Fibre Cable through Trees?

I've just had an OpenReach contractor out to my house for an FTTP install. He's told me that the fibre cable is too brittle to go through the trees between the telegraph pole and our house. He's sending the job back and says it'll result in someone coming out to cut the trees back before they put a cable in.

I'm asking here whether this seems like a likely course of events? And also is it really not possible to put a fibre cable through the trees?

We've recently had the copper cable replaced through these trees and the old cable that had been in place for 12+ years was apparently not the right sort of cable for going through trees and was very worn but had been providing us ADSL and later FTTC all that time.

We live in a conservation area so all the trees have de facto preservation orders on them therefore permission is needed to cut back the trees. The line appears to go quite close to the trunk of two large trees (both on our land). I'm not convinced if I asked for permission to cut the trees back that much it would be granted. I'm currently trying to find a local tree management service to ask but what happens if the council say no? Are we stuck with copper?

Thanks for any insight!

Are all the affected trees on your land?

If so, would it be possible to erect a sufficiently tall pole just inside your boundary, which wouldn't need to be anything like a telegraph pole, to receive the cable and take it underground? It would still need to be very durable.

Where is the telegraph pole in relation to your house. Across the road but nearly opposite, or way along the road on either side?

Openreach would of course need a cherry-picker to do the work at the top, but they often need those at telegraph poles anyway. Once the job's done it shouldn't need further attention up there. Whether Openreach or someone you hire erects it is a question, as obviously OR would need to approve it.

Vandal-proofing may need to be considered.

If some of the trees are not on your land, all you can do is wait and see.

Alternatively could it be routed through a neighbour's land? I expect a formal legal wayleave would need to be set up. No doubt not cheap.

Yeah we had that before the FoD service was connected. It was another reason why the existing copper and new fibre connection follow different paths and terminate on opposing eaves, so as to avoid the deepest tree growth on the copper span. OR only had to do some light tree trimming with the revised route. Last pole span to premises is approx 56 metres.

On the route from agg. node, about 33 pole spans plus underground sections, the main service passes through an adjacent to several other deep tree covers at least 2 to 3 spans. It’s unavoidable, but so far it’s been OK despite several seasonal storms and winds.

Probably just didn’t fancy doing the job. If it was just your connection on the drop wire he could have used cut and draw to replace the original copper wire with your new fibre.

Round my way they have deployed fibre through trees without trimming and used a spiral wrap to protect the fibre through any potential contact points.

In reply to a post by kadi:

We live in a conservation area so all the trees have de facto preservation orders on them therefore permission is needed to cut back the trees. . I'm not convinced if I asked for permission to cut the trees back that much it would be granted.

What council area you?.

I live in a conservation area also and I have TPO (tree protection order) on some of my trees.
What you do is take photo's of the problem branches then you serve a notice on your council planning department.
You send an email headed .

I am serving you (your council) a 5 day notice that work will be done on a tree in a conservation area.
You need name and address and a short details of the trees and what you intend to get done.

BT Openreach have put lots of new fibre through lots of trees in our area.
They gave me a short off cut and the outer plastic is very very tough and it includes strengthening inside to protect the fragile strands of fibre thinner than a hair.

My computer tells me that "Trees growing in a conservation area they are protected by the provisions in section 211 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. These provisions require people to notify the relevant LPA (using what’s referred to as a section 211 notice) six weeks before any intended work on the protected trees to obtain the LPA’s consent for the work.

i.e 42 days notice needed not 5.

In reply to a post by kadi:

I'm asking here whether this seems like a likely course of events? And also is it really not possible to put a fibre cable through the trees?

Sadly every case is different, in certain scenarios as others have said a protective wrap is added on the fibre cable at the point it goes through the trees and that can be enough but that is not always the case. My biggest concern was the point about it being a contractor as they do seem to push jobs back if they can. The fact that you have had issues with a previous copper drop wire does imply that something needs to be done.

Most trees around here have been cut back to make way for the new overhead fibre, if that helps at all.

:Lazy ****** !

The pole with CBT feeds another pole from where my service comes across to te house. Between the two poles are aropud 12 trees - the fibre cable goes straight through them - they used the old drop wire to pull it through

If the copper goes through the trees then AFAIK the fibre shouldn't be a problem, but there may be some specific problem, and as nobody here can actually see the route you can't have a 100% answer.
We live in a listed building in a conservation area, next doors fibre goes through several trees on our property on it's way from pole to his house.
I believe I may have posted on here before several weeks after he had fibre installed he came round mouthing off about our trees cutting his line and how he would have them cut down, turns out the entire village had lost FTTP.

We too live in a listed property with TPO's on some of the trees, our copper cable currently runs through a Walnut tree.

We will be getting full fibre in the next 12 months, and many of the houses in our little area will require cabling to be run through trees. Hopefully this won't be an issue, can imagine the cable is pretty robust and will tolerate some tree rub (otherwise Openreach will have to constantly be cutting back branches on existing fibre cabling routes every few years!).

Contractors get paid by the job and they have a great incentive to ditch long duration jobs.

Get onto your provider rather than a tree surgeon.

Thanks for all the replies - it's really useful to hear other people's experiences so I know whether they are talking nonsense or not when they next get back to me. I haven't heard anything official about the next step yet, other than a "We can see you are now on FTTP" email from Zen which I swiftly countered and got an "er, yes, hold on, we'll update you when we get the details back from OpenReach" reply. No follow up from that yet.

The contractor was very keen to tell me that the contracting company would not get paid if he didn't get the job done, but it seems to me that moving straight onto an easier job would be more lucrative for them.

