Telegraph pole ready for FTTP?

Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting on here. This site has been a wealth of info for me sporadically over the years, so thank you to everyone who contributes and makes it the mine of information it is!

I'm interested in some expert opinions… My house is one of about four that is fed from a telegraph pole, which in turn appears to take a feed from another pole on the neighbouring street, about 40m away.. 'My' telegraph pole was replaced in early December (the previous one had leaned to one side rather a lot for a number of years!) and has a single black Openreach box on top. The pole on the neighbouring street seems to have a full complement of FTTP equipment mounted on it (CBT boxes I think, from having looked elsewhere on this forum). Both my address and addresses on the neighbouring street (that are fed directly from the pole with the FTTP equipment on it), have a status of 'Build planned for December 2023' on the Openreach checker.

So my question is... does it sound like anything else needs to happen to my telegraph pole before FTTP gets enabled? Will I be able to take a feed from the pole on the neighbouring street via my pole? Best case appears to be that there is a fibre connection from the pole on the neighbouring street, and that everything 'just' needs to be switched on and tested before orders are opened. Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm no expert. Very interested to hear everyone's thoughts on here, though because I've been struggling with a 30Mb connection for years!

Thank you very much in advance and Happy New Year!

Adam

The install process is not done in the order you may thing it has been done. Ie you think the cbts are the last install when it probably isn't.

Also the build process can get delayed - yes i know its frustrating.

the open reach site will be the first one to tell you that its gone live

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

this will tell you when bt owned isps are ready to take your orders. For sky, zen and talk talk etc you will have check those separately.


Good luck and try not to press f5 too many times on the openreach website 😁

With so few coming from your pole, they may be planning to use it as a carrier.

My feed comes froma CBT on the next pole. The fibre runs about 50m from ploe to pole and then turns through ninety degrees to feed my house another 60m (or so) away. The immediate pole is referred to as a "carrier pole".

Good chance yours may follow a similar route.

Hi guys. Thanks so much for the replies.

Yeah… I’m certainly not expecting it to become available for ordering tomorrow just because the build date is December 2023, but I have been encouraged by seeing new kit appear on the nearby poles, and a replacement pole going up that feeds my house, so at least it looks like something is happening. Hopefully by next Christmas I’ll be having a faster broadband experience!

I’ll keep an eye on the BT availability checker.

Happy New Year everyone!

Adam

You can track some of the Openreach works via this link.

Things like digging and new poles often show up.

I would expect your pole to get a CBT at some point - it likely didn’t get it first time as the pole itself needed replacing.

Keep an eye out for contractors installing other stuff on the pole - they can normally give you an idea when an area is expected to be ready to handover to Openreach for testing and go live.

https://bidb.uk/

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

I would expect your pole to get a CBT at some point - it likely didn’t get it first time as the pole itself needed replacing.

Not always - a small infill may well have a pole, but no underground feed so original copper wouldwould use the infill pole as a carrier and fibre will do the same. Quite common around here.

A pain, as ORs sub-cons often refuse becasue it will take too long as my neighbiur knows too well with about four failed installs, so far.

Hi,
From personal experience, it took 3 weeks from the CBT appearing on the pole to the BT checker saying fibre available, was checking regularly, I know sad😂

I checked the roads around me that had CBT before ours and they were all ready to order.

There is a pole across the road from our house that takes the copper wires from our pole and that also had a CBT fitted at the same time and fibre pulled from the feeder pole.

Just my thoughts, if your copper is coming from that pole, they will also need to bring the fibre from it?

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

I would expect your pole to get a CBT at some point - it likely didn’t get it first time as the pole itself needed replacing.

Not always - a small infill may well have a pole, but no underground feed so original copper would use the infill pole as a carrier and fibre will do the same. Quite common around here.

A pain, as ORs sub-cons often refuse becasue it will take too long as my neighbour knows too well with about four failed installs, so far.

What reason / excuse do sub-contractors give to the end user in such situations? (e.g. What did they say to your neighbour?)

Various, "need a cherry picker", "two man job", not qualified to install fibre drops", "too difficult" ...

There are 10 houses, 8 from the main pole and just two from the carrier. Of those, five of the main have had fibre already, and from the carrier, I have fibre. The neighbours route is almost exactly the same as mine and in four years I have had three new copper and finally a fibre drop - all done without issue.

