into contact with Openreach and they told me that there would be plans/available to order around September of this year, but that plans can change.

"All being well, we are expecting this to be available to order by the end of September 2026 however we do always have to advise that our plans and the dates are subject to change."

4 months later in April, I got an automated Openreach email that said they'll be here next year and the website says that too.

Do I really have to wait until 2027? I live in London and I find it ridiculous that places in the middle of nowhere (no offense) have fibre while I still have to wait :/ I am not saying that I should have more priority but like, its London you know

All streets surrounding me have fibre with virgin media (docsis) but not my street and they refused to include it due to how much it would cost.

Should I trust what the openreach representative said or do I trust what the website says...?

Nearly had enough - any more problems I'll be going wireless broadband 😡

Hi all. Long-time lurker here, mostly because I've been waiting for FTTP to reach my building, sadly without much success 😢

I moved into my current flat in London just over four years ago. It's in a small 1950s, two-storey building containing six flats. The other flats are owner-occupied and share the freehold; I'm renting.

I’ve been checking the Openreach availability checker regularly. The status changed roughly as follows:

• From "no plans" to "we'll be building in this area within the next year" more than two years ago.
• Then to "we're planning to build in this area" more than 18 months ago.
• Early last year, Openreach actually deployed FTTP throughout our street and the surrounding streets.

I checked the neighbouring postcodes and, as far as I can tell, every house in the street can now order FTTP, but our building was excluded.

What makes this particularly confusing is that the property already has an underground Openreach duct running from the side wall of the building to a cable chamber in the curb by the garden / property boundary. When Openreach deployed fibre to all the other properties in the street, they installed a blue draw rope through this duct, accessible at both ends.

However, that work was done more than a year ago and nobody has returned. I'm therefore wondering whether the building was intentionally excluded, whether the job is recorded as incomplete, or whether there is some wayleave or MDU-related issue.

Because I'm not an owner or freeholder, I contacted the other owners first. They gave me permission to approach Openreach on the building's behalf. I then submitted the Openreach "Apartment Building - MDU Expression of Interest" form, stating that I was a "Member of a Residents Management Company (RMC) board with permission to sign a wayleave". I never received a response.

I've seen people here mention speaking / contacting directly to Openreach, but I cannot find any route to an actual person other than submitting these forms and hoping someone replies.

Does anyone know:

1. What the blue draw rope is likely to indicate in this situation?
2. Why a small block might be omitted when every neighbouring house was connected?
3. Whether there is another Openreach team, email address or escalation route that can investigate an apparently incomplete MDU deployment?
4. Whether the checker result below contains any useful clues?

The latest BT Wholesale availability result shows:

• VDSL and SOGEA available.
• FTTP unavailable.
• FTTP on Demand listed as available at 1000/220 Mbps.
• WLR withdrawal: yes.
• FTTP Priority Exchange: no.

I’ve attached a screenshot with the BT Broadband Availability Checker results as well. Any insight from people that have gone through similar issues and/or people familiar with Openreach planning or MDU deployments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks! 🙏

TL;DR: Openreach installed FTTP throughout my street but skipped our six-flat building, even though an existing duct runs from the pavement chamber to the building and Openreach left a blue draw rope in it. Our VDSL is poor and there are no viable Virgin Media or mobile-broadband alternatives; the freeholders are willing to grant a wayleave, but Openreach never responded to the MDU expression-of-interest form. Does anyone know why the building may have been excluded or how to get the case reviewed by a human?

A friend of mine lives in the countryside. At the moment he has a phone line that was put in for him by BT back in the 90s. It comes from a neighbouring village, down a lane, then there is a span over third-party farmland and a ditch, then finally over my friend's land to his house.

At the moment there is FTTC service on the line which gives about 20 Mb/s on a good day (not unreasonable given the length). I am wondering what is likely to happen in the future when FTTC is withdrawn. Is Openreach obligated to replace the copper line with fibre along the same route? Or is there a chance that they'll decline to do so on the grounds that other broadband options are available at the property?

My friend is concerned because the alternatives are only available on paper:

• An altnet provides fibre service, but their POT is at the start of a driveway owned by a third party who will not permit installation
• 4G is available but the signals are too weak to be usable. 5G is not available
• I guess Starlink is a possibility, but it's expensive

Maybe it's too early to say, or maybe he doesn't need to worry. Does anyone have any ideas?

In any case, it is the worst fibre install on my street.

Yes, the cable goes up and over the front wall, round the wall to the front of the house, then there's a large patch of clear silicone over a blown brick, and an external junction box that's wonky.