If it’s not your land / trees / shrubbery to clear I would leave it to OR (or whatever provider it may be) to get clearance with the local authority. It’s their gear and they are responsible for the path up to your property.

Where fibre crossed from serving pole to my place, was all my land etc. So I just told them fine, get on with it.

You don’t want to be messing around with TPOs etc on land you have no right to. Just puts you in the crosshairs.

The trees the wire goes through are mine, on my land. I presume OpenReach still need the permission from the LA to cut into them just as I would? I'm worried that they'll just turn up, lop branches off and land me with a fine for ignoring the TPOs. Which obviously conflicts with my worry that I won't get my FTTP installed

(otherwise Openreach will have to constantly be cutting back branches on existing fibre cabling routes every few years!).

So whilst the cable is reasonably robust …. I’m not entirely sure why it is Openreach’s responsibility to cut back trees. Especially if these trees are on private property.

Understood. Trees on your land are your responsibility. OR won’t just turn up and cut your trees without your agreement and permission.

Saying that if surgery or trimming is definitely required, then you would need to agree with OR the extent of that beforehand and then seek the appropriate permission from the LA, depending on the scope of work.

It doesn’t sound like you are sure yet what if anything needs cutting back. Get that agreed first. Then approach LA for any required permissions.

Yes that's the long way to do it.

The branches being trimmed that I am doing is Not anything to do with Fibre .!

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

So whilst the cable is reasonably robust …. I’m not entirely sure why it is Openreach’s responsibility to cut back trees. Especially if these trees are on private property.

Correct on private land (in my case, our DP / pole is on our neighbours land along with offending tree - used to be an old through road) so it's her responsibility to ensure this tree is kept trimmed and away from cabling, but to be honest she's weird and old and is not something she will care about.

When we had a new copper drop wire Openreach trimmed a few of the branches for a clearer path but I wouldn't expect them to do it again unless there was another issue identied with the line or I'm (or a neighbour is) ordering a new fibre connection when it becomes available.

Have a good read on your rights regarding TPOs. Where there is potential for damage or injury rather than aesthetics of light you have rights to deal with the issue with minimal notice.

My neighbour recently completely felled 5 TPO trees : he told the LA he was doing it as they were dangerous, with a report said just a few days notice, there was nothing they could do. Did I object? No.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I’m not entirely sure why it is Openreach’s responsibility to cut back trees. Especially if these trees are on private property.

That seems entirely reasonable to me too to be honest! The OpenReach contractor implied that the job would be passed back to OpenReach who would come and cut the trees before sending them back but I wasn't sure whether that was a reasonable thing to expect to happen or just the contractor leaving the job without annoying the customer too much.

Today Zen have told me: "Upon review of your order we have been advised that the engineer was unable to complete the installation yesterday due to further work being required, which has been advised to be tree cutting as the copper line is routed via 2 trees to the house so access to the cable will be required.
The job has now been passed back to the relevant team to arrange when this will now happen."

I've asked for some clarification and pointed out that the trees have TPOs.

It is called "pull new cable through trees by using old dropwire and a winch" ... I've seen it done.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It is called "pull new cable through trees by using old dropwire and a winch" ... I've seen it done.

Erm … not quite, it’s called “cut and draw”

I was being descriptive ...

In reply to a post by MHC:

It is called "pull new cable through trees by using old dropwire and a winch" ... I've seen it done.

This makes sense but doesn't involve any tree cutting does it? My ISP have confirmed this morning that "Yes, it will be Openreach or one of their contractors that does the tree cutting. We are just waiting on confirmation as to when this will be.".

You are from now on called "something that walks on two legs".

Your nick needs replacing with STWOTL

😂😆

Edited by pluralist (Fri 04-Jun-21 09:41:31)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

You are from now on called "something that walks on two legs".

Your nick needs replacing with STWOTL

😂😆

For the past 15months yes ...

If you could have seen the 3 leyllandii plus another confier in less than 4 metres with one over 600mm diameter at the base - it was dense. They had pulled copper through them three or four times in the past couple of years, due to damage but not the fault of the trees. They were removed before the fibre drop was done.

The fibre drop required 60m pole to pole at the side of a road with 10-12 trees to go through. And that was done by Kellys one of BT/ORs sub-cons.

"If so, would it be possible to erect a sufficiently tall pole just inside your boundary, which wouldn't need to be anything like a telegraph pole"

If OR are working on it / putting kit on it , it will need to be a tetegraph pole.

I've been told many things that OpenReach would be doing via an ISP, only for the OR staff to turn up on the day:

1. not knowing that the activity promised was due to happen
2. not having the tools, skills or clearances to do said activity

So, good luck

Good news! OpenReach turned up yesterday morning - no appointment and I was still asleep when they rang the doorbell so my conversation with them was a bit wonky to say the least. They asked permission to drill into my walls and prune my trees. I told them it was all fine by me but pointed out that I thought permission from the council was needed to prune the trees. They told me they'd go away and talk to their boss. I didn't expect to see them back anytime soon but they reappeared this morning to put the new line through the tree without cutting it and I now have a shiny new (ok, dull grey new) "OpenReach Customer Service Point" on my wall and I guess the contractor will be back to connect that up to the inside.

Seems like I was worrying for nothing, but also seems like they can put a fibre line through a tree or two. Yay!

Fantastic

As I posted elsewhere on ThinkBroadband for Fibre Through The Trees (FTTT)
(click on the image) https://twitter.com/janeyellene/status/1348215575827...

Cheers!