Openreach FTTP repairs

A rather dispiriting Openreach experience today raises a few questions. An FTTP connection to a rural site failed 4am about a week ago. After the usual to and fro between CP and their suppliers it was decided that Openreach needed access to the site. That involves a 160 mile drive for me, but there it is. Appointment is between 1pm and 6pm, so I arrive and wait and wait. At 4.30 pm the Openreach man (not a contractor) rings and says he's at XX farm and can't find the site. I ask him whether he has a software tool to enable him to find the site from the circuit number. He says no.
Is this true?
I painstakingly establish where he is and talk him through to arrival. By this time it is dark. He confirms that the LOS light on the ONT is on and that there is no received power. I point him to the location of the CBT, which is in a street box covered in leaves just outside the site fence, so requires a spade to clear before opening. He looks perplexed, walks back onto site and opens the splice box, hauls over his splicer and decides to remake the splice. It is dark and has started to rain. I suggest he might need a shelter over his splicer or things may not turn out well. He says Openreach don't provide any form of shelter.
Is this true?
He has no form of light other than his mobile phone.
Is this normal?
I hold my umbrella over the splicer and hold his phone to put what light I can on his work. He re-checks the ONT- still red light.
He says, "I'll need to come back tomorrow, I have to go home at 5". I say, It's a 1pm to 6pm appointment and I've driven 160 miles to provide site access, so could you just check the power at the CBT, so that we know whether site access is actually required?" He says, "It's another team that deals with that" and drives off.

So my overall question is does Openreach really provide no way for their man to find an FTTP site and really provide no lighting or rain protection for outdoor splicing work?
And can the people they send really not open a street box and check power at the CBT?
And is it sensible for Openreach to have a man attend an LOS, when he's going home for the day, less than 15 minutes after he arrives?

If so, that seems a remarkably inefficient way of organising repair work.

Yes
Yes
No

The remote testing struggles to give an accurate POI for testing.

Sadly many do nothing other than Bob basic testing. No UG skills either. No OTDR for many staff.

Unfortunately a lot of these companies that seemed to be the standard bearer are in a slow decline. We're into week three of trying to engage Openreach on a project in our car park that we're having resurfaced - had all the stuff located but it never picked up that the ducts were 100mm down. There seems to be no process within the organisation for "can you come and tell us what we need to do while we have the machines here, and can you arrange the ducting to be dropped off so we can get on with the job". We've had three people attend who aren't ever sure why they're there, the last one said that the only stuff that gets planners now are new site developments, and he's having to try and sneak ducting off another job to drop off with us.

CityFibre are even worse, they aren't interested in doing anything proactive so there's no option to have them proactively move their fibre from an old duct to a new, the only way to get someone to site is take your service offline and call in the fault.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Unfortunately a lot of these companies that seemed to be the standard bearer are in a slow decline. We're into week three of trying to engage Openreach on a project in our car park that we're having resurfaced - had all the stuff located but it never picked up that the ducts were 100mm down. There seems to be no process within the organisation for "can you come and tell us what we need to do while we have the machines here, and can you arrange the ducting to be dropped off so we can get on with the job". We've had three people attend who aren't ever sure why they're there, the last one said that the only stuff that gets planners now are new site developments, and he's having to try and sneak ducting off another job to drop off with us.

CityFibre are even worse, they aren't interested in doing anything proactive so there's no option to have them proactively move their fibre from an old duct to a new, the only way to get someone to site is take your service offline and call in the fault.

There used to be ‘Plant Protection Officers’ and, if required tasks could be furthered for a PPO to come take a look, and arrange what was required. They would go to sites and track out and mark underground services, give advice etc.
Whether the PPO roles still exist, I don’t know.

The OR team that did the splicing for our villiage's fttp build did thave little clear one man tents. So it does look sadly that the OR bod in question wasn't supplied with one..

hopefully this wont go into a tent thread 😂

The build teams carry more ‘task specific’ kit.

The solo engineers have to carry a vast array of varied kit, in what is often a much smaller van.

The tents issued when we were doing the early blown fibre installs were ridiculous. Gazebo would be a better term. Too large to erect out on a footpath for instance, without having to divert pedestrians to the other side (more signs and stands required, kerb ramps etc) Also with no side panels, they were all but useless if there was a breath of wind. Box guards with sand bags, a cable tied golf umbrella, and a tarpaulin… are what most used.

hopefully this wont go into a tent thread 😂

I went there …..

