Openreach Time to Build from Agreement

I wonder if anyone has any expericence of anything like this and the timescales involved.

I live in the Glasgow Halfway area and the vast majority of the exchange now has FTTP. One side of my street was cabled (via poles) in February this year and they didn't touch my side. I submitted a form to Openreach to ask when my side was getting done and I opened a can of worms. They came out and explained that the manhole covers on side of the street do not cover copper phone cables and my phone line is buried under the golf course behind my house. They looked at the golf course and said they could run cable underground from a pole (with fibre) at the bottom of the course on what is basically wasteland at the side of the course behind the 40 or so properties affected, with installation boxes at the rear of each property.

I didn't hear antyhing for a few months so gave up. Then on 1 June, Openreach appeared at my door, said the golf course had agreed to the work and it had all been signed off. He even told me how much it would cost and gave me a plan of what they were going to do. I was delighted.

I appreciate it has to go through governance (I work in IT governance myself and know how long this can take) and they need to engange Circet, their subcontractor, also get surverys and agree dates with the golf club.

However it does seem to be taking an awful long time and I'd really like to get an idea of when the work will be done, with BT contract renewals in mind.

Edited by Silvio_Dante (Thu 28-Oct-21 11:30:54)

I have an idea where you are. You're lucky. You story sounded much like mine. Also in Halfway and everywhere around has live FTTP. Other than my and three or four other streets. All fairly new, all with ducts to the door. But we can't have FTTP. I tried making a fuss, still not getting any. Any sign of CityFibre up your way?

City Fibre are everywhere at the other side of the main Glasgow Road but haven't doen any of the streets at our side of it.

It's a real pain that decisions made decades ago to find solutions for problems at the time now have these implications on getting modern sercives.

In fairness, the golf club had no problem with the work and saw it as a benefit to their relatonship with the community, so I've no complaints there. They'll get some cash from wayleave, so that's a good thing for them.

In reply to a post by Silvio_Dante:

I wonder if anyone has any expericence of anything like this and the timescales involved.

I live in the Glasgow Halfway area and the vast majority of the exchange now has FTTP. One side of my street was cabled (via poles) in February this year and they didn't touch my side. I submitted a form to Openreach to ask when my side was getting done and I opened a can of worms. They came out and explained that the manhole covers on side of the street do not cover copper phone cables and my phone line is buried under the golf course behind my house. They looked at the golf course and said they could run cable underground from a pole (with fibre) at the bottom of the course on what is basically wasteland at the side of the course behind the 40 or so properties affected, with installation boxes at the rear of each property.

I didn't hear antyhing for a few months so gave up. Then on 1 June, Openreach appeared at my door, said the golf course had agreed to the work and it had all been signed off. He even told me how much it would cost and gave me a plan of what they were going to do. I was delighted.

I appreciate it has to go through governance (I work in IT governance myself and know how long this can take) and they need to engange Circet, their subcontractor, also get surverys and agree dates with the golf club.

However it does seem to be taking an awful long time and I'd really like to get an idea of when the work will be done, with BT contract renewals in mind.

Its very difficult with any certainty to say what the timescales for delivery are given your particular circumstances. Saying that outside plant / new comms infrastructure and FTTP rollouts are well known and acknowledged to take many months, often stretching to a year or longer in actual construction. Various parties and teams are involved and it can be a complex and somewhat messy process to get everything ready. Its great however that the golf course are on side, so at least here should be no wayleave issues now.

I would advise you to get in touch with the delivery manager within Openreach and maintain a bi-weekly contact and update. Once prompted etc. they are usually quite good.

If you don't have the contact, a route to escalation via the executive complaints team ought to get you on the right track. This involves emailing the CEO, which then gets passed to the apporopratite team for resolution.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by Silvio_Dante:

Its very difficult with any certainty to say what the timescales for delivery are given your particular circumstances. Saying that outside plant / new comms infrastructure and FTTP rollouts are well known and acknowledged to take many months, often stretching to a year or longer in actual construction. Various parties and teams are involved and it can be a complex and somewhat messy process to get everything ready. Its great however that the golf course are on side, so at least here should be no wayleave issues now.

I would advise you to get in touch with the delivery manager within Openreach and maintain a bi-weekly contact and update. Once prompted etc. they are usually quite good.

If you don't have the contact, a route to escalation via the executive complaints team ought to get you on the right track. This involves emailing the CEO, which then gets passed to the apporopratite team for resolution.

That's excellent advice. Thank you so much.