Fibre in half the street - what can I do now?

After waiting for years to get fibre installed in my road, OpenReach had my property listed as "Work completed by Dec 23."

They have indeed installed fibre, but only for one side of the street - those houses are all served by telephone poles, whereas my side of the street is served from underground.

So while my neighbours are now getting installations for fibre, OpenReach have told me they there are no plans to install for my address and I should look at Fibre on Demand. Having a 30s look at that told me it's prohibitively expensive.

I'm trying to speak to OpenRech but that is proving difficult. I am tempted to try and rally some neighbour support, but I don't know what for.

I live in an urban area, but there are no other providers available expect for FTTC.

Anyone else faced similar issues - what did you do?

I have a similar problem. Parts of our village centre have fibre but others (including our road) do not. We are 'have nots' on a long-established development surrounded by 'haves'. BT/OR say 'no plans at present etc.`
We have ADSL and Virgin but I do not wish to be forced into using Virgin I am used to having virtually no issues in the fifteen years I have been with our existing ISP.

If enough neighbours are interested it may be worth looking into a "Community Fibre Project" (CFP) with openreach. Although it's not a quick solution.
We had dreadful VDSL connection to a group of 5 houses, we all agreed to fund a CFP with openreach for them to make FTTP fibre available to our properties, they had to run about a mile of fibre bothe underground and across some poles. Cost was nowhere near as bad as the FTTP on demand stories I have read about. Cost us about £2000 each two years ago. Depends what other work is going on and how it fits with other plans.
We've been about to get Gigabit connections for 2 years now and FTTP has been great even though we only opted for a 75/20 package. It's much better than the 13/1 we used to be able to get on VDSL.

The problem for me is that because Virgin Media is installed all round the village (we had it for TV only when the children were young) I suspect even OR may not upgrade to fibre totally, unless they have an obligation to do so. Many local residents are OK with Virgin because of the high speeds currently available even though their service and reliability is not brilliant (and that is putting it politely!)

I can't see any other company bothering with Virgin being so well-established.

In reply to a post by Dumbo9834:

After waiting for years to get fibre installed in my road, OpenReach had my property listed as "Work completed by Dec 23."

what does openreach's website say for your address?

In reply to a post by Dumbo9834:

They have indeed installed fibre, but only for one side of the street - those houses are all served by telephone poles, whereas my side of the street is served from underground.

Fibre can be provide to your property via those poles.

In reply to a post by Dumbo9834:

So while my neighbours are now getting installations for fibre, OpenReach have told me they there are no plans to install for my address and I should look at Fibre on Demand. Having a 30s look at that told me it's prohibitively expensive.

They might be correct or there might be a database issue. Others have been in the same position and openreach have said no because of the either ducting issues or direct buried cables.

You do need to explain "opposite side of the road" How many properties are there? We don't know what tree to bark up at till we get more info from you.

what does openreach's website say for your address?

Since the start of the new year, Openreach's website says for my property "Not Yet Available", whereas before it stated that "build work was to be completed by Dec '23" (words to that effect).

You do need to explain "opposite side of the road" How many properties are there? We don't know what tree to bark up at till we get more info from you.

My street is a standard set-up, well established, it is not a new build area. It is an urban area, 15 minutes walk to a city centre.

There are approx 50 properties on the road. The even numbered houses are served by poles, the odd numbered houses (including myself) are served underground. My phoneline comes up from the ground into the house by the side of the front door.

The even numbered houses are now able to order fibre upto 1Gbs, and I have seen two installations for this take place in the last 2 weeks already.

It would seem that the provision has only been made for those houses that are currently served via telegraph poles, despite the fact a pole is directly opposite my front door (on the other side of the road).

If I am to search my address on an ISP website, only FTTC is available up to 36mb.

Edited by Dumbo9834 (Wed 03-Jan-24 18:05:13)

Are these 1970s-ish builds with direct buried cable, or do you have ducts?

Is that the community fibre voucher scheme via Openreach?

I have seen that and the postcode dose not qualify, presumably because we are not in a remote location.

I also couldn't stomach paying that sort of money, when a house on the other side of the road gets it for nothing.

It's so close I could probably connect to my neighbours router...

Are these 1970s-ish builds with direct buried cable, or do you have ducts?

1990s - I am unsure if it is buried or ducts, how would I know?

My phone line entry looks something like this.

Edited by Dumbo9834 (Wed 03-Jan-24 18:21:12)

You'll be ducted then. I would guess FTTP will be along shortly and whoever from Openreach told you that there are no plans was mistaken.