Well since there's no progress on repairing the fault, why not a bit of tent history, while we wait to see what happens next.

I'm old enough to remember the arched wooden frame tents used over any pavement box jointing works, when the weather looked dodgy, but those were a Post Office standard. Seemed reasonably practical.

We did have an excellent protection of plant chap help us with a site, but that was about 10 years ago. Whether such still exist, I do not know.

Whether such still exist, I do not know.

Seemingly they do still exist, but how one might summon one has passed into the realms of folklore.

So that’s a no then from Witchunt .. I’ll take it as gospel

Edited by Zarjaz (Wed 03-Dec-25 10:28:04)

No, all the PPOs were 'encouraged' to leave
I suspect this fellow has been drafted in from elsewhere in the business, given minimal training and kit , and left to get on with it.
A head torch is invaluable for this kind of work when it's dark or limited light. Hand Torches and rechargeable work lights are readily available and provide ample light for small work areas.

Edited by witchunt (Wed 03-Dec-25 10:19:59)

Out of interest, are we at a point where engineers are trained to splice at the CSP but not test light at the CBT?

They will (should) be using a live fibre detector at the CSP. If you’re going to splice there for an install, a measurement at ONT fibre once spliced will test the whole shebang.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

They will (should) be using a live fibre detector at the CSP. If you’re going to splice there for an install, a measurement at ONT fibre once spliced will test the whole shebang.

For the purpose of the first repair visit a light test at the CBT would have determined that no vermin have nibbled the connectorised cable between the CBT and CSP.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

They will (should) be using a live fibre detector at the CSP. If you’re going to splice there for an install, a measurement at ONT fibre once spliced will test the whole shebang.

For the purpose of the first repair visit a light test at the CBT would have determined that no vermin have nibbled the connectorised cable between the CBT and CSP.

Appointed, or non appointed … if you have access, a light test at the ONT is a good place to start.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

No, all the PPOs were 'encouraged' to leave
I suspect this fellow has been drafted in from elsewhere in the business, given minimal training and kit , and left to get on with it.
A head torch is invaluable for this kind of work when it's dark or limited light. Hand Torches and rechargeable work lights are readily available and provide ample light for small work areas.

it does seem something's gone wrong kit wise, as what the OP has suggested is woeful!

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Appointed, or non appointed … if you have access, a light test at the ONT is a good place to start.

Wouldn't disagree as a start but once it was determined that no light is reaching the ONT surely logic says a light test at the CBT would rule out if the issue is further into the network. This engineer was going through the motions of re-splicing without even knowing if there was light at the CBT which makes me think he has no basic 50/50 fault finding training.

This engineer was going through the motions of re-splicing without even knowing if there was light at the CBT

If the only tool you have is a hammer then everything is a nail.

If the only training you have is resplicing then trying a resplice that might have a remote chance of avoiding someone else having to go out may be their best option?

Edit : Also, he already had a customer that wasn't overly happy because they were late in the day getting their. To do nothing and just leave would potentially have made an unhappy customer irate. Doing something, even if unlikely to fix something could give the customer a sense that at least they tried.

Edited by ian72 (Wed 03-Dec-25 14:38:37)

In reply to a post by ian72:

This engineer was going through the motions of re-splicing without even knowing if there was light at the CBT

If the only tool you have is a hammer then everything is a nail.

If the only training you have is resplicing then trying a resplice that might have a remote chance of avoiding someone else having to go out may be their best option?

Edit : Also, he already had a customer that wasn't overly happy because they were late in the day getting their. To do nothing and just leave would potentially have made an unhappy customer irate. Doing something, even if unlikely to fix something could give the customer a sense that at least they tried.

Wow Ian just wow!!!

I would hope they wouldn't be sending a one trick pony (and thats pushing it). Imagine your car breaks down and you call the AA and they send someone who can only check the internal lights. I'm assuming if he checked them you will be feeling a lot better now.

The engineer said they couldn't check power at the CBT as that was another team - given that I am assuming there wasn't much else they could do (of course, if there were other things they could do then leaving and coming back the following day could have been a waste of time for the engineer - but perhaps they are barred from doing any overtime or maybe they had a kids christmas play to go to or something that meant they couldn't stay).

