CityFibre SOFT LOC

CityFibre have been digging up Kettering for the last few months now. I live on a 2007/8 development of 16 houses which has BT cables underground to deliver existing phone service. CF have completed work on the main road weeks ago but stopped short of doing anything down our street.

I've had several emails over the months to say it's coming but nothing more, I reached out to them and was told my road is on a SOFT LOC but they couldn't give any further detail.

I'm curious if anybody knows, do CF deliver using BT/Openreach conduit? In my eyes, they need to dig half way down the road to the existing BT vault and then blow in to each house using the existing conduit. From my research it sounds like a SOFT LOC could mean they are waiting for a wayleave or similar, perhaps from OpenReach?

Thanks!

In reply to a post by jasonyates07:

I'm curious if anybody knows, do CF deliver using BT/Openreach conduit? In my eyes, they need to dig half way down the road to the existing BT vault and then blow in to each house using the existing conduit. From my research it sounds like a SOFT LOC could mean they are waiting for a wayleave or similar, perhaps from OpenReach?

Thanks!

Cityfibre can both use Openreach duct and poles, or they can did their own ducting.

Using Openreach's ducts and poles is called PIA, physical infrastructure access.
Basically they pay Openreach for access to their ducts.

In some cities they exclusively use PIA. In other cities they exclusively build their own ducts.
In some Cities they use a mix of both.
What they can't do is dig their own ducting and just jump in and out of Openreach ducting willy nilly/ad-hoc wherever they like or upon request.
They have either paid for access to use Openreach ducting in an area, which means they will use it, or they haven't.

So check your local area and see if CF have dug all their own ducting or if they have been using Openreach's ducting.
It's very easy to tell as CF micro trench their own ducts which leaves very visible scars on the pavement.
If they have used Openreach ducts there will be visible scars between the small Cityfibre cabinets and the nearest Openreach chamber.


LOC = limit of construction
Hard LOC generally means the is an issue that can't be overcome and you are unlikely to see Cityfibre arrive.
Soft LOC means a temporary block they hope to be able to get past. Such as blocked ducting or a wayleave issue.

My first instinct with a 2007 development is that the streets aren't local authority maintained, so Cityfibre would need to ask the owners for wayleave or could potentially be denied permission.

You can check the status of your road at https://enc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.... and turning on the NNC Maintained Highway tile

Appreciate the detailed response!

I can't speak for the whole of Kettering, but around my side of town, they have dug their own ducts. They appear to have dug to almost every telegraph pole and left a meter or so of fibre fixed to the pole. Every few roads they installed their own green cabinet and on most corners they have new CF branded vaults.

About 15m from the top of our road they have a new vault and green box but they stopped short of going past our road.

Thanks!

So part of our road is local authority maintained, and part is not. The link was helpful and it aligns with what I remember from our mortgage survey.

The local authority maintained road stops at the end of my driveway where it transitions to a block paved private road. You could easily dig to my property along my driveway from the local authority road, but I wonder if they are waiting for a wayleave for the private section.

If they can't get a wayleave, I'm hoping it's still worth their time / expense to cover the 9 houses & 2 flats that would be accessible from the local authority road.

I've asked CF for more information on the SOFT LOC but haven't heard back yet.

Hi,

Was this ever resolved for you? I have run into a similar problem and CityFibre has told me that it's not feasible as their record notes "Hard LOC, cannot pass property"

Would appreciate any suggestion/guidance from you. Thank you!

Edited by sachinkumar (Sun 12-Nov-23 10:59:12)