FTTP & Shared Utility Poles

Hi all,

Our Village/hamlet is soon to have FTTP deployed to it as part of the Superfast Cymru BDUK programme with works already begun with the FTTP deployment rollout within the exchange area.

The current "copper" Openreach's infrastructure arrives into the village via a approx 1.2 Mile overhead run using carrier and distribution poles (which feed some properties along the way too). These poles seem to just have the Openreach "copper" infrastructure on them.

However as soon as the "copper" pair bundle enters the village the poles which carry the overhead copper pairs to the properties within the village are also used by Western Power Distribution (Electricity) and the Local Council (Street Lighting).

On some of them there doesn't seem to be much space to add more plant equipment/infrastructure to the shared utility poles.

Any ideas or from past experience know if the FTTP infrastructure/plant equipment can be installed on Shared Utility Poles or if new poles would need to be installed.

It may well be down to who actually owns the poles and if there is capacity for additional loading.

As I understand it, the electricity supply companies are now refusing to allow BT to add additional services to poles that they own - repairs can be done but upgrades NO.

I too will eventually get FTTP into my hamlet. I had a long chat with the openreach engineer who was connecting up the fibre to the bottles (manifolds) at the top of poles and he told me that they are not allowed to install their bottles on a pole carrying an electricity supply. The pole in question only feeds one property so he said that would be sorted if and when the owner ordered FTTP and that the problem would be surmountable but would involve delays for that customer.

Here, in Cornwall, they put in a load of new poles for FTTP rather than use existing poles with power lines attached. I have heard various reasons for this - no permission, health and safety. So don't be surprised if you suddenly get a load of new poles in the village.

Think Openreach are going to have to re-design the distribution layout in the village then, as in some cases their isn't enough room to add a new pole next to the existing one.

They have surveyed the village last year, then over a couple of days back in December with wheel measuring meters and clip boards and once again over a week back in February.

Hope it's not going to cause too much of a delay if they need to install new poles and possibly apply for wayleaves if needed.

Openreach have been installing new poles in villages in the same exchange area. New chambers have been build or replaced also.

The Chamber outside the village where the line appears from underground before travelling overhead ~1.2miles into the village had it's cover and frame replaced back in March.

OR are not allowed to add ANY additional infrastructure to electricity posts so if your copper wire is attached to shared poles; they will have to instal new poles or even ducts.

Agreed, no FTTP on JUP's.

I am in a similar situation, small village which is down for FTTP. Electric and phone on same poles. We had a load of new poles installed back in January but no new developments since. The new poles went in really quick though. Each one has a planning notice saying that you have 3 months to object to it so assuming they wont do anything til that is clear. Just hoping no one is causing a issue.

Many (maybe all can't remember) of the new poles we have are not immediately next to the old ones. The closest one to me is on the opposite side of the road to the existing.

Interestingly on roadworks.org, there is work being done next week by Openreach near the chamber on the B road outside the village (where the existing copper pair bundle appears overhead and starts it's ~1.2mile journey to the village)

The roadworks description isn't very descriptive though, just says

"Provision of fibre cables by Openreach as part of the BDUK Wales high speed broadband programme in the XXX exchange area."

The chamber is also by a rural Business park, which has already got it's own FTTC cabinet (active and AO for FTTC) about 8 months ago by Superfast Cymru.

A small brain cell recalls a change in safety rules is also involved. Not unlike the minimum height for a cable crossing a road, which is higher now than it used to be, but they are not forcing Openreach to redo them all, i.e. new ones must be at new height and any repairs.

It is almost certainly tied into safety and liability ...

There is one location I know where there are shared utility poles ... the BT cables are strung along and then they depart and go to one or two BT poles before returning to the shared pole!

On the subject of poles:property ratio -
They installed a new pole opposite me to avoid the joint use pole this side of the road and decided the house behind us could be served by running fibre to the next pole along then across the field back towards us. But the near house pole was joint use so they put in a new pole in the corner of my garden to connect to - that was last October. About 2 months ago another pole appeared on the front corner of my property (just in the road). Still no sign of any fibre to them!

From my days in electricity supply I think it all depends on the height of the poles.

Obviously the BT wires have to be a certain height above the road, but to be attached to a electricity supply pole there has to be at least a metre (I think) between them and the lowest power line.

If it is not possible to get that clearance then BT cables cannot be attached, I presume the same would apply to WiFi kit.

Interestingly, it seems Western Power have attached what looks like an approx half metre metal pole to the top of some of the shared Utility poles where the electric cable now runs up that metal pole and then across to the property.

To raise the height across a road, perhaps?

That would be the usual reason.

could potentially be that, though not too sure why the metal poles have only just been installed on a few of the poles within the last couple of weeks.