Day 9 of fault. Openreach claim to have attended again yesterday and to have "found a fault". However, there was "insufficient time to complete repair" and they would "return later". No report on that and no sign of Openreach on site CCTV today.

the fault may be further down the fibre route, tbf. I do feel for you as nobody is giving you any proper update as to the problem or a date for resolving the issue.

I guess this is a business account which means no compensation.

In reply to a post by Taras:

I guess this is a business account which means no compensation.

Not neccessarily. BT Business offer 4 and 24 hour response times and compensation is payable if repair times are missed. Other suppliers may or may not.

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by Taras:

I guess this is a business account which means no compensation.

Not neccessarily. BT Business offer 4 and 24 hour response times and compensation is payable if repair times are missed. Other suppliers may or may not.

I was dammed if i said what i said and dammend if i had said you may get comp. As you said, it depends on the contract efffectively

Yes, I have raised the compensation issue with the CP (IDNet). The whole thing started with a high latency fault, probably unrelated, 17 days ago and moved on to complete failure 10 days ago. The complete failure occurred at 4am, when local temperature sank to -4 deg C, co-incidentally or not. Latest update is that the fault requires a road closure, so waiting on Openreach to get that organised with the local authority.

Anyhow, this information suggests that the site visit and splicing in the rain without proving the fault by the Openreach man on Tuesday, was, as I had suspected, a complete waste of my time.

I'm glad we made the decision to retain in use some of the 20 pairs of copper that terminate at the site.

IDnet's cs can be a bit lacking at times.

Hopefully you will revise your backup measures after this. As much as gpon is normally(subtended units are powered) passive from olt to ont and normally weather resistant, there will be cases where the weather deals a blow to the network

What revision would you suggest?
Wireless fails in about 45minutes after a power cut in the area where the site is located.
The back-up is using ADSL paths to an exchange with maintained power and a different CP from the one supplying FTTP.
We could add Starlink, I suppose.

Day 10 update.

Openreach have now cleared the leaves off the street box and, presumably, checked for light at the CBT. No details other than a fault has been found and that resolving it requires that a road restriction for the work be applied for to the local authority.

No sign of such an application, yet. Of course, if Openreach had checked for light at the CBT when fault first reported things would be 10 days further forward and I would n't have had a 160 mile wasted journey.

When I had a fault that Openreach deemed needed road restrictions they warned me that the local authority could make them wait up to 13 weeks ! Fortunately, someone in OR came up with an idea about how to deal with it - they arrived at 04:00 and did the work.

Day 13. The plot has thickened a little. The CP, IDNet, have told us that they will offer no compensation for the outage: "service doesn't come with a guarantee of uptime, compensation would not be due on this occasion as the issue is not caused by IDNet directly."
There is therefore no incentive for IDNet to get the repair done promptly.
We have another CP that seems reasonably reliable, gets faults fixed fairly quickly and pays compensation, but has less than knowledgable customer service staff, which is the reason we went to IDNet for some circuits.
Recommendations for a Business FTTP provider that gives good customer service and a reasonable level of compensation when things fail would be appreciated.

I'm with BT Business - not the cheapest but I have no real issues with them. Over time several major faults have arisen.

Pole demolished - BTBusiness provided a 3G or 4G hub which served the purpose. The delay was due to the local authority failing to give permission for the carriageway works - so outside BTs control. OR found a way to resolve it a lot quicker too

Lightning strike - OR on site to replace drop wire the following day and BTBusiness shipped replacement hub straight away..

When I moved to fibre, 300/50 service, speed tests showed 300/30 using BTBiusiness hub - they put resources in aswell as sending OR to us. OR tested with THEIR equipment 300/50 so all was OK but OR witnessed the 300/30. The Tech only had a BT consumer hub - tried that and 300/50. BTBusiness sent out a replacement - 300/30, followed up with 3rd line support working with me and concluded there was a general hub issue. I was planning to use a non-BT device anyway, and BT Business gave me a £240 bill credit which went a long way to the planned purchase.

