Fairly certain I can get the various owners to agree to sign a wayleave (I've spoken to about a third of them already), the question is how do I engage with Openreach to progress things - I suspect they've assumed that the lane is Local Authority property and preoceeded on that basis, but it's actually collectively owned by all the flat owners.

From the OR website here - https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/obtaining... - it suggests we should contact the "case handler", but we've no way of knowing who that is, and I can't find much else on the website.

Not quite the right form (but unless others here can pick up the baton..) fill in your details in this form. Include the pole number stamped on the pole, the postcode and all the relevant details regarding the works.

Explain that this is an existing Openreach undertaking / works - not a chargeable customer work request.

Thank Pheasant.

As it happens, I just bumped into the Openreach/Morrisons team in the lane. We were joined by the neighbour who objected to the drilling on Friday - she is basically point-blank refusing to give permission for the pole on the grounds that it and the cables will be an eyesore.

To be fair, the OR team were very friendly and are now going off to look at other options - potentially using some existing ducts to get the fibre to one end of the buildings and then following the existing copper cables along the rear of the flats. They did say they thought the ducts might be blocked, but were going to check "Orion" for details (I'm guessing this is some database with cable/duct information?). They'll come back to us with an update in the next week or so.

It's a bit annoying that this will delay fibre availability, but I can't see any other way forward at the moment.

I did manage to get some more details from the OR team on my original question regarding CBT deployment. The plan is to have one CBT per close, so each one servicing 8 flats - they didn't plan to have any CBTs at the top of the poles, they were purely for getting the fibre to the closes.

Fingers crossed🤞

In reply to a post by potterer:

As it happens, I just bumped into the Openreach/Morrisons team in the lane. We were joined by the neighbour who objected to the drilling on Friday - she is basically point-blank refusing to give permission for the pole on the grounds that it and the cables will be an eyesore.

And we wonder why our energy bills are so high and economic growth is so low compared to other countries who actually have a liberal approach to planning laws for infrastructure (be that energy or telecomms).

In reply to a post by Whitehall11:

liberal approach to planning laws for infrastructure (be that energy or telecoms).

Everyone should have the right to complain/object to planning regardless of what the planning is for. A pole today, a 10,000 new home development tomorrow on your doorstep.

An update after a delay of 8 months or so.

OR were (eventually) good to their word, and contractors were here last week - they excavated the lane to unblock the duct and have now run fibre along the back walls of our tenement, following the existing copper cable. There is now one CBT per close, some with 8 connectors and some with 12 - so, if anything, it looks like thay have over-provisioned (at the physical level anyway).

I'll wait now to see when service becomes available from BT. CityFibre recently completed work in our street, so we also have the option to sign up with one of their ISPs, but I still have a year to run on our BT contract, so that is probably my preferred option.

Thanks to everyone for their help on this thread.

And a further update - I have now ordered Full Fibre 900 from BT, with an engineer visit due on Monday to install. I want the ONT in an internal cupboard, so have spent today running conduit (with a draw string) through crawl space under the floors and through the rear wall - am hoping that the OR engineer will happily use that to pull the fibre - the exit point on the rear wall is about 2 metres below the CBT, and the conduit run is ~9m, so a total of 11m, which I think is well within spec?

Will update again once install in complete.

Final update on this. Install went smoothly today - subcontractor was very happy to use the conduit and drawstring I had provided to install the fibre, so it's in my cupboard with the rest of my comms gear (SH2, managed switch, and patch panel terminating CAT6 to all rooms). Total install time was les than 45 mins start to finish. Various speed tests now showing a solid 920/110 service - my son just happily reported that he downloaded 102GB of game updates from Steam in less than 20 mins. Probably helps that we're the first order on this segment, so no contention to the exchange yet.

A few notes from my overall experience in case they help anyone else searching this in future:

- there was roughly 8 months delay from OR being told poles weren't acceptabe to them clearing the duct and deploying wall-mounted CBTs
- to answer my original question - as others suggested, OR deployed enough CBT capacity to allow at least one fibre per property (probably 10% more)
- time from CBTs being installed to orders being open on BT website was only a couple of weeks in this case
- I put in 20mm o/d flexible conduit with a drawstring (pulled through with a vacuum cleaner) and the technician was very happy to use this to keep the install tidy
- I switched the BT SH2 to full-fibre mode before the install was complete (at the request of the installer) - there was no break in service, as the hub kept using the copper at this point
- once the fibre was fully operational (solid green light on ONT) I removed the phone line connection and it switched over instantly

Last point - the ONT is tiny, only around 8cm x 8cm.

Thanks to all for help along the way, I'm off to spend the evening running speed tests