Not all fibre cable has a yellow mark on it.

I have yellow tape, using it doesn’t denote fibre, it means it’s yellow tape.

Yeah I'm thinking it's most likely Community Fibre. Openreach are also slowly making their way towards here too so it's good to have multiple suppliers.

Doesn't need to have a yellow stripe (or yellow tape!) for it to be fibre, as has been suggested.

CF also deploying in my area. There's a pole right outside my bedroom window. Got my DSLR out for a couple photos, which are at https://imgur.com/a/DTXk4V1

First one shows a close up of the cable. It's marked with "Community Fibre Limited 0800 082 0770 [103M] 773.7MM 22/01/21"

Interestingly they have their own marked cable jacket, and the distance markers increase (103, 104, 105M) along the cable. The 773.7MM does not change.

It's thinner than the Openreach one that gets deployed - I'm not lucky enough to be in a FTTP area but 2 minutes down the road is as they're on a different exchange.

Edit to add: This is a pole that serves circa 35 premises.

Edited by branflakes (Sat 17-Apr-21 14:14:05)

Oh very interesting. Good to see what it looks like.

Apologies go everyone who thought I meant that a yellow tape signified it was fibre. I meant it just happened to be the tape keeping it in-place and wrapped up on the pole before they put it up.

In reply to a post by branflakes:

First one shows a close up of the cable. It's marked with "Community Fibre Limited 0800 082 0770 [103M] 773.7MM 22/01/21"

Interestingly they have their own marked cable jacket, and the distance markers increase (103, 104, 105M) along the cable. The 773.7MM does not change.

I think it reads 7/3.7mm, which means that it is microduct of 7mm external diameter and 3.7mm internal diameter.

branflakes, out of interest - how long was it between the cable appearing on the pole and the box being installed?

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

What I did notice is that no cable has the yellow stripe on them unlike with Openreach. It's just a pure black cable. Do you think it's Community Fibre as they said they are planning to launch in the area?

Most of the Community Fibre cable (microduct) on poles in my area is pure black. The yellow stripe is only on 48F cable which is on a small number of poles where the build is spanning between them rather than using underground duct which must be blocked. The first cable of this type spanning poles only started to appear six weeks after the first all-black cable.

The colour of the PVC tape used to coil the cable is unlikely to be relevant.

Ah - that makes sense! I was wondering what 773.7mm had to do with anything!!

Cable installed about three weeks ago (pulled and coiled up). Couple chaps came along and then installed it last Sunday. I think its now waiting for someone on a cherrypicker or longer ladder to mount it up the pole properly, as it's around 8ft off the ground as of now.

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

Openreach are also slowly making their way towards here too so it's good to have multiple suppliers.

Same here in SW16, Openreach hot on the heels of Community Fibre. Sadly the commercial reality is that where an altnet (or Virgin) start, Openreach have to follow quickly to retain/regain market share... great for me, but perhaps not the best for the country as a whole.

With that said, Openreach FTTP prices have not fallen enough (unless you can get Vodafone on OR) to make it worth switching the backup line away from FTTC. I'm in contract for that until late 2022 though, so we'll see how things evolve. I'd expect Community Fibre to be fairly reliable, so I might consider 4G a sufficient backup. Hard to judge, because if the CF cabinet falls over, everyone will be on 4G.

I'd also say in another 18 months that 40/10 and 80/20 will more generally be offered on FTTP if available, decreasing prices closer to their FTTC equivalents. I don't see end-user prices for OR FTTP at 150/30 and above coming down much as they are already relatively competitive with VM. That will take longer until altnets are more established.

In reply to a post by branflakes:

Cable installed about three weeks ago (pulled and coiled up). Couple chaps came along and then installed it last Sunday. I think its now waiting for someone on a cherrypicker or longer ladder to mount it up the pole properly, as it's around 8ft off the ground as of now.

That's interesting, six weeks ago here there was a blitz of cables appearing coiled on poles. Nothing much has happened since then apart from constant duct unblocking/track installation although that has increased in intensity recently and seems to be reaching a conclusion. There were a few days when a fibre blowing team were in the area, around three weeks ago, but they've only blown to about 40% of the poles. At the tail end of last week some pole to pole spans of 48-fibre cable have been installed, presumably in areas where the ducts were considered uneconomic to repair.

If it was me, I'd schedule the fibre blowing team back next and a gang to complete the trunk cable back to the cabinet from the splitter node. Easier to have the pole-end splicing team in last so they can check light levels at the connectors.

Worth mentioning my pole was one of the last to have the cable/ducting pulled through after a blocked duct in the chamber that fed the pole so that may have played a part in the speed of the black box appearing on the pole. They're doing a massive part of East London, including nearly all the Upton Park exchange area and stopping where the Ilford Central exchange takes over to avoid FTTP overbuild. About time we got the better internet!

In reply to a post by ft247:

If it was me, I'd schedule the fibre blowing team back next and a gang to complete the trunk cable back to the cabinet from the splitter node. Easier to have the pole-end splicing team in last so they can check light levels at the connectors.

I'm with you on that. Seems like they've recently got Kelly Comms onboard to help with deployment alongside Comex2000. I did see the teams blowing fibre a few weeks ago on an adjacent road so likely not too long to wait. I still have 13 months left on my Gig1 contract so might just get a 30 day rolling 150/150 as a backup line and regrade to gigabit with ~3mo left on the VM contract.