Lots of Openreach activity on the B road just outside the village. The village is served by Cab 4 on Exchange X however the area near by is served by Cab 8 on Exchange Y. SFC currently says both the cabinets 4 and 8 are down for FTTP.

According to roadworks.org the descriptions are:
1) Splitr to DP - Cable (From Exchange Y direction to just outside the village)
2)Safety for Engineer to work in Underground structure. (From Exchange X direction to just outside the village)

There are at least 6 more planned roadworks in the same area over the next month or so being done by Openreach.

Interesting to see what happens and if the timescale stays at June/July 2016.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It may well be down to who actually owns the poles and if there is capacity for additional loading.

As I understand it, the electricity supply companies are now refusing to allow BT to add additional services to poles that they own - repairs can be done but upgrades NO.

Are they? I had a Shared Access License granted by WPD just a few weeks ago. Wasn't an issue at all.

There are now planned works inside the village/hamlet. Any one know if the below is related to the FTTP deployment and what it may be? An aggregation node of fibre splitter maybe?

Build 1 precast chamber in 915mm x 445mm x 965mm deep in Footway,Install 5m of 1 way poly duct in Verge.

Edited by cymru123 (Fri 15-Jan-16 18:12:33)

In reply to a post by cymru123:

There are now planned works inside the village/hamlet. Any one know if the below is related to the FTTP deployment and what it may be? An aggregation node of fibre splitter maybe?

Build 1 precast chamber in 915mm x 445mm x 965mm deep in Footway,Install 5m of 1 way poly duct in Verge.

Could well be, don't hold your breath though, work like this was done in the area near a friend of mine over a year ago but the FTTP work is still ongoing, albeit slowly.

What do Superfast Cymru say for your postcode? They're usually quite good in replying.
www.facebook.com/superfastcymru

Thanks mrijones.

SFC have been saying that the hamlet and surrounding area was in scope for FTTP for well over a year now, but looks like ground/plant works within the village have only just started to happen. There has been flurries of deployment activities in the surrounding areas for over 6 months now.

The updated SFC map says "Your area is in scope for the roll out of Fibre to the Premise (FTTP)".

Ye SFC are usually good at replying, I've been having a thread of emails with them since 2013. Sent for an update a few days ago based on this planned work, looks like they are a bit busy in the office so hopefully get a reply on Monday.

Unfortunatly FTTP seems to take an age to rollout which is sort of to be expected given the extra work invovled. I'm also in an area that FTTP is coming to (in Lancashire) at least according to the e-mail I got from BTOR yesterday and visual evidence on the ground.

Whilst it's frustrating being on basic broadband ADSLMax, when fibre finally does come it'll be true fibre and I jump to the best availble tech. So from almost the worst to the best. Good things come to those who wait.

SFC map says "Your area is in scope for the roll out of Fibre to the Premise (FTTP)".

Well for my line SFC says "Your area is in scope for the roll out of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC)."

my exchange area has no cabinets....all EO lines; if they put a couple of cabs in the houses are too sparse for any benefit, so this may change to FTTP.

Postcode SA62 4AS on exchange SWRSO (Rhos Dyfed) if anybody else has any info.

There are 2 cabinets on your exchange. Cabinet 1 has FTTP planned. No informtation on any others.

There is no such thing as Fibre to the Premise .

Public bodies should know better.

Fibre to the Premise

Did not spot that typo....I only read every other word when speed reading

There are 2 cabinets on your exchange

Thanks....with only 100 lines in total I just thought (and the info from Magenta code look) that there was just 11 "EO bundles"

Assuming it was a copy & paste, it wasn't a typo. It was a spelling mistake by someone who thinks "Premise" is the word for a single building.

In reply to a post by ian007jen:

Thanks....with only 100 lines in total I just thought (and the info from Magenta code look) that there was just 11 "EO bundles"

Though, looking at "all postcodes", it also reports that there are 9 postcodes, but only using EO bundles 1, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10. No mention of 2, 3, 5, 7 or 11.

And at the same time, reporting that bundles 1, 2 and 3 are included in "Phase BDUK Wales 15b".

I don't think the data in Magenta stays very consistent when copper re-arrangement is under way.

Well, looks like there is now some overhead fibre tubing coming into the hamlet travelling about a mile strung from post to post till reaching the hamlet.
Most of the poles where overhead tubing has been strung (or where there is also a loop of the ducting temporally attached to the pole) have a sign saying "Caution Overhead Fibre".

I'm assuming the next stages would be distribute the FTTP infrastructure around the hamlet (assuming the precast chamber will also be used to further split and distribute the fibre) and to install the manifolds?

Interesting, so you think they are bringing it overhead after which it goes underground again?

Well the overhead fibre tubing has entered the hamlet from one end. The precast chamber that was built a few months back is sort of in the middle (which from previous responses could be used for a splitter node or aggregation node).

