North Yorkshire (A170 into Helmsley) New ducting??

Just putting this out there to see if any info can be found...

The A170 into helmsley was on traffic lights this last two weeks or so for BT to put ~630m of ducting into the verge down the hill. Our village (Sproxton) is at the top of the Hill, so naturally I was curious to see if that might be some progress towards getting fibre installed for the village!?!?

Anyone with any info at all? Postcode is YO625EF.

At the moment the village cabinet is ~3km away actually in helmsley so we are unable to get FTTC at all, let alone decent ADSL (2mb!!!). I am actually using a decent Fixed wireless solution which gets me ~12mbit down which matches what I got in York on ADSL2.

Our parish council contacted SFNY and our MP which both resulted in an answer regarding high commercial costs etc... so fibre has been a non starter..................is the roadworks a sign of some hope for us anyone??

(hopefully!)

Edited by mrvanx (Fri 22-Apr-16 17:45:59)

Nothing obvious to confirm anything is happening

Makes no sense for this to carry on through Sproxton to Helmsley since they have access on some cabinets already, so could be start of a fibre feed for VDSL2 for the village. Projects sometimes don't publicise things much in case of delays, so often silence until everything is almost ready to go.

If the ducting came right to the junction and turned into the B1257 look out for a new mini cab or Fibre splitters up the poles. ( You won't get both).

The village isn't really big enough for a Cab so if you are really lucky you may get FTTP. However this will take far longer than FTTC so don't hold your breath.

If the Cab appears it will be far quicker. ( Likely to be by the Phone box of lamppost to get at power.)

If the ducting stopped before the junction all bets are off for the minute.

The roadworks only started around halfway to the village towards Helmsley, there's a grey box in the verge which I assume is something Associated?

This is the point on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/xySu4wTEi9E2

There isn't anything on the horizon to continue the work according to roadworks.org but I guess that doesn't mean much. A whole load of work was done in Helmsley doing some resurfacing etc... Mainly for the tour de Yorkshire route, still it's always good to have some hope eh?

I'll keep my eye out for anything else though. In terms of FTTP one of my colleagues lives in a village near Pickering and up until a few weeks ago was using a fixed wireless provider similar to me, then suddenly he received a letter saying FTTP was being brought into the village and is now superfast...so you never know! (Optimism kicking in now heh)

We'll see what happens in the near future.

Either way hopefully something is being done. I was surprised how quickly they managed to get the ducting in, it was completed in around 3 days, they left the verge really tidy also!

Be interesting to see what happens. I live at Yearsley N Yorks, EO lines to the next village Brandsby. About 2/3 years ago BT ran a fibre ducting from the service manhole in the village down to Brandsby, confirmed by the men doing the work, got all excited, but nothing has ever come of it.

Keep us updated.

Post code YO61 4SL

Edited by agkq62 (Sun 01-May-16 14:38:00)

In reply to a post by mrvanx:

The roadworks only started around halfway to the village towards Helmsley, there's a grey box in the verge which I assume is something Associated?

This is the point on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/xySu4wTEi9E2

The grey box doesn't look like something related to BT. Could it be something for the vehicle sensor loops in the road?

Post deleted by WWWombat

Not sure, it's just happened to be in the same rough area where the ducting work led to.

Just FYI for locals and/or people in the know the village my colleague lives in, which suddenly got FTTP (yes FTTP), is Newton-On-Rawcliffe.

He didn't have particularly good things to say of the guys who came to install it either but that's a different story.

Who'd have thought that would happen? Just checked a number in the village of Newton-On-Rawcliffe and it came up on cab E1 with FTTP details in the checker - the same cab as some of my family but there's no FTTP details on theirs so their extra bit of rural distance keeps them from getting it I suppose (they are further out through the village on the way to Cropton).

So woeful ADSL remains for them Never mind...

FTTP availability can often roll-out across a cabinet area over time, on our coverage checker we often end up splitting cabinet areas into the FTTP and non-FTTP and then a month or two later revisiting and finding more postcodes are now served.

Hi All,
Having taken the morning off I drove past the site in question around luchtime and there was some work going on. The ducting appears to have finished around halfway up the hill at the site of a telegraph pole. It looks like the phone lines head off across some fields to the village (cutting off a fair distance by road).
There was a cordon off at this end of the ducting and an openreach van at the other end in Helmsley.

They were feeding in what looked like a black cable (I estimate around an inch diameter but it was difficult to judge driving past).

Good to see some activity!! MrS any thoughts??

I will try to maybe pull over on the way back and get a picture of the telegraph pole etc....

If the black cable was 1 inch diameter suggests fibre tubing (would have had a yellow stripe on it too), this contains mini tubes through which fibre bundles can then be blown.

As mentioned I stopped at the telegraph pole in question on the way back, no sign of anything above the manhole cover at the foot of it so I didnt bother with any photos.

I'll keep an eye on it and report back if any further work has been done.

Incidentally the same type of thing was going on at a new estate on the opposite side of Helmsley, again with a small barrier around the manhole (which are both rectangular) and an openreach sign at it.

Either way progress is a good thing to see.

I'll take a look at the openreach checker as last time I looked my particular address was no longer in the list!?!?!?

I just drove past the pole in question, the shrubbery has been cut back and a light blue cable (or maybe fibre?) has been run from the manhole at the Base of the pole to a junction box at the top. I'll get some photos tonight.

Likely that this is not a cable but a pull through rope which is used to pull the fibre sub duct through the larger duct.

I was incorrect about the blue wire, I had a bike down to it and took some photos.

The blue wire was indeed a wire but was freshly cut short of the manhole.

I did spot these nice things though!

Fibre warning sign!

Fibre going up the pole (I think)

Fresh junction box at the top

Looks promising! I still don't really know if these poles join the manhole contents to the village but either way it's a good thing to see fresh works being done.

Edit: one thing is odd, my address doesn't appear in the bt postcode checker...if I dont have a bt phone line (I currently use voip via fixed wireless ISP) is that likely to be why?

Edited by mrvanx (Wed 06-Jul-16 18:23:23)

If the property has never had a BT based phone line or not for a long time there may be mistakes but usually all addresses do show up - sometimes the BT database does not have the obvious address though, e.g. number rather than house name

Personally, I reckon it's for a lease line (Ethernet) , probably going to a mobile base station

I was thinking that as well. There are a pair of mobile towers over in the general direction the telegraph poles are going. UGH!