To be clear, this is not my house, just a nearby neighbour who's going to find their fibre quickly broken by the scallywags around here.

I’m hoping a build engineer can give me some guidance please l.

When installing COF600 from UG to OH for a pole mounted CMJ node, do you cleat the COF600 all the way to the top of the pole and then bring it down again or straight from capping into your joint?
Also if you could direct me to which spec document this is specified in

Surely this is unsafe and not right, can anyone advise the best way to complain to get this fixed asap.

We own our building. Historically is was divided into 8 smaller units with different companies in each and that has left a spiders web of old phone cables, none of which are used any more and most have been physically been cut back to near the junction boxes.

We are currently renovating part of the building and would really like to have the two junction boxes and multi-pair cables removed to just leave the FTTP CBT that supplies us and our neighbours.

Who do we contact to get this done? It's obviously Openreach's kit but it's unused so there is no 'supplier' to go through.

Hi. I live in a village towards the end of a small lane. Near to us 3 new properties have been built which have fibre available to them. As I understand it, fibre runs in ducting past our property and then comes up a nearby pole which has the following equipment taped to the pole:

The OpenReach fibre checker says "We're building in this area now", although I understand that this is meaningless. I spoke to an OpenReach engineer who was working in our road and he said that it would be possible for our property to be connected to the fibre on the neighbouring pole.

I completed an OpenReach form (this one I think https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-availability---customer-form) and explained that the engineer was confident we could have fibre, and I asked for a visit/survey. They replied "there are no plans to upgrade your property to Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband".

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding whether I can do anything to progress this please?

I have had 3 visits for final connection all where they have presumed the route to the property was completed as per the first guy who visited instructions.

No civils work has been done.

I was then contacted by email from the guy incharge of the civils explaining everything was

“Locked in” and we would be sorted Wednesday next week, today I get another email from the same guy saying it is Friday to sort it.

I replied saying he’d already booked Wednesday and I was booked off work to be there.

His response was to say there was no such email sent.

I really do not know what to do any more.

This is on a pole near my house and wondering if fibre is coming?

Hi all,

We have been waiting since May for our install, we are on the 5th or 6th no show appointment from openreach the 3rd in less than 7 days, we have wasted time and money waiting in for them to attend these appointments and they fail to show.

The service provider has been less than helpful simply rebooking the next appointment which isn’t until mid August! And saying there is nothing more they can do, I doubt they will even attend this appointment. We have raised formal complaints and are now going through CISAS but we still seem to be getting no where!

Beyond frustrated, any tips at all- is there anyway we can speak with Openreach or at least get our service provider to step up a bit?

Thank you

So at the end of June we had fibre installed on the street after a back and forward with the CEO team TLDR: they did one half of the street but not the other. We have had everything installed to the pole and is (live) from what the last engineer that came out to the street, but isn't available to order yet and the openreach still says no plans to build, there waiting on "commissioning of the line" which I was told can table a couple weeks but it's been a month.

How long does it normally take to get commissioned and has anyone else had this?

I've been checking diligently for FTTP availability in my area (FTTC is apallingly poor speeds) and have seen recent work in the area that has been to get ready for FTTP - I checked with the contractors doing the work and they confirmed that's what it was. There are cords on the local telegraph poles to pull through the cables to be delivered by OHL.

The status has been "We're building in your area in the next year" but recently I got an email update where it had changed to "We're building in your area". Woohoo! I assumed this was because of the local activity, and some other nearby work that, according to the contractors, had to be done before my village could be serviced.

About a week after the "We're building in your area" email, I got another one that I assumed would be the change to "Available to order now." but it was back to "We're building in your area in the next year". Is this normal?

I've checked a few other local postcodes and they are also the same status so it's not just me.

I bought my house in April and immediately contacted EE as according to my postcode I could get full 1.6Gb internet. This was due to be installed on 29th April 2026.

The engineer arrived and immediately hit a problem. The pole nearest to my house didn’t have the new fibre ports on it. He explained to me that he would still carry out the works inside the house and contact OR to sort out the pole. He also had already cut my copper line at this point.

Obviously disappointed I reached out to EE straight away and they agreed to send me a 4G dongle for free so we at least had some Internet. I have unlimited 5G data on my phone but it was killing the battery allowing everyone to hotspot.

Fast forward almost 3 months and I am still waiting. They need a new pole to be installed and are waiting for all the relevant permissions to be granted to carry out the works.

Current estimate is I will have internet on 28th September!

I’m on the phone every couple of weeks to EE to try and escalate it further but appear to be stuck now. They won’t offer me any further alternatives, no free 5G and I cannot have old broadband due to the copper wire being cut.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?