In reply to a post by tdw42:

I came across some overhead works recently in the YO10 4** area, the contractors vans had FibreNation branding. Some streets actually have a mix of regular toby boxes in the footway and pole-mounted fibre DPs.

The initial works appeared to involve digging a trench and leaving a loop of fibre on the poles, a week or so later that fibre had been terminated in a DP at the top of the pole.

Some of the poles are getting quite busy with copper DP, Openreach BFT manifolds, Openreach CBTs, UFO/FibreNation DP at the top. As some feed 20+ properties do UFO/FibreNation have to remove Openreach OH feeds when a customer switches (or Openreach remove the UFO/FibreNation OH feed when a customer switches back) to keep within the loading limits on the pole?

This is what's happened here (Kirklees area FN rollout) - I'm not up on the technical details of what the parts are, but I was at home in lockdown during the early summer build-out so I was watching! The trench was dug down the street to each pole and the fibre was left coiled up part-way up the poles, later they arrived and ran the fibre to a "black box" at the top of the pole, and that's how it is now. A couple of months later (presumably after they'd set up their infrastructure at the exchange) I got a letter saying it was available to order.

My pole only feeds five houses and there isn't any other fibre here - Openreach haven't "done" us, perhaps because FibreNation have. I don't know if they will take down the copper when they put up the fibre, or leave both - I will report back as to what it physically looks like if the installation goes ahead successfully!

As for footpath parking, I didn't want to start a big argument! The van is a bit of an irritant in general (blocks the footpath and causes the road to narrow, lots of annoying traffic arguments and Mexican standoffs outside particularly when sat navs send 40 ton trucks along the street, not to mention obstructing Openreach's pole) but it's not the end of the world.

PS. Quick question re. FibreNation - TalkTalk UFO is the only service currently available to order (and is reasonably priced, so I'm fine with that). Is it likely that there will be competing providers on the infrastructure in future or is this a bit like Virgin, where it's a one-provider thing?

Edited by abigailk (Wed 16-Sep-20 09:49:51)

In reply to a post by abigailk:

PS. Quick question re. FibreNation - TalkTalk UFO is the only service currently available to order (and is reasonably priced, so I'm fine with that). Is it likely that there will be competing providers on the infrastructure in future or is this a bit like Virgin, where it's a one-provider thing?

There will be competing providers in future. FibreNation was bought by CityFibre, and I'd expect them to integrate the acquisition.

CityFibre currently has Vodafone as exclusive reseller for the residential market, but only for a limited time and on a city-by-city basis. After that they will open up the network for wholesale access to whoever wants it.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by abigailk:

PS. Quick question re. FibreNation - TalkTalk UFO is the only service currently available to order (and is reasonably priced, so I'm fine with that). Is it likely that there will be competing providers on the infrastructure in future or is this a bit like Virgin, where it's a one-provider thing?

There will be competing providers in future. FibreNation was bought by CityFibre, and I'd expect them to integrate the acquisition.

CityFibre currently has Vodafone as exclusive reseller for the residential market, but only for a limited time and on a city-by-city basis. After that they will open up the network for wholesale access to whoever wants it.

That's good news. I'm on a cheap 18-month deal with TalkTalk which jumps in price after month 19. In 18 months, there could be other providers on the network and I can jump ship to someone else's new customer offer...!

This saga continues! I'm still working at home this week, so I'm able to see what's going on. Two blokes turned up in a pickup truck early this morning, parked at the top of my driveway and sort of had a look at the pavement in front of my house, scraping at it a bit before clearing off.

I'm not sure why they'd need to do anything with the pavement if it isn't an underground install, and the fibre hasn't been run down this side of the street, only down the side of the street with the poles. I do hope it's able to go ahead.

Did you speak to them? what did they say?

They were here and gone within a couple of minutes - I was about to go out and say hello and they raced off.

In reply to a post by abigailk:

They were here and gone within a couple of minutes - I was about to go out and say hello and they raced off.

Two thoughts from me (both possibly wrong),

1) your new connection may not be installed overhead via the pole.
2) the wrong team came out and a pole climbing team needs to be sent out.

Fibrenation/Cityfibre where possible try to use existing or new u/g ducts up to the customer premises but o/h cabling is still used in certain cases. As others have said, don't rule out the possibility that you may be be getting u/g cabling.

https://www.fibrenation.com/faqs/#Working+on+your+st...

A quick update on this - Openreach rejected the order. I can't actually reach TalkTalk to discuss why this may have been, which suggests that I may have dodged a proverbial bullet with regard to this ISP's customer service!

I only found out by pestering them on their forum to ask why My Account wasn't working - I didn't actually receive any communications from them, so I would have been sitting at home on Monday morning wondering where my engineer was... not great.

Edited by abigailk (Fri 18-Sep-20 15:34:17)

Sorry I'm confused, I thought this had nothing to do with Openreach as it was TalkTalk over FibreNation not Openreach.