Question whether Openreach would route fibre down a pole

Got a FTTP install booked in a week and seeking some advice. I have a telegraph pole (new replacement one as old one was rotten) that is at the end of my driveway, backing onto a flower bed where I've preinstalled Openreach grey ducting underground (with pull rope). The other end comes up next to my garage where I've preinstalled internal ducting to my router (only about 5m) to make the install as simple as possible.

My question is, will Openreach route the fibre down the telegraph pole to be able to take advantage of the ducting or will they refuse and try and insist on overhead replacing the copper wires.

Overhead is not a great option as there is no easy route from the external cable attachment point to a suitable place for the ONT and router inside or an easy route to the garage.

TIA

Ian

As long as your external ducting comes up outside and gives a reasonable location on an outside wall for the CSP [Customer Splice Point], it is likely to be acceptable. I have done similar with ducting from the pole on my garden and it was OK.

Inside, I had the ONT backed on to the CSP and wanted extra fibre left in the cavity. That was accepted in the end - I used a dry lining box and a new build style over box from ebay, the guy thought there would be no room behind the dry lining box, but was OK once he saw the depth available. If your inside ducting is OK, I doubt that will be a problem.

My phone line was underground, so I had slightly more precedent for fibre to go underground too, but I chose a different location for the ONT from the old master socket and the job was treated like a new install.

Do remember the ONT, which goes inside, between the CSP and your router, for which you will require a power socket. As I said, I had the ONT backed on to the CSP, which I regard as optimum because the connection from the ONT to the router is ethernet, which you own and can change about as you want.

I would imagine they would be happy to do so.

Maybe , if it’s a single engineer, offer to help. The most practical will be making sure the fibre doesn’t pinch and bite at the pole base while it is pulled through the ducts.

Hi,

My only concern would be how close your ducting is to the base of the pole. If your ducting is touching the pole then I see no problem but if there is a few cm gap then I suspect the Openreach engineer will be scratching their head trying to work out how to protect the cable between the pole base and the ducting entry.

A 19mm capping adaptor (galvanised elephants foot) with some capping should do the job if its not to far from the pole. Not sure the engineer will have this onboard when they arrive sadly.

The CSP can be installed internally too.

Capping is easy to get onsite before, just in case. Thanks for the advice.

Edited by Spans (Wed 17-Sep-25 19:38:39)

Job done, was a contractor (who don't get paid if the job doesn't get done so that may have been a motivator).

Engineer's initial view was he was going to have to call in the cherry picker to route and access overhead so he was quite relieved when I showed him the alternate underground route.

Took a photo and tried to get authorisation from a manager but with no reply just got on and did it

Great call to get the elephant boot and capping, they were gratefully used and the job looks great with the external fibre all the way into the garage and set up adjacent to Vodafone Router and cat8 cable to my home setup.

Now up and running with 1.6Gbs internet! Thanks for all the advice.

Thats really a good outcome. All the best with your new speeds

Why cat8?