Cityfibre installing toby boxes instead on using poles?

Just trying to understand the logic here.

We have fibre from Hey!Broadband (F&W networks). I followed the rollout as they cleared the ducts and pulled through fibre and ran it up the poles etc. We now have overhead fibre to the property.

Now, Cityfibre are rolling out in the area, but instead of using the Openreach infrastructure as F&W networks did (and probably did a lot of the heavy lifting already clearing ducts etc.), they're digging up the pavement and installing toby boxes at the boundary of properties.

Why on earth would they do this? The poles are overloaded with equipment (yet).

Is it cheaper long term to go to all the effort of digging to install their own ducting, and then having the dig through the customers driveway, rather then just renting PIA?

I should also add it's causing traffic chaos on my (busy) road. F&W networks you were lucky to catch them doing any work.

Round here we have 2 altnets (and no sign of OR fibre). One altnet did PIA and most folks didn't even know they were working. The other dug up everywhere and installed Toby pots, were right pain with roadworks, and everyone knew about them. I couldn't see the logic either, unless maybe some bean counter figured that having their own assets in the ground would make the company more valuable when they sold out in a few years?

I wish CityFibre had installed our area underground. If a property was already supplied by a pole they used that.

Our fibre and old phone lines run through several trees along the road and as a result get damaged quite often. In the 10 years I've lived at the property the phone line goes down every 12-24 months which requires OpenReach to come out and fix or replace it and since I had CityFibre installed in the spring the squirrels have chewed through it twice this summer!

Zzoomm did some underground and others above ground for some reason. Mine is from the pole and yet a couple of roads away they use Toby boxes. I don't understand it either. Happy that mine can from the pole, much easier and less hassle.

CityFibre see themselves as an infrastructure company in their own right, this ambition is thwarted a bit if everything they do is with PIA.

Then you'd have rats chewing through it instead! Should someone be maintaining the trees though?

I think they're positioning themselves as a wholesale supplier more than an infrastructure operator.