FTTP Advice

I was looking for some possible advice, which might be relevant to others.

Last year (26th Aug 2021) there was an Openreach van in my drive. I live at the end of a lane off
a main road (the A38 in Somerset), with telegraph poles along it, servicing a number of houses, finishing with mine.
Chatting with the OR engineer, he said he was doing a survey for FTTP installation.
I was taken aback and suggested I wasn't expecting it ever to happen.

Anyway he assured me it was happening, I'd probably be wired up in March and most probably connected by June (2022).
We discussed placing the ONT, all a bit of a shock really.

Indeed our exchange SSWIN was included in Tranche 6 announced in October 2021.

During the first few months of this year, I noticed lots of activity around the village.
Quite a few postcodes went live initially in the new estates (that are appearing everywhere) then most of the rest of the village.
Then around May work seems to stop. Fibre on poles, on some similar lanes, has been left spooled up (for 5 months now) and few new postcodes have appeared.
There's a few fibre manifolds, up poles, in postcodes that haven't gone live.

Our poles haven't been touched at all and no new blue polypropylene have been seen.

I guess they've been pulled to more pressing exchanges, with lower hanging fruit. Easy premises to push the numbers up quicker.
Our stop sell date was 1st November 2022

I was wondering if any one had any suggestions about;

1 How I might find out about what progress might happen?

2 if I could poke or prod anything....?

or 3. should I just forget that I ever saw Mr OR and re-evaluate my ISP based on not getting FTTP anytime soon.

Following the Survey(s) the fibre network design will have been drawn up and build costs assigned, the local project is broken down into networks (known as PONs - Passive Optical Networks), each PON has a cost and the local project manager has a budget from available funds.

Once the easier/cheaper/low hanging fruit/best bang for the buck PONs have been built they will reconcile the budget and decide if they can go back to some of the more expensive (difficult or long way from fibre node) PONs.

You can contact Openreach via their contact form and get a vague idea of when they hope to have you connected up, or reach out to the executive complaints team who are usually more forthcoming and may even put you in touch with the local project manager as has happened in some cases.

In my case our PON was deemed too expensive for the currently available funds because of the cost of civils to unblock a lengthy run of ducting. They came and resurveyed identifying alternate cable routes but even for 26 properties deemed it too expensive. The last I was told is they will start the build in January 2024. Copper Stop-Sell has long since passed in the local area.

Ironically OR have been back in the nearest village clearing ducts for Virgin Media who are currently overbuilding like the clappers but like OR not doing any of the difficult or long line PONs.

Hope you manage to get a definitive answer.

Phil,

Many thanks for your reply.

Will try what you suggest.

I'd not seen the contact form, will try that first... not sure what "in scope" means, but assume I'm
in scope....?

Best regards, Fred