Openreach FTTP Rollout Missed My Road

My road is a cul de sac of 31 houses in total, 24 of which (including mine) were built in 1962 and are served underground with a JB22 ‘GPO’ concrete footway box for each pair of houses, lead ins are mostly direct buried. There are 7 other houses (slightly later build I think) served from a pole.

At the end of January this year the through road my road connects to was able to order (but not my road) and since then a large part of the surrounding area has been enabled.

I waited a few months to see if there was any sign of any installation work in the road but none seen so at the end of April I contacted Openreach Fibre Enquiries. I was informed my road was marked as needing 180m of new duct (that matches the entire length of the road). At that point it wasn’t explicitly stated that there would be no work done.

After another 3 months of no sign of any work being done on my road I raised another query. This time this resulted in a call from a project manager who claimed they had checked 3 times and were adamant there was no pre existing ducting and out of budget. There is no evidence of any of the covers in the road having been lifted and presumably no ‘rod and rope’ attempt. I know for a fact there is a 2” duct entering the JB22 outside my own house. The project manager’s explanation of this is it must be a later ‘overlay’.

Could any of the Openreach experts please comment on whether a 1962 build should have pavement ducts between the JB22s? I think from what I’ve read here and elsewhere the DIG era didn’t start until the mid ‘60s? And, as I say, there is definitely at least some duct present. I’ve noticed that since the start of the year multiple other similar cul de sacs locally have been enabled, some after quite extensive ‘civils’ work which is making the situation for my own road extra frustrating.

Thanks for reading this far!

Drawn a bit of a blank here so far!

In summary what I’d like is some expert opinion on please is whether my 1962 built cul de sac with a footway box for each pair of houses would be expected to have been built with duct between the boxes or ‘it depends’.

As already stated I know for a fact there’s an incoming 2” duct into the box serving my own house (I’m end of the road so no outgoing duct).

In summary what I’d like is some expert opinion on please is whether my 1962 built cul de sac with a footway box for each pair of houses would be expected to have been built with duct between the boxes or ‘it depends’.

It depends, as simple as that. There are a myriad different scenarios as to why some ducted, and some is direct in ground.

The expert opinion you seek comes from Openreach, who own and manage the infrastructure, and they've given your answer already.

There is no hard-and-fast rule like "if a house was built in 1962 it *must* have been built in this particular way". Builds vary from place to place and time to time, and whilst statistically the overall mix of builds done in a particular way may have changed from 1960 to 1990, that doesn't mean you can predict with certainty how any individual build was done.

My street falls into the same category: built in early 1960's, some houses have ducted lead-in and some DIG; some footway boxes have ducts between them and some are DIG.

And yes, sometimes when a DIG lead-in failed, at the time of reinstatement it was replaced with 2" ducting. Was DIG a bad idea? Yes - and the replacement ducting implicitly acknowledges this.

A lot of corners were cut in post-war 1960's construction, and not just in comms. For example, my house was built with pitch fibre drains - basically papier mâché infused with tar, designed to last no more than 30-40 years. We recently replaced the last of it, which was an expensive job.

i'm not going to repeat what Zarjaz and candlerb have said, because its 100% correct.

I will say this, we have seen many instances on this forum of one side of a road getting fttp and the other side (for what ever reason) not.

Some do get infilled later. There is many reasons why this happens, for instance OR may have run out of funding for that quarter or financial year. It may be that in some instances the tech to make that last mile connection is currently too expensive. How a build is done, is constantly changing for OR. From using extensively Overhead cabling on a build to smaller csps and cbts to faster onts.

The other two things are this, a quarter for OR is tiny, its a rarity that a build from the ground up is done in a quarter, mine was and that was mostly due to it being overhead (design dec - build between jan to the end of march). Normally you are looking into multiple quarters for a build cycle.

Thee other thing is to check the project gigabit, get your urpn number for your property and download one of the csvs and check where your property status.

The ‘DIG’ era was immediately after the telegraph pole era , if an area doesn’t have poles , and was constructed before the fully ducted era ( very early 1990’s and onwards ) then it’s DIG , it’s a little odd , if told directly by OR that your road is not ducted , to question that , why would they lie ? , the date of construction and the lack of poles as well as the OR representative statement all confirmed the same thing …not ducted, it’s ridiculous to think anything else is the case .

