Switch to Vodafone - keep FTTP from telegraph pole?

Hello, hope this is the correct forum to post in. We currently have Sky FTTP which comes into the house via a fibre cable from the nearest telegraph pole. There is a little white box mounted on the interior wall which I believe is the Nokia ONT.

We are thinking of changing to Vodafone Full Fibre 100 when the contract with Sky is up.

To add a little more information, we had the pavements dug up a few years ago by CityFibre here in Newcastle Upon Tyne. There is a little socket on the ground outside each property and ours is just outside the garden wall. Sky FTTP was installed after this pavement work was done (we never had FTTP before that) and only involved connecting to the telegraph pole.

My question is: if we move to Vodafone, will they just use the existing telegraph pole cable and hardware? I would like to avoid anything that involves connecting to the pavement socket/digging up the garden/new boxes on the wall etc.

I thought I would ask as a promotional letter came through the other day which mentioned both Vodafone and CityFibre, and I am not clear on what that means or if City Fibre can run from the pole or whether that would be Openreach. Is it likely that any new supplier could use existing hardware and out of interest what about Virgin Media too?

Thanks for any help!

If they both use the Openreach network, then yes, as far as i know, it is only the ONT and router that is changed. Saying that, they may have a way of keeping the ONT these days as well.

If City Fibre have installed their own Toby box in the footpath outside your home , and you want to use Vodafone ( who use both City Fibre and Openreach but charge different prices depending on the underlying network they select for their user ) , VF prioritise City Fibre and select them for your FTTP by default, if they do that , then they will use the CF Toby box, and ‘excavate’ from its location to to your house wall and fit a new CSP and ONT at your property.

You may need to specify to VF when ordering, that you want to continue to use the Openreach FTTP network that way you should continue to use the OR overhead fibre dropwire and ONT , without specifying OR your service would probably be provided via CF with the associated installation work.

Although CF do also use OR telegraph poles in some areas and place their own equipment on them , they don’t duplicate provision ( that would be unnecessarily expensive) , so if they have built an underground network for your address , they won’t also have equipment on that telegraph pole .

If an Alt Net did place equipment on an Openreach pole , and had an order for service, they would put their own dropwire up ( so their wire as well as the Openreach one ) as well as a new CSP and ONT in addition to the existing Openreach ones , if you asked an Alt Net to remove the OR kit as part of the Alt Net installation, they should refuse, it’s not theirs to interfere with

Edited by Iniltous (Mon 20-Nov-23 08:33:29)

Not sure if Vodafone will supply over Openreach in a CityFibre area. Depending on the agreement the two signed it may be more than just a preference to use CF where available. Not a lot in it for CF if Vodafone have no obligations on their side.

Oh yeah, if Vodafone is using the city fibre network then a new cable and ONT will have to be used, Missed the city fibre part for some reason, I was in a rush as i was getting ready for work