"CAUTION OVERHEAD FIBRE" plaques in West Suffolk

Little yellow plates have appeared on the poles for a section of the overhead line in our village.
New overhead cables have been installed but not yet terminated, just coiled up at both ends.
Is this normal practice to install cable with fibre and copper cores during overhead line replacement, or are we to expect the option to upgrade to FTTP?
There is a small new development at the end of the section in question maybe the developer thinks this is a good way to sell his houses?

In reply to a post by Thumper:

There is a small new development at the end of the section in question maybe the developer thinks this is a good way to sell his houses?

It's quite likely the new development is getting it: the minimum size for getting discounted fibre to a new development was reduced last year from 30 properties to just 2.

https://news.openreach.co.uk/pressreleases/openreach...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/26/bt_openreac...

Edited by candlerb (Sun 07-Apr-19 21:08:13)

Thank you Candlerb, I wasn't aware of that.

It's not always right to assume that fibre being installed nearby means you will be able to access it.

In the majority of cases where a developer orders FTTP for new housing it is only the new housing that is able to order FTTP.

Occasionally a developer will pay for existing properties on their site that only had copper installed to be upgraded to FTTP. That's not all that common though.

If it is FTTP for new builds, ordered by the developer, then usually none of the properties outside of the developers site will have access to FTTP after the work is complete.

Ideally the work is BDUK funded or part of the OpenReach Fibre First scheme or you may not be able to access FTTP when work is complete.

If this is rural west Suffolk then with no other available information the probability based on what has happened in 2019 so far is that this is infill with FTTP, i.e. spotting a couple of new live ones each week.

While it may be new build properties in the village you would expect the site to have at buildings at least part built before you see the FTTP heading in the direction.

Won't be FibreFirst since there are not FibreFirst exchanges in Suffolk or Norfolk

In reply to a post by Thumper:

Little yellow plates have appeared on the poles for a section of the overhead line in our village.
New overhead cables have been installed but not yet terminated, just coiled up at both ends.
Is this normal practice to install cable with fibre and copper cores during overhead line replacement, or are we to expect the option to upgrade to FTTP?
There is a small new development at the end of the section in question maybe the developer thinks this is a good way to sell his houses?

have you tried contacting the bduk in your area to see if they know whats going on?

Don't suppose your OR 'where and when' has changed?

Yes this is Rural West Suffolk.
The houses are pretty much finished as far as I can see without entering the site.
The run that is tagged only extends as for as the new builds, but to be honest the density of the remaining properties becomes lower beyond that point.
I can but hope..

So if the run ends at the new builds then yes looks like new build activity rather than BDUK work

In reply to a post by Garlic:

have you tried contacting the bduk in your area to see if they know whats going on?

Don't suppose your OR 'where and when' has changed?

OR 'where and when' has not changed.
Better Broadband for Suffolk's website could be better

In reply to a post by Thumper:

In reply to a post by Garlic:

have you tried contacting the bduk in your area to see if they know whats going on?

Don't suppose your OR 'where and when' has changed?

OR 'where and when' has not changed.
Better Broadband for Suffolk's website could be better

DM Openreach on twitter about it, the when and where page doesn't always update.

This is likely one of those cases where Openreach are wasting shareholders money. That is it will invariably cost Openreach more in the long term to revisit the village and install fibre to the rest of the houses rather than take the opportunity bringing fibre to the housing development gives to just do the whole village.

And by the same token you could say that all of Greenwich in London should have FTTP by now by virtue of it coming to new build premises.

Guess it depends - if all they have to do is run on a pole to a few nearby houses from the existing joint it might be cost effective. If its distance and blocked ducts then prob not..

Then of course the next few set of houses are now nearby...you get the picture

Oh I accept that can be/is an issue of where do you stop. But on other occasions there is a clear 'village' and an obvious stop point.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

This is likely one of those cases where Openreach are wasting shareholders money. That is it will invariably cost Openreach more in the long term to revisit the village and install fibre to the rest of the houses rather than take the opportunity bringing fibre to the housing development gives to just do the whole village.

But are they actually saving money?
Can they now claim that the whole street has peen "Passed" by fibre, literally.

A street is only passed if they can place an order - if the database doesn't show they can place an order then they have not been "passed".

Correct

Of course if the planners have used some common sense then they will have made sure in doing this work a suitable joint(s) have been left for future deployment

Except there are plenty of cases where there is a defined small village. Say 50 properties. Developer puts say 10 new properties on the edge, Openreach rock up and pull fibre etc. for just those 10 new properties where the incremental cost of putting fibre on the top of a few extra telegraph poles would be much much less than coming back even a month later and doing the remaining properties in the village.

We also have the madness of someone ordering FTTPoD, Openreach pulling fibres through a whole bunch of distribution points on the way to the final one, but only enabling the last one. Shear madness I tell you.

Openreach's goal should be to bring FTTP to as many properties as possible at the lowest possible cost. If they are not doing that then they are firstly wasting shareholders money and secondly squandering shareholders value as alternative providers come in and basically lock Openreach out of areas in the longer term.

