How do BT put the fibre between cab and exchange so quick?

Curious over this....

How do bt manage to place the fibre between the new fttc cab and the exchange so quick?

My cab is more than 2-3 miles from the exchange, I just couldnt imagine the engineers digging up and pulling up panels this far back to where the fttc cab is located?

How is it done?

Do bt already have fibre between the exchanges and the old cabs already?

BT seem to do all this stuff extreamly quickly...

Forensic

As existing fibre cables already go between exchanges, and even to some business sites they may have already run past your Cab.

Openreach would have just run fibre to the nearest point that a fibre cable with spares in existed already, then just jointed it in.

Are you near an industrial / commercial / business area or on a main road that cables may already run down?

You have been lucky it was quick, many others have found that due to blocked ducts it has taken months to get the fibre through!

They don't even attempt to open up the duct, They just pull a tube 100s meters a time through then just blow the fibre down the tube. My partner spent an hour one afternoon watching them go down the road and then disappear into the distance!

It is easy if there is ducting in place. Of course, the ducting has to have room, and not be blocked, but if that is the case, then it is quick.

First they pull through some "microducting". This looks like a cable, but it is really hollow tubing specifically for fibre. Because it is just plastic tubing, this can be pulled & pushed with some force.

However, the fibre itself is a little more fragile. Instead of pulling the fibre, they use a process known as "blown fibre". There they get an air compressor to blow fibre through the microducting.

Take a look in the pages around here.

If there's no ducting available, then there's no option other than to dig, or go overhead.

If the ducts are clear they will just feed a small tube into the duct which can be a fairly quick process. Once that is it they just blow the fibre through the duct. There is very little(if any) digging and manhole covers only lifted where necessary.

The teams doing it have a lot of experience and can almost do it in their sleep. They know the problems they might face and how to resolve them quickly.

So what are the typical problems that they face & resolve?

We obviously only hear of the showstoppers, such as a completely blocked duct requiring a dig.

But with all the bends and junctions in the road, how the hell do they get this tubing through all this at such a distance?

Fttc date was sept, its now December, however the cab is actually in place.


We live in a council estate area.

The current Openreach developer's guide sets a few rules:

• All runs should be laid as straight as possible. If needed, you can carefully bend the ducts or use pre-formed bends supplied by us.
• There should be no more than one pre-formed 90° bend in any single run of duct.
• Pre-formed 90° bends should not be installed in any duct linking two joint boxes.

I imagine that, if they've been following those rules for a while, then the duct runs between joint-boxes will be relatively straight.

I don't know what the bending radius of 50-core or 100-core copper is, but I imagine that it is actually more effort to get that down a "bendy" duct than blowing fibre.

Oh right interesting!

What sort of equipment is used to feed new cables down ducts?