Lit Fibre

Openreach FTTP is rolling out across Welwyn Garden City and there are signs of activity near my home. Looking at local roadworks there are a number near me showing as being for Lit Fibre rather than Openreach. Is it likely that Lit Fibre will be competing with Openreach or is it more likely that the work is to serve a commercial property?

They will be building their own independent alternative FTTP network in your locale:

See news:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/09/lit-fi...

Openreach may accelerate the build of their network in response.

Thanks for the input. Looks as though I might have a choice of FTTP providers in due course.

Potentially yes. Although not all streets / properties are always covered.

If you're on a council maintained road then it's likely you will get both networks, Lit are using PIA and their work is very closely following Openreach's work to unblock ducts.

Open reach should stop work and let Lit Fibre do some duct unblocking for a change

Yes, council maintained road so hopefully I'll have a choice when my Virgin contract ends.

Round my way Openreach seem to be letting Trooli do all the duct unblocking looking at what's going on on bidb,uk website.

Cool, I'm watching the build slowly get close to me and will take whichever one gets here first.

I don't blame you - FTTP is a life changer let alone a game changer

Managed to bump into some Lit contractors today who said they were a team sent around to follow up on any areas that the first guys had some problems with. It turns out the chamber cover that serves my house has been opened recently and rodded, but the rod didn't come out where they were expecting it to so they went away again.

Helped this second team uncover a chamber in a hedge that was on the Openreach map but everybody previously had assumed didn't exist because they couldn't see it, and it probably hasn't been opened in 30 years as there's not been any new homes built and everybody already had a fairly hefty underground gel-filled cable running to their property with maybe 5 pairs in - however many you can count in https://i.imgur.com/haxd4Vt.jpg so I guess even with ISDN or fax lines there was never really a need to go into the chamber.

There's one blockage at the end of the road in soft verge so hopefully that is an easy one to dig up and fix, with the underground fed houses and the ones that are fed from the pole it's got 15 premises behind it so you'd hope anybody would decide it's worth the cost to unblock (I think Openreach pay for their ducts to be unblocked anyway). Everything else is roped and ready, and presumably Openreach are going to zip round once all the ducts are clear and put their network in as well.

Edited by jpm (Tue 21-Feb-23 21:13:22)

And a permit has appeared to dig the verge to unblock. Hopefully things can get moving now.

...guess they cleared it. Still not showing as ready to order yet.

https://i.imgur.com/yKyq7iv.jpeg

A confused man turned up today with a job assigned to connect me, which is strange because I never placed an order. Anyway, signal levels on the CBT port were checked and are good, and the fibre has been pulled into the duct and coiled up ready to go. Just waiting on their website to allow me to place an order.