Not sure IDNet have any way to make this happen quicker. OR have identified that a fix is required and will need permission from the council for road restrictions. At this point IDNet is in the hands of OR, OR are in the hands of the council. The council wouldn't compensate OR and therefore OR won't compensate IDNet.

There are probably ISPs out there that provide SLAs and compensation but either you would pay a lot more for it (because someone has to cover the compensation costs) or they would not provide compensation as it is with a 3rd party with whom they cannot exert any influence.

If using a FTTP connection without an SLA in a critical business then you should have backup options. If you need better service in the event of an outage then a leased line may be the only option but for significantly higher cost.

When I was in the game, Openreach provided proactive automatic compensation to providers when they fail to meet their Service Level Guarantees. So it is disappointing if IDNET are receiving compo but not passing on to customers.

13 weeks is pretty standard notice for permit for planned provision works. Customer out of service permit is likely to be much faster

I know, but in this case the LA still refused to budge with customers out of service. OR found a way round it though.

Ian, excuse my naivety, but don't Openreach pay their customer (Zen, whose customer in turn is IDNet) a daily sum when the Openreach service connection has failed for more than a set number of hours? I thought this was in their standard business FTTP SLA? If that money is not passed on to the end customer, then there is a peverse incentive to drag out repairs for the intermediate companies.

IDNet is actually more expensive than a number of CPs and, given that, as the post after yours indicates, even BT are more supportive of their customers, when there is an Openreach fault, I think asking the question whether there are better business CPs than IDNet is not unreasonable.

It's a good thing we do have back-up provision at the site, as, otherwise we would have some very unhappy customers. But that back-up does not have the throughput of FTTP and no other fibre provider passes the site.

That is my understanding, also. The chain in this case goes Openreach-Zen-IDNet to ourselves. If Zen or IDNet are pocketing the cash, that provides a perverse incentive on chasing to get repairs done promptly.

The fault could have been proved and a "loss of service" streetworks permit could have been requested on day 1, rather than thinking about it on day 13.

I'm familiar with organising road closures for our own works and the sooner you start the sooner you finish.

Well someone booked an appointment on the 2nd, which by the sounds of things Openreach struggled to meet.

So it is likely that the testing or flow charts, be it Openreach, Zen or Idnet, suggested a fault likely at the customer premises. I doubt anyone is going to be closing roads before that has been checked.

Edited by FibreBubble (Mon 08-Dec-25 18:36:14)

No road closure was needed to measure the optical power at the CBT, which the Openreach man attending on the 2nd declined to do. Since the CBT is in a street box in the verge of a public highway this required no site access either and so could have been done days before the 2nd Dec. Any road restriction needed for repair work could then have been applied for.

Since IDNet has declined to pay any compensation to its customer, even though it seems from other posts that Openreach pays compensation for delayed repairs it seems that everyone is happy except IDNet's customer.

Day 17 and no action by Openreach. I checked with the local highway authority. No traffic management application made. The officer told me, "Openreach do this a lot- they don't have the staff to do the work, so they use us as an excuse" He also confirmed that Openreach could use the 2hr retroactive notification procedure for complete loss of service faults, but "never do that because it costs more".

Nice example of why UK productivity is so low relative to other economies. There is no incentive for IDNet, Zen or Openreach to get the fault repaired. Instead of employing people to repair faults people are employed to generate excuses.

The problem atm is that you a) have no service, and b) paying for it.

As you are into day 17, review how the system is coping and when its back up do some tests with fully wireless connectivity and copper (which you are kinda in now ).. and work out if you can use one or the other exclusivly or a mixture.

I feel your pain as this has been sadly rumbling on without the cause being clearly explained to you.

For me its always easier to cope with an outage (not just broadband) if you know exactly when it will be up and running again but now you're stuck in limbo not knowing if it will be a week or a month.

If it was me I would be escalating this to Openreach high level complaints, it may not get the issue resolved any quicker but it will give them a kick up the [censored] and you may find out more about the cause.

Thanks both.

The customers are limping on the back-up copper connectivity, which from a rural site like this is of pretty limited bandwidth per circuit. We've had to curtail site monitoring to the minimum required for safety and security to allow this.
Being a rural site, cellular does not provide a good solution.

What is rather disappointing is that, far from being pro-active in pushing the repair work along, IDNet are giving us "we have no control over this. We will of course keep monitoring and updating you as soon as we know more." They now admit that Openreach have not even completed their internal approvals process to schedule the repair.

