How accurate is Openreach's When Can I Get Fibre?

I knew my new build was in plans to get FTTP (despite the Openreach website saying there was no plans). Over the past few weeks there's been Openreach vans in my street.

Today I checked the Openreach website and it said I could order FTTP. So I placed an order via BT which they have processed. I'm booked for an install in a couple of weeks.

What's weird though is that none of my immediate neighbours appear to have it. If I check their door numbers, they still come up as only having ADSL.

If I use the BT DSL checker, I see this

https://i.imgur.com/9ACHvrb.png

If I do the same for a neighbour, they see the same minus the top row entry for FTTP. Is the Openreach database accurate? I do see a pull rope has been pulled through to the side of my house where the BT phone line comes in.

It is possible that the others are not actually ready, i.e. new builds can go live in stages as each fibre DP is completed, rather than wait for a whole estate to be completed.

If people are in a property and expecting FTTP and checkers say no, first stage is to get the provider to do the leg work, as new builds have a number of issues for multiple utilities in terms of being recognised.

Maybe all my moaning since I moved in at the end of June has paid off!

Mine has gone from "Exploring Solutions" to "Design", "Field Survey" & "Build" over the last 1.5 years, to then go back to "Exploring Solutions" a few months ago, when I'm 99.9% certain we will be getting FTTP at some point - I live on a dead end road and some of the postcodes come up as FTTP and some like mine show nothing, I cant imagine for one second that BT are going to by-pass my house to go further down the estate with FTTP.
(Ex-TPON on whole estate).
Been waiting 7 years for something faster than 4Mb - almost 2018 its a disgrace really.

Depends on their database.

An error stopped me ordering fibre in March and has delayed our install.

When OR tried to correct the error, they succeeded in listing our property twice, one in scope for FTTP, the other not available. The property 10m away had theirs installed on Tuesday and an engineer is coming to install ours next week.

And the checker still says we can't get it.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Oct-17 14:23:46)

In reply to a post by fiddler:

Depends on their database.

An error stopped me ordering fibre in March and has delayed our install.

When OR tried to correct the error, they succeeded in listing our property twice, one in scope for FTTP, the other not available. The property 10m away had theirs installed on Tuesday and an engineer is coming to install ours next week.

And the checker still says we can't get it.

Guess I'll find out a week tomorrow when my installation appointment is. What was the error you encountered? And why has it taken them from March until October to resolve it?

Mine went straight to FTTP even though there�s some fairly significant build work to be done. BT were pretty quick to identify further survey work was required, in contact within a couple of days. So if you haven�t heard anything hopefully that�s a good thing.

In reply to a post by bluemoon87:

Mine went straight to FTTP even though there�s some fairly significant build work to be done. BT were pretty quick to identify further survey work was required, in contact within a couple of days. So if you haven�t heard anything hopefully that�s a good thing.

Yeah, I ordered it last Friday. Everything on the BT website still appears to be on track. Appointment confirmed for the morning of the 3rd Nov. Not had any news to tell me different so assuming all okay so far.

Do they do the install all in one appointment these days? Pull the fibre from the DP in the chamber in the pavement outside my house through to my house then connect the ONT up inside?

In reply to a post by sparkymark75:

Guess I'll find out a week tomorrow when my installation appointment is. What was the error you encountered? And why has it taken them from March until October to resolve it?

Error was that for some reason, of the five properties at the postcode, only three were listed as being able to have FTTP, our being one of the ones that couldn't, even though we were 10m across the farmyard from one that could and placed an order.

OR is absolutely useless - I tweeted and filled out an on-line ticked and the 4 week response turned to 6 weeks with no change in status. I e-mailed the CEO of BT who got his team involved long enough for me to explain and place an order in April.

There was about 4 months of fannying around with contractors surveying, re-surveying, re-re-surveying before digging up the shared drive in fits and starts. In the mean time, there were 3 visits by engineers to install the fibre even though the closest piece of cable was in ducting about 50m away.

AT some point, the database must have flipped as there are now two listings for us and neither can get fibre. This delayed our install while the neighbours went ahead as planned.

BT threw their hands up and said they have no control over OR and said we'll just get them to install it anyway.

As of Tuesday, when I was chatting to the guys working on the neighbour's property they said that there were no other orders that they could see on the system for the post-code.

BT have e-mailed be to say that an engineer is coming between 8 and 1 next Tuesday to install fibre.

Time will tell.

Fingers crossed they turn up for both of us!

Mines is (hopefully) more straightforward as I'm on a new build estate and there has been loads of activity recently with OR vans and contractors.

Edited by sparkymark75 (Thu 26-Oct-17 18:21:09)

Seeing the way OpenReach work, you can understand why our prices are so high. After all, why do a job once, be paid for it once, when you can do it 50 times... I wonder just how much this Super Farce is actually over budget, and just how much extra it has cost the tax payer. I have seen these guys laying cables in the night, and leaving the empty holes in the road unmanned during the day. Then when they are done disturbing traffic for a while, fill the holes back in, only to re-open them a month or so later, and then for this whole cycle to repeat itself three or four times. You can start to get a feel of this company's mentality, but then when they are unregulated, seem to answer to no one, some might say who can blame them...

It depends what kind of FTTP is being used for your address. Blown fibre will be a two (obvious) visits

If connectorised, then the installer will get it all the way from the DP on the day of the install.

In reply to a post by dwg1:

Seeing the way OpenReach work, you can understand why our prices are so high. After all, why do a job once, be paid for it once, when you can do it 50 times... I wonder just how much this Super Farce is actually over budget, and just how much extra it has cost the tax payer. I have seen these guys laying cables in the night, and leaving the empty holes in the road unmanned during the day. Then when they are done disturbing traffic for a while, fill the holes back in, only to re-open them a month or so later, and then for this whole cycle to repeat itself three or four times. You can start to get a feel of this company's mentality, but then when they are unregulated, seem to answer to no one, some might say who can blame them...

And the guys I saw (contractors?) putting in the blue ropes weren't exactly in a rush. It was pull a rope through, go for a cigarette and a cuppa, then repeat.

So as I expected, they don't have a clue what they're doing. The guy turned up do the install but had to check as he was told the DP was away down the street (outside number 36, I'm 76) and he can only run cable 150m. Theres an underground DP across the road from me but it's not been activated. He's passing it back to planning to get them to activate that DP and then he can pull the fibre from there to the house.

So thats a holiday from work wasted and more waiting for an unknown period of time. Just exasperating at how little they seem to know what each other are doing.

Called BT who said I have to wait 5 working days on a response from OpenReach. Why say somethings available when it clearly isn't!!!

She read the notes out from the OR engineer who stated that he estimated the DP was 285m away and it's been passed back to planning to see what they want to do.

Run a [censored] cable would be my answer. No wonder this country is so behind with it's comms infrastructure.