The ducting outside the house runs about 100m up the road to a big set of underground chambers on the corner which, according to the Openreach surveyor, the main network passes through. It's on the same side of the road, so I'm pretty sure we can connect underground the whole way

Thanks

I think I have to assume that's my answer then and hope against hope that someone puts a pole up sooner rather than later. Rather frustrating not being able to talk to anyone from Openreach during this long process.

Many thanks for your replies.

In reply to a post by TheHedgymon:

The only explanation I can think of is that they don't want the manifold underground for maintenance reasons, so are putting a pole up for somewhere to hang it on. I guess in that scenario the fibre would come above ground up the pole to the manifold before being split out and going underground again through the ducting to our house? Does that make sense?

It doesn't make much sense to me. I thought the manifolds were made to be able to go on poles as well as in chambers.

What would make more sense to me is the manner in which they will choose to deliver fibre to all the other homes nearby. Even though your home can be fed underground through the new ducting, they might have decided that all other homes need to be fed overhead. If that is the case, then the manifold would need to be up the pole too.

If they have recently decided this, they *might* have changed their minds for you too, and decided on an aerial feed (instead of running your BFT tube back down the pole, and through the new ducting).

Have to admit I was slightly clutching at straws with my explanation. As you say, if they're going to put a pole up anyway why did they bother with the expense of digging up my drive? Why not just go straight from the pole to the house.

I'm not totally convinced that it's for the neighbours' sake either. The proposed site for the pole is too far for the fibre to run to their houses so they'd need quite a lot more work to get connected anyway. The frustrating wait for the installation of the pole that I don't understand continues !

thanks

Getting FTTP installed after the checker tells you that it is available is certainly a struggle. They told us that we would need a pole, then we didn't. In the end the manifold is installed in a chamber and is ducted underground to the front of the house as you have described. But it took about 8 months from initial order to installation.

Good to know I'm not the only one - 7 months and counting now.
That's my frustration - I've a feeling that all of the infrastructure work needed has been done and that something has now got confused at Openreach so we've gone into a wait state. One 5 minute conversation would probably resolve all, but you can't actually talk to anyone!