Laying my Own Fibre Across a Road

Hi All

My wife and I have purchased a house opposite my parents property. We want to use their fibre connection and whilst the plan at the moment is to use a Ubiquiti Building Bridge to connect the buildings together, I'd much prefer a direct fibre link between the buildings. I can put our own poles up to run a fibre cable over a road, but wondered if there's any regulations for running a cable over a road (in a hamlet with 5 houses and very little traffic) or whether I can just do this? I understand Openreach will connect the sites but I don't want to pay any ongoing fees to effectively hang a cable a mere tens of meters between existing poles!

Thanks all!

No direct knowledge, but I think you would need the permission of the highway authority and planning permission. Is there any reason you can't get a fibre connection of your own? Or why you specifically need such a connection?

Anything you could do with a private fibre you could do over the public internet, unless you are gong solo to the degree that you are developing your own communication protocols.

Just my thoughts

Unless the road and foot paths between the two properties are owned by you or your parent I would say its a big no no. We all can't start lashing cables over the road to other properties just because we want too regardless of how busy the road is. If you must have a connection between the two properties then the best option is to use a wireless bridge as you stated in your post.

Best to keep within the law. The local highways authority will make you take it down, or could go and fine you if you don’t tell them and apply to do it properly, according to their rules and regs.

Also from a public liability angle, make sure your insurance is aware etc.

NO ... unless you want to spend thousands with the highways authority, purchase poles (not cheap) and have the ongoing public liability insurance.

Plus, read the Ts&Cs of the ISP and you may well find that sharing between properties breaches them.


If you do decide to chance it and put an RF link in, why the UBB? £500

You could use the NS5AC or NS5ACLoco and get good data rates at way less cost.

In reply to a post by MHC:

poles (not cheap)

£208.72 on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204554016154?toolid=20006... And these are new, in their original retail wrapping, according to the listing.

Edited by DFScale (Mon 17-Feb-25 13:47:29)

You would require a Licence for projections over a highway (England & Wales )

https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/licence-projection-...

Fees are @ £600 per annum , that differs by authority , plus insurance and all other costs as others have mentioned.

Fines for non compliance are painful.

Much cheaper to get your own ISP contract.

A wireless bridge will link up at a symmetric gig and you will have none of the complications involved with trying to run a wire between them. If the road underneath is a public highway then you almost certainly don't have enough money to spend on this, especially when the alternative is the cost of an FTTP service for your house.

The least hassle is a ready-paired 60GHz short radio link, which will give you oodles of bandwidth and be immune to other unlicensed WiFi. I’d look to MikroTik or Uniquiti for solutions.

Just then boils down to T&Cs of your ISP agreement…

In reply to a post by AndreiV:

You would require a Licence for projections over a highway (England & Wales )

https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/licence-projection-...

Fees are @ £600 per annum , that differs by authority , plus insurance and all other costs as others have mentioned.

Fines for non compliance are painful.

Much cheaper to get your own ISP contract.

I'm not sure that's necessarily true / applicable for the OP. Seems to indicate larger structures such as bridges.

Suggest if the OP really wants to explore this, get more information etc. they look up the relevant local Highways Authority from:

https://www.findmystreet.co.uk

Then check with them what the correct application process is. I believe cables over roads falls under Section 178 of the Highways Act.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by AndreiV:

You would require a Licence for projections over a highway (England & Wales )

https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/licence-projection-...

Fees are @ £600 per annum , that differs by authority , plus insurance and all other costs as others have mentioned.

Fines for non compliance are painful.

Much cheaper to get your own ISP contract.

I'm not sure that's necessarily true / applicable for the OP. Seems to indicate larger structures such as bridges.

Suggest if the OP really wants to explore this, get more information etc. they look up the relevant local Highways Authority from:

https://www.findmystreet.co.uk

Then check with them what the correct application process is. I believe cables over roads falls under Section 178 of the Highways Act.

It is quite clear :

You must also obtain the consent of the highway authority if you wish to position any overhead beam, rail, pipe, cable, wire or similar apparatus over, along or across a highway.

Thanks All, very helpful!

I thought there'd be some legal aspect that needed looking at but wasn't entirely sure where to look. Absolutely do not want to be falling on the wrongside of the law on these things.

Connection needed to be on same internal network for my sanity when it comes to troubleshooting varioius network issues! Looks like it's a Wifi Bridge for me!

I followed your link, with details for local road near me (classified as neither A,B or C) and it just points me to customer service contact Suffolk County Council with an email adores and postal address. No mention of fees or process.

So I've emailed them, more or less to see what they have to say. Obv it will be different for each local Highway Authority and road classification etc. I don't think its just a blanket annual £600 although I suspect you dropped that in there to scare the OP rather than anything else.

Maybe remote tools would work?

https://remotedesktop.google.com/


https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk

Suspect what you want, it's your fantasy.

