FTTP for semi-rural property

My parents live in a village and a couple of months ago there was a lot of activity with openreach engineers surveying the existing cable ducts in preparation for a FTTP roll-out in the village.

During the surveying an engineer visited my parents house to see where the current copper cables came into the property.

Long story short - the property is a farm house and the existing copper cabling comes from a telegraph pole on a main road and then ~300 meters underground to the house. This 300m stretch of wire serves only my parents house.

The engineer said he didn't think they would be able to run a fibre cable to the house as they wouldn't have the budget for it in the initial build out.

He said there might be grants available to do this but I haven't been able to find anything relevant online. All I can find are community grants whereby multiple neighbouring properties can come together and apply for "vouchers", but as my parents is the sole property that will be impacted then this isn't applicable.

Anyone got any ideas of how we can get openreach to run fibre to the property?

A map of the village can be found here, with the existing ~300m stretch of copper wire shown in red:

https://ibb.co/XkLX4s4L

You could find a communications provider who could establish what the excess charges for providing service to the property will be. Look at some of the smaller companies who might go beyond the ‘computer says no’ approach.

The OP reads like the property hasn't flipped to served on the checker, so nobody can place an order to find out what the ECCs are. .

Yep, could be.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

You could find a communications provider who could establish what the excess charges for providing service to the property will be

Although note that won't be normal "FTTP"; it will be a Leased Line with much higher monthly fees and long contracts (typical £300+ per month and 3 year contract), on top of any initial Excess Construction Charges.

Once there is Openreach FTTP close by you could order FTTP On Demand but the costs would be anything £10K upwards, paid up-front and with no guaranteed timelines for delivery.

I'd suggest your best option is to sit tight. If you're lucky, Openreach will deploy FTTP to you anyway (existing poles and usable ducts work in your favour), and the problem goes away. After all, it does help Openreach to get rid of bits of legacy copper network.

And if you're not lucky, Starlink will be a much cheaper option, with no long-term commitment in the event that FTTP comes along in future.

I think the key questions are:
a) Is that 300m underground in duct or direct buried?
b) whose land is the cable on?

If it is duct on their own land then there may be hope, it isn't a very big job.. If it is direct buried then it is a fairly big job. If it on their own land, or they are on good terms with the landowner then them paying to get duct installed (and agreeing a wayleave with the landowner) may be a solution, assuming that Openreach are happy with that approach.

In reply to a post by DantD9:

Long story short - the property is a farm house and the existing copper cabling comes from a telegraph pole on a main road and then ~300 meters underground to the house. This 300m stretch of wire serves only my parents house.

Was able to find the location. There's no altnet coverage so the FTTP nearby is Openreach. If they have ducts/poles as others have said it may not be crazy but beyond standard I imagine.

If I was there and you had a friendly neighbour with coverage, I'd look at what you could do get your own fibre to the neihgbour and order service there. This is more of a hack but it may work. This would rely on you having a fibre path you can use if you own the land. You can't use Openreach poles/ducts for this.

An altnet could use OR poles/ducts and pay something to them for it but if they don't have a network nearby it might not be interesting.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

You could find a communications provider who could establish what the excess charges for providing service to the property will be

Although note that won't be normal "FTTP"

Hmm? Normal FTTP has ECCs if the build is complex.

In reply to a post by behuk:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Although note that won't be normal "FTTP"

Hmm? Normal FTTP has ECCs if the build is complex.

I remember reading some time back where a property was technically enabled for regular FTTP but due the cost of getting from the CBT to the property the owners were slapped with a £6K bill by Sky (although this was being passed on from Openreach) and the owners weren't prepared to pay it so there was a stand off, so you're right about the ECCs.

The difference with the OPs case is that Openreach are not technically enabling the property like the one I described

Edited by PCJM40 (Fri 27-Feb-26 17:12:50)

Does not need a pysical path from teh neighbours though. Ubiquiti has their UISP range - easily transmit Gbit over a km from ONT to a gateway and not too expensive either. I have a 300Mbps wireless link - equipment cost under £100