Workmanship

I'm a potential Openreach engineer, just walking along the streets and looking at the workmanship of the virgin engineers who install FTTP, I find the work very messy ie the outside boxes and wiring are all over the place, is this because of wear and tear or just bad workmanship because of being rushed to get the job done. are Openreach engineers the same?.

Both can be as sloppy as each other.

In my street the Virgin installs are much neater. All the Openreach CSP's are being installed by Kelly subcontractors, and it shows.

I don't think I've seen a single CSP directly on top of the elephants foot round here. They are all offset to the side with the external fibre visible.
They look a right mess.

The Virgin final drops are invisible from Toby to external wall, with all Tobys installed in front of a strip of grass running right to the property. All the external Virgin boxes are installed around 6 inches from the ground. They are even colour coded, with either white or brown omniboxes used depending on the colour of cladding on the property (there are 2 colours used in the street).

My Virgin omnibox is installed perfectly on my wall.
I ordered Openreach FTTP before the CSP's were being deployed on my street. The Openreach engineer (not a subcontractor) stole my elephants foot and my cover 101A while doing the FTTP install.
I didn't notice immediately and eventually replaced them myself.

In other areas I've seen Openreach do a much neater job. It varies, a lot.

Edited by j0hn83 (Sat 11-Dec-21 20:57:49)

The training BT gives their technicians is second to none. It is driven home that quality is teh key, right first time and more.The direct BT staff know that getting it right means less annoyed customers and callbacks which may end in "earache".

The dealings I have had with other suppliers has shown a massive difference in staff and management attitudes.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

CSP's are being installed by Kelly subcontractors, and it shows.

Kowboy Communications fitted our FTTP earlier this year, I came home from hospital a couple of weeks later to find a mess, we had several problems with the install and the way the work was carried out, from a quality point of view, we had four wall plugs on the inside wall only one of which was used to hold the ONT

MHC, Pretty hilarious to be honest, our repaired (years ago) phone line is still running on top of the grass verge and across field entry gates where it's regularly driven over by farm vehicles. Maybe some of those engineers you talk of so highly don't know what 'buried' means.

Edited by Swac3 (Tue 25-Jan-22 21:27:16)