In reply to a post by Ahmedg:

Hi,
From personal experience, it took 3 weeks from the CBT appearing on the pole to the BT checker saying fibre available, was checking regularly, I know sad😂

I checked the roads around me that had CBT before ours and they were all ready to order.

There is a pole across the road from our house that takes the copper wires from our pole and that also had a CBT fitted at the same time and fibre pulled from the feeder pole.

Just my thoughts, if your copper is coming from that pole, they will also need to bring the fibre from it?

Yeah that’s what I’m thinking… surely they’ll need to pull a fibre connection from the pole with CBTs on it to my carrier pole. Having said that, the new pole that was installed a few weeks ago has loads of new cabling on it

As suggested already there are various possibilities, it’s could be that the pole your address is served from , although probably a ‘DP’ pole ( you could look to see if it has any identification labels on it as a DP ) if it is a copper Distribution Point pole , normally it would be provided with a CBT intended to serve the same addresses as the copper DP , but at survey it may be changed so that the previous pole is used and your pole ( as stated ) in effect becomes a ‘carrier pole ‘ , or it could the fact the pole was leaning over , perhaps to the point of being a ‘D’ pole ( defective ) then that particular CBT cannot be provided until the pole is replaced, in that case you have to hope that the FTTP build team revisit once the pole has been changed and provide its CBT .

Only time that will tell , keep an eye on the availability checker , once your address shows FTTP as available , if it’s only the pole one back with a CBT , potentially 4 wires between the poles doesn’t exceed any Dropwires In Line Of Route ( DILOR) limit , it may be visually a worse solution, but should an Alt Net come along , the ‘visual’ impact isn’t taken into account they will simply put up their own overhead cables on the same poles , obviously if a CBT appears on the pole nearest to your address, that will be used for you and your neighbours, once availability is shown and service ordered.

Edited by Iniltous (Mon 01-Jan-24 09:31:36)

Very helpful. Thanks Iniltous.

The pole that serves my house was actually replaced on 8th December 2023, I.e. about three weeks ago. No CBT is currently on the new pole but as you say, numerous situations appear possible.

There currently appears to be just one cable connecting the pole with CBT to my pole, which I guess is the copper connection which has always been there. I checked Street View, where the imagery is a few months old, and shows the further away pole before any CBTs were fitted, still with the same single cable to our pole.

I don't know your topology of your road.

But count the number connections available - it will be 4, 6 (not a hundred percent sure on the 6), 8, 12 or 16. and count the properties around it, you said you have four houses there?

You may need to go to the end of the street to match cbts and properties. Note this will only be a guide for you.

Also you may be provisioned from the pole 40m away, they can do 300m from the cbt. So you may be worrying about nothing

Hi Taras. This was a great bit of research to do - thanks for the suggestion.

The lay of the land is as follows:
- there are three poles involved - think of them forming two sides of a square
- the main pole, with all the CBT kit on it, is at the bottom-right of the square - let's call that A
- the pole that serves my house is about 30m away and is at the top-right of the square - let's call that B
- another pole also appears to be served by A and is at the bottom-left of the square - let's call that C

Pole A has 2 x 12 connection CBTs and 1 x 4 connection CBT, so 28 connections in total. By my count, pole A serves 24 properties directly, and also pole B which has four properties on it, and pole C which has four properties on it, so 32 total.

Both pole B and pole C are connected to pole A by overhead cabling - I don't know if they are old copper connections or fibre connections. Either way, sounds like pole B or pole C will need a CBT to ensure all properties are served.

In reply to a post by Taras:

I don't know your topology of your road.

But count the number connections available - it will be 4, 6 (not a hundred percent sure on the 6), 8, 12 or 16. and count the properties around it, you said you have four houses there?

You may need to go to the end of the street to match cbts and properties. Note this will only be a guide for you.

Also you may be provisioned from the pole 40m away, they can do 300m from the cbt. So you may be worrying about nothing

Might have changed recently but I've only seen 3 sizes of Openreach CBT's. 4, 8 and 12 ports (no 6 or 16).

is there any more properties behind a and any more beyond b and c ?

Sometimes you think a cbt wills serve a property and it doens't either because it will be done by another cbt or its uneconomical to do so. Given your checker response, i think you will be ok and probably over thinking things right now. And theres nothing else you can do till its available or not

Yeah... I need to just let it lie! I'll keep checking the checker!

openreach will be the first to tell you and then waiting for your chosen isp to say yay


Good luck!

If you have any questions pre install ask, theres a few brilliant installers here that will guide you.