I think the fact that BT installed new ducting to a new pavement chamber which links to nothing other than the previous chamber and which I now understand probably contains the manifold suggests that they were well aware that somehow they would need to get the fibre from that chamber to the houses. They also knew that it would not be down the non-existent ducting because that ducting certainly did not go to the new chamber.

On the day that I moved into my first house in Croydon about 25 years ago the local cable television company were digging up the street outside the house so that their cable passed every house. On the day that I moved out again 10 years later they were doing the whole thing again to replace the cable. So if that was possible all those years ago I do not understand why it is beyond BT to do the same thing for 20 houses in a close off a road where they have the fibre installed on the current telegraph poles.

A neighbour has ordered BT Infinity Extra from BT Retail. They have been given an installation date of 29th May. So in less than a week we will see if BT Retail are able to install without charging their customer the Excess Construction Charges which PlusNet feel that they have to pass to me.

At the end of the day, I am sure Openreach will pay for putting in the ducting. It's probably just the case that the right people within Openreach need to talk to one another.

I would hope your neighbour does not receive any preferential treatment because he's using BT Retail. That would raise very serious question marks if his installation goes ahead and Openreach put in ducting for him at no cost.

Is that neighbour fed off an existing pole?

From previous posts the OP describes his property as having a 'direct in ground' feed, quite common for houses of the late sixties to early seventies, like mine in fact.

A two pair armoured cable is laid under the property at the time of construction, coming up in a wall and ending in the recess behind the NTE/LJU. Outside, the cable would run to an (often) buried frontage tee joint.

It does sound like work of some description has already been done, maybe a new duct to the premises, or just a new duct to provide a manifold.

There are no poles at present in the close. So my neighbour's situation is very similar to mine. He actually has more concrete drive to get through to his nearer chamber than I have to mine.

The existing work that has been done during the past 18 months is to install new ducting in the pavement on the other side of the road between an existing chamber and a brand new pavement chamber. The surveyor told me that the fibre equipment had been installed in the new chamber but did not say what exactly. The new chamber only has ducting to the old chamber. No work to extend that ducting to any properties has been done.

With regards to the duct work, they would either put in 25mm (fibre only) or 50mm (fibre + copper) ducts. It should be 350mm-450mm below ground level (which doesn't include any paving/concrete you might have down). Then are then various rules on the bends and the distance the ducting should be from electrical cables, but I don't think the latter applies to fibre only ducting.

Most people would probably jump at the chance of having superfast broadband and agree to work being done to their properties. Some people won't care and wouldn't want their driveways/gardens being dug up.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I would hope your neighbour does not receive any preferential treatment because he's using BT Retail. That would raise very serious question marks if his installation goes ahead and Openreach put in ducting for him at no cost.

I am certain Openreach will charge the same to any ISP. However, the ISP has discretion as to whether they pass that charge on to the customer.

Plus, the other person may for whatever reason have lower costs and therefore may not incur additional charges from Openreach at all.

OK. Here is an update on my situation and some of the things that I have learned.

The original order from PlusNet was cancelled by them after discussions with me and they reordered to see if there result would be the same. It was. Openreach still wanted £3277 for excess construction charges. So for the moment at least having native FTTP through PlusNet is a non-starter.

I have now placed an order for Infinity 2 with BT Retail to see if I get a different result with them. So far they have informed me that a survey will be required (despite one having been carried out for PlusNet). I will wait to see what the result of the survey for them will yield.

So what have I learned?

Openreach will provide infrastructure to the manifold, the last point in our network prior to the customer lead in. My manifold is in a pavement chamber within 20m of my front door on the opposite side of the street.

At the point of customer order, an assessment will be made as to how to serve the customer, in line with Copper provision policy, the first £1000 is covered by Openreach, with the additional cost being charged to the communications provider who may choose to pass this on to the customer. So the total excess construction charge is £4,276.57 with PlusNet being charged all but £1000 of this which they have passed on to me.

In many cases the first person to order in a location is expected to pay much of the cost to complete the infrastructure for the location. So although I am only 20m from the manifold PlusNet were being asked to pay for:

1 Survey £255.58
27m Duct in footpath £1,095.12
12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84
3 Small Joint Boxes £2,114.67
£4,276.57

Much of which would not be used to supply the FTTP to me. Only the ducting in the road and the ducting soft surface (across my garden) and possibly 1 small joint box is required for my install.

The biggest problem is that when our houses were built in the late 70s the copper phone cabling was provisioned with armoured cable straight in the ground without any ducting. Therefore there is nothing in place to blow the copper down and the network has to be overlaid with ducting to provision the fibre. Hence the brand new duct to bring the fibre to the brand new chamber where the manifold is installed. This currently goes nowhere and the infrastructure to get the fibre from there to the houses is what I am being asked to pay for. Why Openreach think that residential customers would be willing to pay £3300 to install a product that would then cost between £25 and £40 per month is beyond me.

So currently the decision by BT to cable the houses up with armoured cable 40 or so years ago plus a more recent decision by Openreach to deploy FTTP to the phone lines on our cabinet has currently left me fighting to get the only Superfast broadband available to me at a sensible price.

So would I be right in thinking that most of that is already in place, and all that is needed is the following two items?

12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84

Those two would be a more palatable cost.

Shame you can't get a mole and send it under the road from your garden and put your own duct in.

My house is also on an armoured cable which is just buried, also built around 40 years ago, but at least I have FTTC so I'm guess I'm lucky we didn't end up with FTTP.