And at scale this is what FibreFirst is seeking to achieve, what you are proposing is that rather than Openreach picking and choosing where to go that a property developer by arriving in a smallish area would also go.

It is possible in a few years that when the bulk of Fibre First has completed that this sort of thing might happen but its not going to happen for now, no matter how much people wish for it to happen.

Even if the policy was adopted who decides the order of doing these villages?

In reply to a post by Jake4:

In reply to a post by Thumper:

In reply to a post by Garlic:

have you tried contacting the bduk in your area to see if they know whats going on?

Don't suppose your OR 'where and when' has changed?

OR 'where and when' has not changed.
Better Broadband for Suffolk's website could be better

DM Openreach on twitter about it, the when and where page doesn't always update.

Don't do Twitter, but have sent a request to Openreack by thier feedback system.
We'll see in a couple of weeks.

In reply to a post by Thumper:

In reply to a post by Jake4:

In reply to a post by Thumper:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

OR 'where and when' has not changed.
Better Broadband for Suffolk's website could be better

DM Openreach on twitter about it, the when and where page doesn't always update.

Don't do Twitter, but have sent a request to Openreack by thier feedback system.
We'll see in a couple of weeks.

It'll probably be good to make a twitter account just to DM them since you'll get a instant response compared to waiting at least 2 weeks for a response that might not even be correct

Lets say we have a small village 50 houses, nearest cabinet is in the next village 2 miles away and everyone has rubbish broadband. Developer puts 10 houses on the edge of the village. Openreach turn up, bring fibre to the village and hook up the 10 houses, while in the meantime passing the bulk if not all of the other houses distribution points in the village with the new fibre. In what world does it make economic sense to enable those distribution points at the same time. Ok that was a rhetorical question it never makes sense in any world ever.

However this is BT/Openreach we are talking about. These are people who said cabinets where not commercially viable to upgrade to VDSL which have then had to have an extra large twin added. These are the idiots who in 1998 enabled deprived council estates for ADSL at a time when you needed a PC for the internet (with corresponding low ownership on a deprived council estate) and then said a full ADSL rollout across the country was not commercially viable because take up on a deprived council estate was too low!!!

Anyway the "order" of doing villages is based around other work being done. All I am saying is that if Openreach are not taking the opportunity that either developments or FTTPoD offer to enable additional properties for FTTP at minimal extra cost then they are wasting shareholder money. That is a governance issue; basically wasting shareholder money is a PLC is illegal. Not that you will ever see a prosecution for it.

I wonder how much money is really wasted. They will build out the FTTP to the new sites by putting in aggregation points at strategic locations. Whether they extend it there and then or 5 years later the only real additional cost is them getting back to site again - they are unlikely to be digging the same trench again so I would guess not much duplicated effort.

This means they can use their current resource to meet SLA timescales for existing work and infill later when they have the resource or that area hits their magic targets for viability.

Maybe OR will never come back and some other operator covers the area?

Correction needed ADSL rollout got underway in 2000

Any locations with it in 1998 where development/pilot areas testing the service in the real world to answer worries about things like ADSL destroying AM radio signals

It may make sense when the teams doing this work could enable 200 houses in the same work time frame in another more densely populated area.

If the nearest cabinet is really 2 miles away and the local authority granted planning permission then they could have used this advanced notice to direct their BDUK project to also do the FTTP for existing premises at the same time.

If this is illegal then I suggest buying some shares and attending the shareholder meetings or lobbying a major shareholder to get this issue raised.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

That is a governance issue; basically wasting shareholder money

Counter-arguments:

1. If a team of fibre engineers can FTTP-enable 40 village homes, but in the same amount of time they could FTTP-enable 80 densely-packed urban homes, which should Openreach do?

2. The cost of activating rural connections is higher. Let's suppose that 20 of those village homes decide to connect to FTTP. That involves sending out the FTTP installation team, on 20 separate days, back to the same remote village (to drill through walls and make the actual fibre connections). It would likely be cheaper to activate 20 city dwellers, where the teams are already nearby. It's also a consideration for putting in an FTTC cabinet instead.

3. By not putting in FTTP off their own bat, there's a chance they will get a subsidy to do it later.

4. By deciding to spend time working on the village project (which wasn't previously planned), they will delay the already-planned rollouts in other locations.

I'm not saying that there isn't an opportunity to do parallel rollout of FTTP when new-builds get FTTP or FTTPoD is deployed. I'm just saying the business case for doing so is not as clear-cut as you make out.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

Lets say we have a small village 50 houses, nearest cabinet is in the next village 2 miles away and everyone has rubbish broadband. Developer puts 10 houses on the edge of the village. Openreach turn up, bring fibre to the village and hook up the 10 houses, while in the meantime passing the bulk if not all of the other houses distribution points in the village with the new fibre.

(Splitting the paragraph to isolate the second part whilst keeping its context. The following one is the part I'm answering).

In what world does it make economic sense to enable those distribution points at the same time. Ok that was a rhetorical question it never makes sense in any world ever.

In the whole post, (I've dropped what followed the above), that is the only bit you get nearly right. Everyone else has already shot down the rest.

May I suggest that rather than "never" it nearly always makes economic sense. As the other replies have explained.