Your scenario is not the current case and has not been the case for some time.

could you perhaps name just three?

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

As pointed out above digging that deep for over 30m on a live carriageway is an expensive process.

Then perhaps they should use any of the myriad of technologies that exist which don't involve digging the road up to get from one side to the other.

What are these miracle technologies?

In reply to a post by MatHal:

Telecomms companies should never be allowed to charge customers fees for building company infrastructure.

And the other utility companies ? Gas ? There's millions of households and businesses who would absolutely love this utopian principle to be applied to all utilities. No more smelly oil or eye-wateringly expensive bottled gas.

What are these miracle technologies?

Directional drilling "moles" are very common in other countries for running comms/power/water/etc in urban areas, and there are a number of small/portable models for small-scale jobs. For fibre/comms ducts under roads/pavements/driveways microtrenching (ie. 20-40mm wide "cuts" 100-300mm deep) is used too, they effectively just do an epoxy/grout job to fill them in � quick and painless. Of course all depends on the situation, but there are practical solutions out there beside "digging a 1-foot-wide trench and patching it with bitumen".

Source: my brother is a civils contractor in New Zealand.

Thanks, doing some investigations with the neighbours at the moment then figuring out what they've encountered and some next steps.

Cancelling & retrying with BT and hoping some magical pixie will cover it appears to be a bit of a consensus here (though I don't understand why they would unless there's a big pile of govt funding they have which no other ISP does).

BT are restricted in what they can do by legislation, local by-laws and inter-utility agreements.

Moles cannot be used as there are too many other services under roads - most of which are not accurately identifiable.

Micro trenching would not be suitable for three reasons - firstly, telco cable need to be a minimum of 450mm below the finished surface, secondly, 20-40mm may be enough for one fibre bundle but in almost every case there is a requirement for several or future expansion and thus the use of 100 or 150mm ducts. Finally, there is no visibility of any other service pipes or cables running in that location and that could include power.

There is also a requirement to lay marker tape above the services, neither moling or microtrenching can provide that additional protection.

Personally I don't have a big problem paying for connections to new developments, or anything that happens on a new property. Part of the cost of building a $00K house or a $M development is getting power/water/comms/roads/etc connected to it.

Payback period for a lot of infrastructure upgrades is in the decades range, that's why it's partially funded by government � it doesn't make any sense on an individual user-pays basis, the overheads are too high (and it's not like as an individual I have the option of paying back the upfront costs over decades either, is it?). And sure, some properties will cost a bit more, others will cost less.

This is all even more relevant for infrastructure upgrades � there's zero commercial reason for OpenReach to put any fibre outside dense city centres without govt funding, but as a country we're shooting ourselves in the foot long-term if we don't prioritise connectivity, and it's worth doing.

What I do have a problem with in this case is the taxpayer paying for more properties to be connected to fibre via the above mechanisms, but it turns out in practise that they're not actually connected at all. If you live right next door to their drop-point you can get connected � everyone else has to build out the network on an individual basis. Yet the "we've connected 20 more properties in this street" funding has been handed over.

If they do absorb its not to do with govt funding, but just a willingness to gamble on you being a decade or more long customer, i.e. massive operators can take on costs like this and spread them across the whole customer base more easily

i.e. one reason perhaps why BT Consumer pricing is not ultra competitive

Other countries & cities around the world have these exact same constraints...

Like everything else, they are choices and tradeoffs to consider, discuss and decide on, with appropriate mitigation measures. We shouldn't just say that the existing process is the only way because any new process is (by definition!) not the existing process.

If as a country we can install to many more properties for the same $ by adopting different techniques where it makes sense, but there's a slightly higher risk of future disruption, maybe that's a tradeoff we should consider? (Though there's zero reason for newly laid stuff not to be extremely accurately located).