Cityfibre buildout methods

How are Cityfibre typically rolling out fibre to the premises?

I live in Norwich City Centre, which is earmarked for CityFibre deployment. My house is in a courtyard about 25 metres off the highway with brickeweave paving.

To date the courtyard have resisted any installation of Virgin Media due to matters of concern over damage to the structure of the paving, so we've only been able to get ADSL and then FTTC. Both of which perform well - ADSL here is around 18mbps, FTTC is 80/20 due to cab proximity.

Recently FTTP has been deployed in the area, and OR have been able to rod and rope from their street chambers to newly updated chambers in a couple of the flower beds on this side of the brickweave, so it looks like we're all getting WBC FTTP without any distubance to the courtyard, which is brilliant. There is a nice underground CBT about 5m away waiting for me to be hooked up to now, my installs are booked. A few weeks ago OR did a small amount of civils specific to my property and intercepted one of these underground ducts in another flowerbed with a swept tee to bring a 2" duct direct to the front of my property, and have left this roped for the subsequent steps.

I wonder if Cityfibre would be able to take advantage of these clear underground routes to get fibre to our premises the same way BT has, or are they going to be in the same boat as VM, and facing having to dig up the courtyard to get their own ducts in place?

It would be nice to have the option of more than one full fibre provider, though I'm sure if it involves digging up the courtyard that it will be dead in the water and we'll be left just with OR as the only option.

If i recall correctly a lot of City Fibre deployment uses PIA so if OR have now recently put new ducting in / cleared it, i'm sure city fibre would go down this cheaper route.

Can PIA include locating CBTs etc in existing chambers, and include access to the very last duct up to the property? I imagine when my FTTP installation is completed that the duct that is currently just poking out of the ground is going to get capped off and lead straight into an external junction box of some sort. I was trying to work out at what point Cityfibre's infrastructure may have to diverge from OR's. Or whether they could come right out of the last duct and into the house.

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Can PIA include locating CBTs etc in existing chambers, and include access to the very last duct up to the property?

As I understand it yes, there are charges listed on the Openreach pricing pages for hosting equipment in chambers. The duct access prices are split into 'spine duct' which carries a 5 year minimum term, and 'lead-in duct' which does not carry a minimum term but attracts a much higher price per metre.

I'm not sure at what point a chamber is considered 'full' preventing PIA users from locating further apparatus there.

In reply to a post by ft247:

As I understand it yes, there are charges listed on the Openreach pricing pages for hosting equipment in chambers. The duct access prices are split into 'spine duct' which carries a 5 year minimum term, and 'lead-in duct' which does not carry a minimum term but attracts a much higher price per metre.

I'm not sure at what point a chamber is considered 'full' preventing PIA users from locating further apparatus there.

Thanks, I found the pricelist. Surprised how inexpensive it is, can't see why you'd dig your own if there was deemed to be space available in these ducts.

The chambers in out flowerbeds seem to have plenty of space in them...

Pretty exciting stuff though, will be brilliant if we can get access to 2 different full fibre networks without any digging.

that's really good to hear.

Similar situation here - just a 9 houses off a private road. Though we jointly own the management company (I've recently moved in) and I think there's acceptance we'd probably allow digging if needed - for example virgin is only 150m away - but would prefer symmetric fibre if poss.

In Brighton, and cityfibre deployment is starting, plus also BT FTTP so will be good to eventually get fibre (hopefully within 2 years). Can't come soon enough. 65/11 seems to slow these days (previously had 1000/50 with virgin ...)