Direct Burial Fibre: Openreach FTTP

Here's a story. About six months ago a friend of mine was switched from FTTC to FTTP. He's a BT Retial customer, so obviously an Openreach task.

To cut a long story short, they turned up several times to survey, and eventually decided on a route (a dig across his garden, from the distribution point in the pavement). He was surprised there was no conduit involved, and even more surprised when the cable was installed only a couple of inches below the surface.
He questioned both of these observations, but was told conduit is not used under private gardens, and there is no minimum depth, so 50mm is fine.

Anyway about a month ago, guess what, his wife went through the fibre with her trowel, doing some very lightweight gardening. BT sent Openreach round, he was told he had damaged OR equipment, potentially big fee to paid, Tower of London etc etc. He was again told perfectly normal to bury the fibre without and ducting, and that shallow. They sent a bloke a few days later to fix, who was horrified. He went away saying he needed to mobilise a team to bury the cable in ducting, 250mm down etc etc. Two weeks later this happened, all good, and he ended up being paid by BT 8 quid a day for not having internet.

What is the actual situation ? As far as he could tell, every visit he had was by vanilla Openreach, and not contractors ?

The first scenario is wrong. There is no armoured fibre to be had, so duct, and at a decent depth is what is required.

It amazes me you say this was done by a direct employee of Openreach.

Direct buried non armoured cable is a big no no regardless of it being copper or a fibre cable.

The Openreach guy who got it fixed should be escalating this back to their line manager so they can retrain those engineers who did it.

Edited by PCJM40 (Tue 12-Mar-24 14:35:09)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

It amazes me you say this was done by a direct employee of Openreach.

Direct buried non armoured cable is a big no no regardless of it being copper of a fibre cable.

The Openreach guy who got it fixed should be escalating this back to their line manager so they can retrain those engineers who did it.

The whole story took him about 30 mins to relate to me, there was other nonsense that went on too.
My initial thoughts were how could it have possibly been OR 'Staff', but he is quite sure all the vans were vanilla OR ones.

Ironically, their neighbours have just had Virgin installed. Virgin buried trunking at a decent depth (And that's a first for them around here !)

My line was partial DIG.

It was ducted into the middle of my garden, they used the tone device to find the line - dug down into garden, found the end of the partial duct, then put in a micro duct (no thicker than a electrical cable, with the fibre in that. it comes in through wall and I have an internal ONT

They were gonna (if i wanted the router where the line was) pule the fibre through with the old copper line to the point in my hall.

Edited by BuckleZ (Tue 12-Mar-24 13:31:05)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Ironically, their neighbours have just had Virgin installed. Virgin buried trunking at a decent depth (And that's a first for them around here !)

A few years ago, less than ten, Virgin connected three houses near me, putting the cable in spade-dug slots in turf. No ducting.

I have seen VM putting coax literally over the ground through bushes etc. They are well known for it. You can get away with it with coax. Fibre is very delicate.

Due to circumstances I have both OR and VM installs.
The OR fibre is ducted and buried at a good depth, by two great guys. Very good job.
The VM cable is just about under the sods and was dropped into a spade split in the garden. Not such a good job, but as there is only grass to be cut above it, not the biggest problem.
I've also seen VM cables just lying through hedges when out walking the our area, so the armoured co-ax must be tough. Hopefully they will do better when XGS-PON is rolled out.