Tapping into fibre on a telegraph pole

Some local businesses (farmers) have been working with Openreach recently to improve broadband to their premises. Details are a little sketchy but yesterday whilst out walking, I had chance to chat with one of the owners who was busy installing a trench ready for Openreach to pull a fibre & copper cabling through. I asked if the trench carried on all the way down the valley to the cabinet and he said, no - it was on overhead poles. He also mentioned that one of the farmers had contributed a lot to the cost which gives some idea of the financial complexity/ownership of all this.

These telegraph poles happen to go past a small business area with some adjacent private properties where I know they would kill for a better connection.

My question, which exposes my lack of knowledge of fibre cabling, is whether it is technically feasible to tap into a fibre cable on a telegraph pole to serve a local area?

If one can get FTTPoD to a single location in the business area, it would be entirely feasible to wire them all up to a single (say) 300Mbps connection and share costs.

Am I deluding myself and are there are good references on what one can or cannot do in terms of rural broadband self-help?

Thanks in advance, Rob.

Technically possible, but without knowing what has actually being actually deployed where in terms of aggrenation nodes, fibre splitters and manifolds then impossible to say with any certaintity.

If the fibre passing you is from a splitter to serve a couple of manifolds for the local businesses then splicing in will not help you but will break their service. i.e. it all hinges on the expected layout and location of the GPON network.

In terms of Self-Help if they are funding via FoD and you DON'T get access to native FTTP afterwards, then your course is to fund a FoD install yourself.

Thanks for that. Yes, I appreciate it's a bit of a stab in the dark but if you said "No, you can never tap into a fibre cable as it's point-to-point", I would have not bothered trying to follow-up. I'm going to try and speak to the prime mover on the project so see if one can find out more.

Openreach don't break into an existing fibre tube and the fibres held within, or if the newest method slice through the Kevlar cable and split out 1 of 44 individual fibres.

What they do, is run the fibres for the GPON infrastructure that would serve you, and it may be that your manifold might be served by a fibre splitter down the road that has been installed for the other businesses.

So tapping does not happen, its down to the planning and then running a fibre to you from existing infrastructure. So forget all notions of a person shinning up a pole and installing your fibre manifold with a simple cut into a cable.

Do you have line of sight back to a farm building? you could pay the farmer to have another connection made live and fit a wireless link. another alternative is pay the farmer to run your own fibre back down his trench then dig another trench to your premesis.

Edited by deleted (Sun 18-Feb-18 15:00:43)

Yes, that will be one of the scenarios we can look at. This is the area:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s4d68rj1xoz45j0/Bakestoned...

So my thought was whether Openreach can supply a service off the pole near the industrial estate, network up that area using cabling & Point-to-point bridges etc and also point-to-point up the road towards the residential properties.

Towards the left/bottom end of the road, it's a steep sided valley so line of sight isn't given. Once higher up, it's moorland.

Except I've learnt on my other thread that BT don't offer a service built on FTTPoD so have to approach one of the other providers who only services businesses (which is fine).

If somebody said "Rob, here's a fibre termination point, can you connect us all up to the network", I'd be off like a shot but the prospect of dealing with Openreach and the legal technicalities of shared internet services means I might just keep quiet

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Feb-18 10:32:08)

I reckon those residential properties will be getting FTTP anyway

That would be even better! How do you go about initiating an honest discussion with Openreach? Please don't laugh...

Suspect that discussion has already taken place

In reply to a post by robnicholson:

That would be even better! How do you go about initiating an honest discussion with Openreach? Please don't laugh...

From what witchunt has said, wrt the residential properties I think you just need to wait and see .

The small business area may or may not get lucky at the same time.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 19-Feb-18 12:23:53)