Haven't seen any pole mounted fibre splitters yet (though seems to be early-mid stage of the deployment so some may pop up at some point).

All the properties are fed by overhead copper pairs at the moment so I'm assuming the fibre will need to go underground at some points to go up the various distribution poles that are daisy chained.- i.e the current copper is distributed underground at some points to travel to the next series of distribution poles.

This all sounds very odd. That jointbox (that's what we call them) in the middle of the overhead fibre run is confusing me. I'm wondering if the intention was to bury the fibre, which is what would usually happen and they just couldn't do it so they've had to go overhead instead.

@Icaras and anyone else,

I've drawn a quick basic sketch to try and illustrate what is currently there.

I've only included the poles in the hamlet. Where a pole is on it's one this illustrates that the copper pairs are fed to it from underground - i.e it's not fed by a carrier pole.
I've also included the new precast chamber, however other Openreach chambers and jointboxes also exist.
Also FYI, the new overhead fibre tubing travels the same route into the hamlet as the copper ariel cable (which has all the copper pairs coming into the hamlet)

Click here to view sketch

If the image doesn't load - you can try to download it here. Both links are on a ~0.34Mbps upload link.

Just a quick question.

What would cause multiple customers within the same hamlet to have their connection resync at the same time, and also causing a reduced in connection speed?

Not much of an issue as a manual power cycle of the modem-router usually resolves it.

There is still a lot of fibre works going on in the hamlet, so might partially be down to that? e.g disturbing the Arial cables whilst up on the poles. - Not complaining as we are nearly getting there for FTTP.

Disturbance of copper or maybe something like turning on a noisy (in the RF sense) device, e.g. arc welder etc

They most certainly are making Openreach lift some lines where they cross a road and shared utility poles are in use. Exactly that happened right outside my parent's house who live in a rural single-track cul-de-sac about 400 metres. There's not even a turning point (the council waste truck has to reverse down the lane). A man with a measuring pole came along and explained that where the phone line crossed the lane (as the poles changed sides), it would have to be lifted to conform to new EU regulations. It didn't matter that it was a dead end, or that quite large farm vehicles and the council refuse truck passed underneath.

A few weeks later a gang came along and dug a trench across the road with some ducting (it took three days as it was a long one on the diagonal and the road was essentially laid onto solid chalk). A pull rope was left and some months later an OR engineer came and put in the new underground cable and removed the old one.

I've no idea what schedule this is on, but there is certainly a process in that bit of the country (Buckinghamshire) to lift cables, even if it's in an unlikely location.

I also recall there was an OR engineer killed a few years back when a lorry snagged such a line and brought a pole down. That may well have prompted this.

Yes but I'm not aware of any new regulations in the last few years. I think what you're describing is OR just applying the existing rules that have been in place for many years.

It was three of four years ago that the work was done.

I can tell you that the rules regarding heights over roads haven't changed in at least 6 years. Someone else might be able to go back further than that. I honestly have no idea about any new EU rules and that would definitely be something I should know. So unless there's been a massive oversight and people haven't been told....

A few questions.

Based on this quick map I've drawn (Village FTTP Architecture Map) :

You can see that there is one overhead BFT from point A to B, then from point B two overhead BFTs leave going towards point C and D. Point E on the map is the precast chamber installed back in January. Point A looks like it's waiting to be threaded through the underground ducts and connected to hardware that will connect the fibres back to the exchange.

So the looking at this the initial questions I had was :-

1) I'm assuming a pole mounted splitter will be placed on point B? Or will this be a DP or something else that will connect the fibres from the one BFT into fibres that will then feed into the two BFTs going towards Point C and D?
There are also a handful of properties around this point so they will need to be provided a fibre manifold as well.

2) Any idea on what type of BFT this is and how many cores or strands of fibre it can hold?
Some large images can be found here IMG_20160708_151556 | IMG_20160915_151710

3) I'm then assuming point C will go to a fibre DP which will then serve the ~4 properties around there?

4) Then from point D this looks like it will go in the underground ducts around the village/hamlet and into the various underground chambers to distribute the fibres to the telegraph poles in the village and also into the chamber at point E which could be another DP?.
The sketch showing the poles and how the current copper pairs are distributed within the village can be found here

The timeline has also slipped and is now looking to be towards Nov-Jan.

Edited by cymru123 (Fri 16-Sep-16 12:25:10)

In reply to a post by cymru123:

2) Any idea on what type of BFT this is and how many cores or strands of fibre it can hold?
Some large images can be found here IMG_20160708_151556 | IMG_20160915_151710

Is the BFT in the previous post with the map and images a 36 ULW cable?

I can't see the first image, as it needs a google login. The other doesn't show enough detail.

