The main development in the past 2 weeks is that BT Openreach have just added fibres from the pole in my garden to what appears to be the BT pole nearest to each property in the road. I was NOT included presumably because there is already a BT cable from the pole to my property which can easily be replaced with fibre..

They do not yet appear to have added a router on the pole or provided a fibre link from that router to presumably one of their nearby green cabinets.

I recall from several years ago that the underground duct from the pole in my garden to their cabinet was blocked and a road closure was granted to investigate. Unfortunately Affinity water took advantage and dug a trench across the road to connect two new properties. This prevented BT from investigating the blockage that they had requested the road closure for! As far as I know that blockage is still there and may prevent a fibre being easily connected to the pole.

BT have now opened up the ability to order an FTTP solution on their website for our road and interestingly includes Cuckoo as one of the service providers to provide a full fibre broadband connection.Cuckoo currently manages my FTTP account originally installed by Swish!

I will pass on the message to my neighbour that her full fibre service might now be available again. I think though that it might be sensible to wait a while until we see what BT are doing as she will then have a choice of providers.

In reply to a post by steelej02:

The main development in the past 2 weeks is that BT Openreach have just added fibres from the pole in my garden to what appears to be the BT pole nearest to each property in the road. I was NOT included presumably because there is already a BT cable from the pole to my property which can easily be replaced with fibre..

They do not yet appear to have added a router on the pole or provided a fibre link from that router to presumably one of their nearby green cabinets.

I recall from several years ago that the underground duct from the pole in my garden to their cabinet was blocked and a road closure was granted to investigate. Unfortunately Affinity water took advantage and dug a trench across the road to connect two new properties. This prevented BT from investigating the blockage that they had requested the road closure for! As far as I know that blockage is still there and may prevent a fibre being easily connected to the pole.

BT have now opened up the ability to order an FTTP solution on their website for our road and interestingly includes Cuckoo as one of the service providers to provide a full fibre broadband connection.Cuckoo currently manages my FTTP account originally installed by Swish!

That sounds like good news John. You now have two physically discrete FTTP networks available for your property.

If your property (and remainder of the street) will be served by overhead, then Openreach will mount Connectorised Block Terminals (CBT's) on the tops of the serving poles and the drop fibre cables for each respective property will connect directly into an allocated port on the CBT. The CBTs are pretty easy to recognise, once you've seen one before.

On the second point I think you meant to say Openreach (rather than BT) show Cuckoo as a service provider. Yes that is the case everywhere pretty much.

Edited by Pheasant (Fri 02-Oct-26 15:48:46)

You are correct - I did mean BT Openreach!

My property currently still has a BT copper cable directly to the pole in my garden which is currently disconnected.at my end. All other properties have a new fibre to their nearest BT pole. I think my pole is the only one owned by, and shared with, power distribution.

My current fibre connection takes a longer route to an external fibre termination point through an existing duct under the lawn. I do not think Openreach would use that route as it would be easier to run a fibre overhead directly into my loft space. it is a bungalow with the existing BT cable still there and with very easy access to the cupboard where my current ONT and router are.

I cannot see exactly what is installed on my pole - it is amongst trees. I do know there is no new fibre from the existing BT duct up the pole. They may have an alternative overhead route to the BT cabinet. I do know a neighbour opposite had a fibre installed about 4 years ago which was overhead to a different pole.so they may not need the existing duct.

In reply to a post by steelej02:

They may have an alternative overhead route to the BT cabinet. I do know a neighbour opposite had a fibre installed about 4 years ago which was overhead to a different pole.so they may not need the existing duct.

Fibre won’t go to the cabinet but it may share a duct route with the cabinet. The cabinet FTTC service and the FTTP service typically are both are fed from the same aggregation node that comes from the handover exchange.