Does FTTH need ducting to the house?

I've just found out that my house will soon be able to get FTTH, rather than FTTC. Please can anyone tell me whether or not I need to have pre-installed ducting to get the fibre from the manifold to my house to get the service?

Luckily the manifold is right next to my front garden and I do have a BT duct. The bad news is that my garage has been converted and the duct (drop tube) opening is now buried under the wall and floor of my living room.

Will BT install new ducting or am I going to have to rip up part of my dining room and dig down to the duct opening? (I hope not!) Are there any other options?

Which exchange are you connected to?

Normally new underground installs will need access to the ducting for the fibre run, but some FTTP trial areas are overhead so utilise the existing poles.

The only thing is Openreach will only do so much, my duct was blocked with to many cables so the engineer pulled out the CATV and pulled through the fibre carrier with it, but asking them to do this inside a premises could well lead to an aborted job and canx order.

If you know where the duct is routed before it goes under the "garage" wall from outside, maybe they could get into it from there, as I believe FTTH connections are external anyway. Especially if (after consulting with them beforehand) you have dug down to it.

It may not even be supplied through that duct - I don't know. Do you have a live phone connection running through it and just getting to a sensible place inside, or it it "dead"? On brownfield installations the phone is still using the copper.

They are just about to start the voice trials for those already on FTTP in Bradwell Abbey

I'm connected to the Exeter Exchange and always thought we were going to get FTTC, but yesterday four Openreach vans turned up in my close and started pulling cables from all the underground duct boxes towards the one outside my house. I asked one engineer if this meant I was getting FTTC and he said "no, were bringing the fibre straight to your house - if you're willing to pay for it!"

My house is on a 15 year old housing estate, and prior to the garage conversion, the black phone cable emerged from from an approx. 1 inch wide PVC tube with a cap on top of the PVC tube. The black cable then runs a few feet to my master socket.
The PVC tube is still there - just buried under the floor, as the builders cut the tubing (not the cable) back so they could lay the floor on top of it. All the houses round here seem to have their phone lines coming in to their garage, and I can see how simple it would be for Openreach to install FTTH assuming the duct pipe isn't buried - however a lot of the other garages round here have also been converted.

The manifold/duct box is right on the edge of my garden and only 20 feet from my house, so perhaps trying to dig down to the ducting from outside my house would be the best option?

According to the FTTP trial page on the Plusnet site the external wall box has to be at ground level, even if the existing copper enters the house higher up. How does that work with a pole-supplied drop lead?

Possible answer to my own question here which may be of interest to others:
Had a long chat with the Openreach guys who were back in my street today. I explained that my duct was blocked due to a garage conversion. He said it wasn't an issue as dozens of properties had already been identified (in the Exeter exchange area) as needing new ducting laying which would be undertaken as a matter of course. Interestingly he also said that even if my ducting wasn't blocked, because the drop tube emerged in my garage they wouldn't be able to use that ducting as they're not allowed into customer's premesis so would lay new ducting anyway.

That makes sense... everything I've seen on FTTP shows that BT install a fibre "termination" box outside the house, at ground floor level. Either outside, or within an externally-accessible distribution box (like gas & electricity meters are now installed in).

The box doesn't really terminate the fibre - it's really a splice box that they join the external fibre to the length that goes into the house.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

That makes sense... everything I've seen on FTTP shows that BT install a fibre "termination" box outside the house, at ground floor level. Either outside, or within an externally-accessible distribution box (like gas & electricity meters are now installed in).

The box doesn't really terminate the fibre - it's really a splice box that they join the external fibre to the length that goes into the house.

That's what I thought. At first i wondered if it was a media converter, but having found a picture of one open all I could see was fibre (so no copper). But my question stands: if the box is just above ground and the fibre is being supplied from a pole... doesn't make much sense to my dim brain!

As far as I am aware, the fibre is not delivered via the pole, but at ground level similar to how Cable is delivered, so along the street with access points to run it to your house.