FTTP cabling - only one side of the street?

Openreach engineers were around earlier this week pushing fibre into the ducting. However I was a bit surprised that they only did half of one side of the road. They stopped at the house opposite so I'm assuming that's where there's going to be a splitter node for the entire road. Does that mean they'll have to trench across to my side or would they run 'our' cables around the end (it's a cul-de-sac)? I'd have thought it more sensible for them to run fibre down both sides like Gigaclear and Swish did.

It's also amusing that the access point they stopped at is the one I reported as being unsafe a couple of months ago. It was going clonk when the neighbour drove their car over it. The engineer who turned up eventually just wedged some bricks under it. They've now fallen out and I noticed the engineer testing the cover as they put it back. If it's going to contain a splitter perhaps it will merit a proper repair now.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 01-Nov-24 11:07:32)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Openreach engineers were around earlier this week pushing fibre into the ducting. However I was a bit surprised that they only did half of one side of the road. They stopped at the house opposite so I'm assuming that's where there's going to be a splitter node for the entire road. Does that mean they'll have to trench across to my side or would they run 'our' cables around the end (it's a cul-de-sac)? I'd have thought it more sensible for them to run fibre down both sides like Gigaclear and Swish did.

Where they can, they'll use existing infrastructure. How are you connected to OR at present? If it's ducted then they'll use that for fibre. If it's iin the ground then you'll get a a new duct from the nearest chamber on, or before, installation day.

It very much varies.

In my road, also a cul-de-sac, one side is ducted but the other side only partially, with a DIG link under the road between them - as was described to me by a surveyor for a CFP request our street put it. As a result, the CFP came out too expensive to be worth it.

(I had FTTPoD installed before that, and fortunately I'm on the ducted side, so it wasn't an issue for me)

My exchange area was recently added into scope for FTTP rollout, but no activity has been seen so far, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when they get to my road.

In the 1960’s through to the very early 1990’s , the underground copper infrastructure was DIG ( direct in ground ) but this refers to the ‘lead in’ the cable from a distribution point ( a copper pair joint ) and the house , this type of infrastructure ( UR , underground radial ) still has some joint boxes boxes and ducts between the joint boxes , just not ducts to any individual house ( although some houses may get an individual duct to effect a repair where the DIG became faulty ) ….a typical UR distribution could be several jointboxes ( with duct existing between them ) on one side of the road , the other side has a ducted road crossing ( from an existing box ) but no corresponding joint box opposite ( on the other side of the road ) armoured cables exit the road crossing duct ( not via a joint box ) and lead directly to each property ( so one side of the road can have no joint boxes or existing distribution duct )
.
When FTTP is provided, obviously the side with existing jointboxes and duct will be ‘cheaper’ on a per dwelling basis, to provide with FTTP , compared to the opposite side of the road , OR can ( if they chose ) build out the relatively cheap / easy side of the road ( and they show availability ) and defer the ‘expensive’ side of the road until financing allows.

Edited by Iniltous (Fri 01-Nov-24 16:30:05)

In reply to a post by ParksidePeter:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Openreach engineers were around earlier this week pushing fibre into the ducting. However I was a bit surprised that they only did half of one side of the road. They stopped at the house opposite so I'm assuming that's where there's going to be a splitter node for the entire road. Does that mean they'll have to trench across to my side or would they run 'our' cables around the end (it's a cul-de-sac)? I'd have thought it more sensible for them to run fibre down both sides like Gigaclear and Swish did.

Where they can, they'll use existing infrastructure. How are you connected to OR at present? If it's ducted then they'll use that for fibre. If it's iin the ground then you'll get a a new duct from the nearest chamber on, or before, installation day.

I have a duct connecting my property to a chamber in the pavement outside my house. As far as I know that's what all the properties on this estate have (I think each chamber serves multiple properties based on how often they occur in the pavement). The two altnets opened every chamber so I assume they either went all the way around or down each side.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 01-Nov-24 17:00:32)

If the age of the property means they are ducted ( so 1990’s to date ) then the design criteria used by Openreach is to provide a CBT where the existing copper joint exists, and that is likely to be the box where there is a confluence of ducts serving several properties, so ( for arguments sake ) a jointbox with 8 ducts leaving towards 8 properties would have a 12 port CBT .
if your area has boxes than OR haven’t cabled ( yet ) that could be the properties served from that box are not part of same PON you observed being cabled , or a duct leading to that box is blocked , or the box has no capacity because an Alt Net ( or Alt Nets ) have used all the available space, and although the box is Openreach property, once the space is used up , OR have to decide , build another box just for their CBT , linked to the original box that has no space ( not cheap ) , serve the addresses from another linked box that’s further away but has space for a CBT ( but not that far that makes installation impractical ) or just remove the properties served from that box from the build plan…removing the addresses from the plan is the most likely option.

Edited by Iniltous (Fri 01-Nov-24 19:48:12)