Are new builds FTTP enabled?

Reason i ask is we have had quite a few new builds in the last few years near and around where i live. None of these have the traditional pole and phone cable going into the house, but are being lived in. So are developers future proofing houses by installing the cables for FTTP, or is it simply the owners havent ordered a phone line yet?

New build estates have not had telephone poles on the whole for some years, i.e. underground infrastructure is preferred

Without an actual location all one can say is that some new build is FTTP ready when people move in, but if it was started pre 2016 then this may not be the case. Also builders have a choice of full fibre providers who they can partner with.

Depends on what the developers request. BT will do FTTP for new builds over a certain number of houses but if the developer doesn't request it then it won't happen. Developers may also get other providers to provide telecoms.

Being underground makes sense, as there have been Openreach guys doing works to the houses, without any obvious signs of cabling.

Even in older homes it is often underground, e.g. my old street in London we had no visible cables outdoors but I was in a property that was easily 50+ years old. Over 50% of the places I've been in within London have been underground, none new builds.

I think there are laws now which do not permit the usage of cables overhead ie I do not think you can easily just pop up a bunch of overhead cabling now.

Overhead fed services are often frowned upon by site developers, and a UG duct leaves scope for both.

In several large estates round this way are Openreach FTTP only.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Reason i ask is we have had quite a few new builds in the last few years near and around where i live. None of these have the traditional pole and phone cable going into the house

There's nothing new about that. Since at least the 1970s increasing numbers of councils have insisted that all utility cables be underground. My house was built in 1984 and has underground cabling.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 22-Jan-18 20:54:19)

Our estate was built in the seventies, it's all direct buried in the ground, so no ducts either. Some bright spark thought it would save money.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Our estate was built in the seventies, it's all direct buried in the ground, so no ducts either. Some bright spark thought it would save money.

That bright spark was probably correct though.

In the short term yes, but every time they needed to replace a cable they have to dig it up, so in the long term I suspect not. Ducting isn't expensive, it's getting in the ground that costs, but if you're digging a trench anyway then to put ducting in is negligible.

Like using ally cables was saving money, but look at the problems that caused.

Except that when these type of cables and non ducted underground feeds were being installed it was to service a very different industry ........

When I started twenty years ago a few were having 2nd lines installed for dial up.

Still see direct in ground cables and joints working just fine all these years later.

Hindsight is 20/20 vision.

We have this outside our house on the pavement and there is some more serving other houses on the road. Would this mean they're non ducted feeds to my house? What is the purpose of these particular fairly small inspection chambers?

There's no overhead poles around it's all underground. House built 1979/1980 but always wondered what kind of ducting.

Which is exactly why I didn't mention broadband or FTTP etc, because they didn't exist back then. But line faults, corrosion and the likes did, and surely it must have made more sense to install ducts than not, especially for system that would need maintaining, and cables replacing from time to time. Perhaps digging up roads was a cheap as chips back then.

I bet you see plenty of cables that need to be dug up to gain access to, plenty of old cables which are well past it being patched, because they can't pull a section and replace it without digging up the entire road. I know because OR engineers have told me, more than once - patch, patch and patch again

In reply to a post by tomse43:

We have this outside our house on the pavement and there is some more serving other houses on the road. Would this mean they're non ducted feeds to my house? What is the purpose of these particular fairly small inspection chambers?

There's no overhead poles around it's all underground. House built 1979/1980 but always wondered what kind of ducting.

It's a JB23 (joint box) and will contain either a joint or the DP (another joint basically). It's pretty likely that there is no ducting and there's armoured cable laid straight in the ground.

I see, thank you for explaining.

New build in Derry has FTTP, there's no other trace of FTTP deployed in the City, but I guess it's down to the developers and Openreach


Postcode: BT47 6HG


All showing native FTTP (the houses that are ready that is)

Edited by BuckleZ (Wed 24-Jan-18 01:22:50)