I know you know, but all indications are that this was an OR subcontractor - no names - who are neither paid nor incentivised to complete anything other than the most dead simple and straightforward jobs.

Otherwise they just lose money for their employer and do themselves no favours. This is what pay by the job gets you. So these jobs will get eventually reassigned to actual employed in-house OR engineers. Who as we hopefully know are far more patient, considered, professional and well just capable.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I know you know, but all indications are that this was an OR subcontractor - no names - who are neither paid nor incentivised to complete anything other than the most dead simple and straightforward jobs.

Otherwise they just lose money for their employer and do themselves no favours. This is what pay by the job gets you. So these jobs will get eventually reassigned to actual employed in-house OR engineers. Who as we hopefully know are far more patient, considered, professional and well just capable.

Agree subbies are typically not good but there is some responsibility on the customer not to scare the subcontractor off or give them a get out of jail card. I don't think I would have called the ISP afterwards and cancelled the job, I think I would have enlightened the ISP about the engineers attitude and asked the ISP to get an Openreach engineer on the next visit.

Not many, most issues where due to customers having unreasonable demands as to location, or how cables were run.
More often than not, you could reach some compromise.

The OP appeared just to not have it installed no matter what . For reasons I cannot fathom.

We are only getting one side of the story. In my view, an easy pull through and simple siting, subby would have been all over it like a set of badly fitting overalls. That the subby scarpered without cashing out with an external splice point and a kickback to Openreach suggests to me that it wasn't that straightforward.

Edited by FibreBubble (Fri 28-Aug-26 21:39:18)

In reply to a post by sadguy:

Thanks again for your replys. The two satellite cables enter the house via the side of the bay window.itself. The window is not disturbed, just the brickwork immediately adjacent.

could we have a picture of said area. It may help in helping you.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

We are only getting one side of the story. In my view, an easy pull through and simple siting, subby would have been all over it like a set of badly fitting overalls. That the subby scarpered without cashing out with an external splice point and a kickback to Openreach suggests to me that it wasn't that straightforward.

I just rechecked what the OP has said about the window, because i was worried he wanted it to go thru an existing hole that is in the a upvc frame - but hes sayings thru brick work.


the most damage we have seen an OR contractor do is blow brick out. And we have to remember that this is a single hole

Personally I would make a fresh start and I would ignore my dissatisfaction with the existing/redundant cables, (which you can then either live with as you do now or you can remove or can have them removed at a later date to suit you).

I would treat this new FTTP installation as a fresh start but you do have a few constraints and the first limitation is the way in which the new FTTP cable travels down the street to get to your house.

You indicated that you have telegraph poles and then you said you do not want your path or garden disturbed but unless you have underground ducting in your area, (which is what we have to our home - we do not have or want any telegraph poles), the grounds around your home would not need to be disturbed because the cable will probably run from the same telegraph pole to the same location/bracket on your house that the existing ADSL cable already runs to. - (If it had needed to run via the garden it would not have been a did deal as gardens/grass soon recovers).

From that bracket location you then have a few decisions to make.

(1). How do you want the fibre cable to move around the outside wall of your house?

(2). Where do you want the fibre cable to enter your house?

Personally, (if you do not want to have a new electrical socket installed), I would choose a location on the exterior wall of the house where an electrical socket already exists inside of the house and that would be the location that the new ONT is installed near to the existing electrical socket. - A new hole could be drilled through the wall near to the existing electrical socket. - A junction box/slice box would be fitted on the outside wall to cover the new hole and the new FTTP cable could be run externally from the cable bracket to the new junction boxed, sliced and then enter the house to feed the new ONT.

The new router would them be sited next to this new ONT and would just connect via WIFI until when/if you use ethernet cables.

You can then, if you wish to keep to, your existing ADSL contract running until it ends and use FTTP at the same time or you may have decided to just change over to FTTP immediately and no longer bother using ADSL.

I can see plusnet terminating your contract at the end of the 3 month period leaving you with no internet at all

OFCOM are currently removing the maximum costs openreach can charge for legacy products especially where FTTP is available
Openreach are also giving ISP BIG discounts to get them to move their customers to a FTTP product
Its not just a case of paying double or triple for sogea ofcom wont let them and I doubt plusnet will let you keep a service they need to contribute to the cost of supplying.

Pull the satellite cable out yourself I am sure they would then use that socket.

On the subcontractor openreach are currently moving to an outsourcing model and making many of their engineers redundant MJ Quinn are the major contractor for them so dont be surprised if they turn up to do the install.

PM me which area you live if you want further info.

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

OFCOM are currently removing the maximum costs openreach can charge for legacy products especially where FTTP is available

Some additional context for the OP - this recent change to the rules which means that Openreach have to reach 90% of FTTP coverage (rather than 100%) of the exchange area, before price controls on copper products can be removed, doesn’t come into effect until April 2029. It’s discussed in this thread and the full announcement with all the details is here.

Edited by Pheasant (Fri 11-Sep-26 07:10:45)

On the subcontractor openreach are currently moving to an outsourcing model and making many of their engineers redundant

(my bold)

That might be ‘making good copy’ … but is wholly untrue.
What Openreach are doing is offering Early Voluntary Redundancy packages to those who wish to take them.