Costs for cabling install

Hi

After some advice and clarification on what Open Reach can charge for when installing the cabling for superfast. We live on a residential street and have been quoted £1000 for an installation of ducting.

Distance across our front lawn is 22m. Distance on public pathway to junction box is 25m. Happy to pay for any work on our property but feel it is not right that we're being asked to pay for the work to get the cabling to our property boundary.

Can anyone clarify the rules around what we can and cannot be charged for.

I've offered to install the ducting on my property to reduce costs (it's a fairly easy job) but unable to dig up the local footpaths!

Any help much appreciated. It's plusnet as the service provider but Open Reach have quoted the cost.

Thanks

Each broadband provider typically has a different amount of these charges they are willing to swallow, they are within their right to charge even for the bit on the public footway. It really comes down to you either want the service or not as its not really negotiable. We have seen far higher charges discussed on this forum for a service like this and probably yours at £1,000 is possibly the lowest.

It's very painful. especially when you have (to use DNO parlance) non-contestibe work in the public footpath etc. Basically you have to use them as its their duct network and they hold highways street license to dig it all up.

In 2019 Openreach charged me £2,280.64 (inc VAT!) to install 8 metres of duct 56 from joint footway box to curtilage edge of my property. They free issued about 10 metres more of grey duct 56 which my contractors installed into the basement comms space. they also installed a 5-pair copper cable onto a new termination - which we later ripped out and used as a pull cord to bring in fibre.

Virgin Media charged £403.42 +VAT effectively to install a new swept-tee into their existing duct network. They also free issued us their equivalent green 56mm duct and a drum of quad-shield RG6 coax for us to run into the premises.

You are will within your rights to trench, duct and lay all your own chambers on your land - as long as you do its according to Openreach specification. They should also free-issue you duct etc.

Interestingly, our local altnet refused to install fibre to my neighbour if he installed his own ducting on his property.

Who was that out of interest?

In reply to a post by Alucidnation:

Interestingly, our local altnet refused to install fibre to my neighbour if he installed his own ducting on his property.

I found that fact rather amusing, even my old nan could have installed a fibre cable better than some of these altnet providers 🤣

I installed 35m of ducting ready for fibre, OR laid the fibre into a box next to my curtilage instead of the planned pole and left the ducting for me to install and run a pull through in, I have my own mini-digger so it took a day to do but my view is undisturbed by the planned solitary pole. 400M away next to the road is a forlorn pole with no connections at all installed at the same time, why they installed it is a mystery, in a few years it will be made into gate poles.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Who was that out of interest?

Trooli.

I assume the quote is from the ISP directly. In situations where a deployment is literally metres from me, I've had luck on 2 occasions now mailing the Openreach team directly. It failed once, as they had totally finished all activity in the area.

The last time it turned out they stopped a few metres away as their database had more line IDs than houses. The assessor began knocking on doors (e.g. number 1 had 2 drop cables entering - and so mapping out the missing data meant they could then get past "computer says no.")

The 1st time was in London, our private roads (4 or so steets set back) was missed out but everywhere else had full fibre. ISP quoted 4k to offer any services via leased line. Openreach came onto the private roads, noted their fibre headend exchange backed onto where we were and mapped out a deployment that routed full fibres across existing telephone poles (since ducting was appalling - 1800s properties). It did take around 6 months before they came back & confirmed they'd be checking the area and a further 3 or so months to complete.

This is the person I've messaged historically:

[removed]

Considering it's so close to you, Openreach may apply some logic that the ISP isn't able to do via their frontend systems that generate quotes based on "as is" and do not think outside of the box like Openreach (often but not always) can.

Edited by seb (Wed 16-Apr-25 00:08:38)

We have removed the contact details you shared for an Openreach employee as it's not fair for individual staff to have their direct e-mails publicly available. Everyone gets too much spam as it stands, it just makes the problem worse. You can share them with the user privately if required.