Latest update. Openreach are going to have their contractor to survey the road to decide what traffic management will be required.

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve. Well, that will be two days under a month since we lost service.

If the cables were under the road, I would be slightly more understanding, but they're actually under a wide grass verge, with enough room to park vehicles without impeding traffic.

Anyhow, the problem with the cable is said to be that 150m of it has been damaged by "rodents" who have been nesting in one of the street boxes.

I wonder, is it really the case that there is not one intact spare fibre available in the various cables in the damaged span that could get us reconnected, while they get on with designing their traffic management scheme?

Out of interest has the rodent nibbling happened between CBT and the Splitter or between the Splitter and the Ag node?

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve.

Don't think Openreach will work on xmas eve! Maybe I am wrong!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve.

Don't think Openreach will work on xmas eve! Maybe I am wrong!

You are.

exactly.. Theres a network to maintain. 24/7 365 (366) days a year

Plus christmas eve for most is a normal working day. Christmas day, boxing day and new years day are bank holidays and so openreach may only do emergency work/break fix but christmas eve is just another normal day of the year.

Day 23. Having not been able to get anywhere via IDNet, I followed the private advice of a leading contributor to this thread, for which many thanks. Result: connection restored 4pm this afternoon.

I am not sure where the splitter that feeds this circuit is located, but since there is very little Openreach FTTP in this rather rural area my best guess would be cable damage between CBT and splitter.

As a result of this incident, I have looked through the T&Cs of a number of business CPs and this has proved a bit of an eye opener. While the web-sites trumpet the reliability of service and quote time to repairs, following Openreach's service levels, the small, and some of it is very small, print generally excludes liability for outages, irrespective of length, and in most cases provides no compensation either.

The major exceptions are Cerberus and BT Business. Cerberus's position is clearly stated on their web-site. The BT Business T&Cs are lengthy and require combining terms from a number of web-links, so it's no easy read. However, if you work through it, they specify the circumstances under which they provide compensation for loss of service- these are broad enough to be useful- and the amount payable, which is reasonable.

So the take-away is "Don't believe what the web-site advertises, when buying business broadband. Read the small print." For consumer broadband, at least there is the Ofcom scheme for those CPs that offer it.

We had a problem with a TalkTalk Business phoneline, didn't get a penny compensation, we would have got compensation if it had been a residential line. As TTB where the only company offering the service we wanted, at the price we where happy with, can't complain too much

Did they confirm if its a temporary or permanent fix? Hopefully if its between the Splitter and CBT its a new CBT and tail but may be just two track nodes and a short length of fibre across the damage.

Yes, like for like cable replacement; 150m plus replacement of two damaged track nodes according to original report.

It's an interesting issue that there's something appealing to rodents in some cables. We've seen this in outdoor cabling ourselves- some cables in a cable trough will have bite marks every few inches, other cables not at all.

Some cables we use expressly claim to have rodent repellent additives in their outer sheaths and these have not been attacked, but this is yet another detail of cable specification that is not easy to verify until it's too late.

Anyhow, I have happy customers for the moment, so a good result.

Pleased that you have a restored service.

This sounds like you have had to manage the fault progress with Openreach yourself? Rather than IDnet via their own escalation channels?

Please could you advise if IDnet have offered any compensation in this case in view of their inability or unwillingness to escalate.

I had to approach Openreach directly to get repair work started. Once I did this, the fault was repaired in three days.

This, after 23 days trying to get IDNet to get the fault repaired.

IDNet have refunded one month's rental for the one month outage.

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

I had to approach Openreach directly to get repair work started. Once I did this, the fault was repaired in three days.

This, after 23 days trying to get IDNet to get the fault repaired.

IDNet have refunded one month's rental for the one month outage.

This is IDNet responsible to get in touch with Openreach directly. As Openreach do NOT deal with public directly for any repaired. I was surprised you have to get in touch with Openreach to get it repaired. Very rare to happen.

Glad it has been resolved, I think IDNet has letting you down and you should leave IDNet because of their failure!

Yes, we are reviewing our use of IDNet after this experience.

Had it not been for the kindness of a forum member, we would still be without service.