OR have the same financial pressure as every other network builder , and the current focus quite understandably is to enable the greatest number of addresses at the lowest possible cost …if your street has no usable infrastructure and jointbox 21,22 and 23’s were never intended to be connected by ducts and aren’t , they are simply access points onto cable joints on a buried armoured cable network and are of no use whatsoever when it comes to the FTTP build and consequently areas like that currently fail the financial test (from a cost/benefit perspective ) they are deferred , for who knows how long , until the economics for Openreach make better sense.

There will be small pockets of retro fitted duct in these area to get around individual faults on buried cables ( when unarmored cable in duct became the standard so used in repairs ) so the odd jointbox 23 may have a bodged duct entry or exit , or an individual property has a duct when the neighbours don’t , but that would have been a local ‘solution’ to a specific small scale problem and is not a viable large scale solution regarding the installation of FTTP in DIG areas , for one thing all these small jointboxes are too small to house a CBT , even a regular 4 port CBT won’t fit within these boxes .

If your area is deemed uneconomic, in the short term that’s it , end of story ( unless an Alt Net , given their exclusive use of any infrastructure they build ) takes a punt and builds underground infrastructure , or they may ignore any local resistance and put up poles , or they may just wait until Openreach take the hit ( financially ) and build a ducted network that they can then use at a regulated ‘rent’ , but for now if OR have put your street on the ‘back burner’ , from OR point of view, that s it , there isn’t an appeals process to dictate how OR should spend their own money, how long on the back burner ?, no one on this forum can possibly predict that with any certainty

Edited by Iniltous (Sat 02-Nov-24 11:08:35)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

If your area is deemed uneconomic, in the short term that’s it , end of story ( unless an Alt Net , given their exclusive use of any infrastructure they build ) takes a punt and builds underground infrastructure , or they may ignore any local resistance and put up poles , or they may just wait until Openreach take the hit ( financially ) and build a ducted network that they can then use at a regulated ‘rent’ , but for now if OR have put your street on the ‘back burner’ , from OR point of view, that s it , there isn’t an appeals process to dictate how OR should spend their own money, how long on the back burner ?, no one on this forum can possibly predict that with any certainty

Completely agree with your reply, DIG was one of those "its cheep now" but expensive later - nobody back then imagined a world with inter connected groups and groups of computers.

coming back to my area and the vast majority of the properties have been done, except for the DIG areas. I feel for them, as I was told over a 6 year period "fttp is coming in xxx time", that is why I feel for the OP.

The areas now being covered are becoming more expensive to upgrade, there is though an economic interest for OR to do these properities but its always "is it cost effective". That is why theres government intervention, because those people should not be left out as fttp is transformative.

In reply to a post by Taras:

That is why theres government intervention, because those people should not be left out as fttp is transformative.

Only in areas where VM isn't present. My own town, and where my parents live, the housing estates are 1950s, 60s, and 70s build. The OR infrastructure is mostly DIG, but CableTel/NTL cable dug up and put ducts in back in the 1991 to 1993 era.... so right now the only choice for anything over 40 to 50 Mbps is cable.

I don't see any taxpayers money here, unlike towns such as Horsham which had no VM cable, so now has some of the most competitive high speed options (see Thinkbroadband news).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Taras:

That is why theres government intervention, because those people should not be left out as fttp is transformative.

Only in areas where VM isn't present. My own town, and where my parents live, the housing estates are 1950s, 60s, and 70s build. The OR infrastructure is mostly DIG, but CableTel/NTL cable dug up and put ducts in back in the 1991 to 1993 era.... so right now the only choice for anything over 40 to 50 Mbps is cable.

I don't see any taxpayers money here, unlike towns such as Horsham which had no VM cable, so now has some of the most competitive high speed options (see Thinkbroadband news).

have you checked your parent's uprn against the may update. ?

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/project-...

In reply to a post by Taras:

have you checked your parent's uprn against the may update. ?

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/project-...

Prioject Gigabit overbuilding VM shouldn't ever happen. Premises with VM coverage are not eligible.