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)