However, my initial response to your post was
a) to wonder how many properties there were, and how they were distributed around the area.
b) to wonder whether the cable you labelled as BFT - which is really empty tubing - was actually a form of lightweight fibre.

The key piece of infrastructure is the splitter (or the primary splitter, if 2 levels are to be used). Obviously the splitter needs few fibres in, and lots of fibre out to premises ... so there is a balance to be had for locating this close to properties.

There is an architectural picture for overhead fibre that might allow you to guess further:
http://www.optservices.eu/FTTP%20-%202%20Level%20of%...

Either the 96-fibre lightweight or the 36-fibre ultra-lightweight seems more likely than overhead BFT.

@WWWombat

Will see if I can fix the image which is asking for a login.

However, my initial response to your post was
a) to wonder how many properties there were, and how they were distributed around the area.

There are about 5 properties at Point B on the Map.
Then about 4 properties around Point C.
Within the Village boundary itself (as highlighted in the map) there are around 50 odd properties.
The rest is just narrow roads and fields.

b) to wonder whether the cable you labelled as BFT - which is really empty tubing - was actually a form of lightweight fibre.

How can you distinguish the difference between the BFT's and the light weight fibre cables from a far?

I'll have to get a better camera to see if I can get some close-ups. It's very thin ariel cable anyway whatever it is.

At that kind of size of village, one splitter node is enough - starting at one internal splitter device, gradually expanding to 2 or 3.

Each property will need a DP of some kind - either a standalone DP, or a combined secondary-splitter and DP.

That likely means a splitter at A or B, and DPs at B and C, and more DPs in the main village. Or a primary splitter at A or B, and a secondary splitter/DP at B, and a DP at C, and more secondary splitters in the village.

I don't see how the chamber helps.

It can be hard to tell the difference between cables.

A single tube BFT can be 7mm underground, but likely larger for aerial.
A 7-tube BFT is likely to be 20mm diameter
a 12-tube BFT is likely to be 25mm+.

I saw BT say, on announcing the 96-fibre lightweight variety, a diameter of 7mm.

The 36-fibre "ultra lightweight" places less demand on poles, but I can't imagine it being much smaller.

Thanks @WWWombat.

Looks like you are right, it is LW OH Fibre. I've updated the map.

I'm not too sure what the chamber is for either, however it was installed earlier in the year. Maybe to house a splitter or DP as some of the poles within the village may not have enough room to have a pole mounted enclosure.

Got some closer pictures of the fibre cables (IMG_1621 & IMG_1622)

On the cable I can make out the following:

multi element LW OH fibre cable 36F/18 Property of BT PGH 0216

That closeup cinches it then ... 36 fibres.

I suspect the "/18" means that the fibres inside are in 2 tubes of 18 fibres, but most of BT's previous fibre has come in tubes of 12 fibres. Perhaps it means something else.

Well after about 10 months of no Openreach related activity within the village, leaving the works they had done back around Jan time, it looks like they are now installing more ducts and joint boxes in the road and footways.

Such as the message shown below:

Install 1m of 1 way poly duct in Footway,Provide 1 core drill(s) into jointbox or building & install a JB26

I understand a JB26 is a type of joint box, any reason why they would need to install another one by the existing one? This seems to be by an exiting pole too.

Least things are now moving on.

I wonder if these are the new FTTP cables that are meant to speed up deployment of FTTP? They are dated 2016. I do know how they are different, but can't say as who knows what's in the public domain.

I don't work on the FTTP side myself so couldn't say for sure anyway.

Hate to say it, but that could be nothing to do with FTTP. I often see that sort of thing on roadworks.org round and there's no FTTP here.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Hate to say it, but that could be nothing to do with FTTP. I often see that sort of thing on roadworks.org round and there's no FTTP here.

What I would say is a JB26 is a small box. Usually something larger would be used for FTTP.

What I would say is a JB26 is a small box. Usually something larger would be used for FTTP.

+1

Cymru123, where abouts are you? Im on the Broadhaven exchange in Pembs. We also had all the overhead work done last January and since then nothing.

I cannot get any info whatsoever from OR, so have contacted our AM Paula Davies. On the 3/11 he wrote to the Welsh Region Manager of OR asking for more details of when anything more was to happen, and for OR to also contact me directly. To date still no response from them!
Woody

Thanks guys for the responses. I wonder what they are going to use the JB26 for then. Time will tell.

@ukwoody

Vale Of Glam area. We've been reassured from quite high up the BT Group that all the FTTP deployment works to and within the village should be done before the Christmas Period (helps that our MP seems to know and is friends with the NGA Director and our AM is in constant contact with the Wales NGA Programme Manager). Was also told that theworks being done in the village at the moment are related to the fibre deployment.

Updating this - FTTP is now partially available. Manifolds were placed on new and existing poles where there was room, some of which were shared by there appliances but as said in other posts there needs to be adequate space.