The fees I saw on several council sites were @£600 per annum which is why I posted thst information.

And yes some areas want £600+ initial fee then @ £250 annual renewal.

The other equirement is a mimimum £5 miilon liability insurance policy.

Why would I or anyone here want to scare the OP?

Edited by AndreiV (Mon 17-Feb-25 15:37:50)

As mentioned - be aware of ISP Ts&Cs.

I have a UI based network here and most is Unifi - except the radio link which is from the UISP range. I have 2x NS 5AC Loco and can get 300Mbps if I choose a wide channel but only need sub-100Mbps most of the time.

It is 5GHz which might be a problem in a built up area awith large numbers of APs but you are remote so that level should be fine and no need for the UBB at 60GHz.

Have you tried the UI tool to see what is recommended?

Edited by MHC (Mon 17-Feb-25 15:33:34)

Back in the late 1980s I worked with a company who acquired a building opposite their existing one on an industrial estate. The road in between was a public road, very lightly used at the weekends,

We hired a contractor to dig up the road one weekend and lay a very large duct between the two buildings, which we then used to service all sorts of connections - principally token ring in those days.

The council never found out and there were no repercussions, I doubt that would be the same these days!

Definitely not recommending this course of action to the OP, but it brought back a memory and made me smile.

Before you spend any money linking the two homes you need to check with your parents ISP if it is allowed in their T&C to provide internet to another postal address. By sharing the connection, you are depriving your ISP of a standing charge. Just because it is technically easy to do does not mean it is legal. Keep in mind if you ask Openreach to provide a phone only, not internet connection at your new house they will almost certainly provide it via full fibre (FTTH), connection using their new Digital voice service.

Too many busybodies with smartphones these days Jon. If it were only as if once was 😂

In reply to a post by JonRennie:

The council never found out and there were no repercussions, I doubt that would be the same these days!

Definitely not recommending this course of action to the OP, but it brought back a memory and made me smile.

Smiling is good Local authorities certainly now have various tools and methods to identify changes to the local street scene so as you say its more likely now than it use to be. Considering the technical advances, lashing a cable isn't really needed for a workable solution.

In reply to a post by FibreFelix:

Thanks All, very helpful!

I thought there'd be some legal aspect that needed looking at but wasn't entirely sure where to look. Absolutely do not want to be falling on the wrongside of the law on these things.

Connection needed to be on same internal network for my sanity when it comes to troubleshooting varioius network issues! Looks like it's a Wifi Bridge for me!

Have a look at these. This is a price for a kit / matched pair:

https://www.getic.com/product/mikrotik-wireless-wire...

There's other UK-based outfits like LinITX and Broadbandbuyer too, if you don't want to use Getic. I've run the earlier generation 60G Wireless Wire Dish over around 400 metres and they were v.good.

ISP T&Cs may be worth looking into too, if you want to remain squeaky clean on this.

Why go over when you could go under?

Assuming the road is not a dual carriageway, you could mole a pipe beneath.

Used all the time for gas and water. A 25 mm pipe should be big enough.

If you used yellow (gas) or blue (water) no one is going to cut it and have a look see!!

I had a water pipe moled a couple of years back and needed an easement. This was across private property.

There are lots of moling firms plus those doing it as a side line.

You could aske here re legalities etc. https://www.chilternthrustbore.co.uk/

Cheers!

One problem with moling - what if it finds another service! If someone was doing it surreptitiously without full checks then is always a chace!

Personally I'd use Ubiquiti's 60GHz link.
I've got three in permanent installation and they all get over a gigabit in each direction.

Thanks
Dan

That's great to hear. I know the Ubiquiti stuff is slightly more expensive but as the network to extend is fully Ubiquiti Unifi I was going to simply keep it in the same controller for ease of management.

I've asked the ISP for their thoughts and approval.

In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

If you used yellow (gas) or blue (water) no one is going to cut it and have a look see!!

Old farmer here used blue alkathene for encasing lots of stuff, including electricity. A really terrible idea on so many levels.

This is something that we'll do longer term anyway..! No mains water in the area so all the properties are on a spring with the execption of my parents who have a mains top up for when the summers are really dry and the springs run slowly. When we connect the pipe in we'll run ducting too for a cable, but this won't happen for a few years I'm sure!

In reply to a post by FibreFelix:

I've asked the ISP for their thoughts and approval.

Others will beinterested in what they come back with ... so please let us know.

Unless there are budget reasons why this isn't an option, I would get a connection to each house with different ISPs, and then add the wireless bridge as well. With the correct configuration you'd end up with a high bandwidth L2 link between the two houses, as well as failover internet connections.

Had a response which has confirmed 'It shouldn’t be an issue you extending the network to the new House'. I explained the full situation to them so taking that positively!

If teh ISP has said it is OK then go for it.

Just choose what you need for the link ... speed/capacity, 5GHz or 60 GHz, cost