Had an email from Openreach

Openreach are now telling me Full Fibre is available to me and gave me a list of suppliers to get quotes. I have seen a couple of OR vans but when looking at certain planning apps it appears to be copper work.

Indeed they were working on the pavement outside my house digging up the pavement and I think more copper work as my line dropped (FTTC) once when an OR engineer was in a pit near me.

Do they get orders in first for the area then roll out the fibre network or is it on an adhoc basis where fibre is laid per order.

I cant order yet as I still have til Oct 26 under contract with TTB. I did enquire if TTB could upgrade me in the meantime and got some prices but the sales agent said he hadn't got a price for installation and would email OR as I wasn't on the system but heard nothing since and it has been a few weeks now.

What's the procedure? All the copper round here is underground and my property had a duct put in too to replace an aerial cable incorrectly put underground in the 1980s.

I believe they install fibre to the local nodes and then do the final section when an order is placed. Ours went live and I hadn't really noticed any OR engineers around before hand.

Put your address in here and post the results.
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/...

In reply to a post by Banger:

Do they get orders in first for the area then roll out the fibre network or is it on an adhoc basis where fibre is laid per order.

From our experience the fibre is laid along street first, it's only when that is up and running that orders are taken and the final bit of fibre run from CBT to house.

OR will typically enable an area and either durring ready for service commisioning or shortly after going live you get an email saying your post is live (can sadly mean your post code is live but not your property)

Our rollout was mostly overhead, so one team did the whole work, with some extra teams here and there. Typically you get different teams doing exchange work, blowing of fibre if needed, and then the cbt guys and overhead work.

Team availability can mean cbts are done first, in the middle or at the end. From my experience, the cbt that serves me was put on the pole opposite me (and it was in the wrong place on the pole) four years later it was fianlly enabled.

So don't thing the cbts are the last thing to be done. @Iniltous brilliantly gave the link to find out if its live or not.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Do they get orders in first for the area then roll out the fibre network

No, they build the network out to the final distribution points - Connectorized Block Terminals - where each CBT is has enough ports to serve a group of properties (4, 8 or 12 are the common sizes). At that point, the network build is considered complete and those properties are "passed" by the network, i.e. ready to connect, and orders are accepted.

Then when you place your order with your Communication Service Provider (CSP), an engineer will run a fibre from the CBT to the outside of your house at a Customer Splice Point (CSP) and from there through the wall to the inside, where they install the Optical Network Termination (ONT), a small powered device which your router connects to.

In reply to a post by Banger:

All the copper round here is underground and my property had a duct put in too to replace an aerial cable incorrectly put underground in the 1980s.

That will likely be why you haven't seen any signs of fibre network rollout - it's all underground in your area.

The CBT will likely be in a nearby footway box, like this one:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/assets/images/news-20...

Full article:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/8620-a-walk-in-a...
(although formatting has been broken by TBB's site redesign)

https://ibb.co/TqPWtq1h

Here's a screenshot of the checker.

So you can order it.

Yes but stuck in a contract.

Ah well … look on the bright side, this is a ‘first world problem’.
I can’t get FTTP from any one on my 90’s estate. All fully ducted, ducted lead ins to every property ….
Oh, and it exists at lots of locations off the same exchange, damned if I haven’t installed it for some. Och well.

Edited by Zarjaz (Wed 16-Jul-25 17:46:04)