Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mikeh]

I live in a rural area, my property is the only one down my lane located on the other side of a rail level crossing which is 600 meters from main village road. My landline is 1.8km from the fibre cabinet and is underground most of the 600 meters until it traverses the rail line by tall poles and then drops to the property.

I am currently getting 20mb down and 1mb up which is fine for what I need. However today there were some contractors working near the pole at the start of my lane and near the farthest rail crossing pole. I asked the boss what was happening and he told me they were laying fibre underground to the pole at the rail crossing. It is being laid directly underground, there is no ducting to my property. I saw two new BT ground boxes, one at the pole at the village road junction and one near the pole on the far side of the level crossing.

My questions are these, I presume this means there will be fibre to the pole but I've never requested this, what will be the monthly cost and why would BT go to all this expense. I don't mind paying more for a better service but not lots more. I'm not complaining I feel very privileged to have this upgrade I'm just very surprised. 

[j0hn]

There is no such service as Fibre to the Pole.
The fibre cannot terminate there and then go along your copper wires.
That would need a DSLAM on the Telegraph pole (which is FTTdp) but OpenReach do not use this method of deployment at present.

 If they were running fibre up that pole then it is going to somewhere else.
It could be going to an FTTC cabinet nearby or to some local properties.
It could also be going all the way to your property (theoretically at least).

The Telegraph pole is almost certainly not where the fibre terminates.

[mikeh]

Hi again I won't speculate about what might be happening with the current activity down my lane, all I will do is give you some facts.

The landline to my property is the only one down the lane. There is only one other property on this lane about mile further away and their line comes via another road intersection. This is all farmland with just the other property and putting fibre down the lane is going away from the village.

The contractors were working down my lane today. They installed a ground box next to the rail crossing pole near my property then installed 3 more at intervals back along the lane.

In late Autumn last year I saw an Openreach van parked near the property and he was looking around. I did ask him what was doing and he said he was here to do a survey concerning laying fibre down the lane to my property, he said I will benefit with a lot better speeds. Like you I was very skeptical and now all this work is going on. As yet nobody has contacted me about this work. Wait and see!   

[renluop]

may be a silly thought, but might roadworks.org give some leads (no pun) as to who and why?

[Ronski]

Was that back along the lane towards the village, or towards you're property?

It does sound promising  , but could it be for mobile communications, or something for trains?

[mikeh]

The lane is a right turn off the road that leads to the village so it is going away from the village. There is a rail station in the vilage so a more obvious choice for any rail internet.

I don’t know why BT would sanction all this work, it maybe a trail. There is still the km back to the cab to do. It maybe sometime before all is explained.

[j0hn]

Can you visit here:

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/index.do

Enter your address and post the results.

[Weaver]

Maybe the guy was speculating, putting two and two together to make five. One BT chap told my wife a strange and garbled (although this was not told to me directly, so watch out) story about high speed internet here and it may have involved a mention of boxes attached to poles. I don't have any poles on the main run, just two for the drop cable, to get the lines up and over the road. Anyway I was surprised that the chap didn't seem particularly well informed about future developments, which was unfortunate.

[mikeh]

The checker for the exchange list FTTC/P & FOD.  When there is any definite information I will let you know.

[mikeh]

You may be interested in what has been happening since my last post, well quite a lot actually.

Two weeks after the initial work a fibre junction box was attached to the top of the pole that supplies my house along with a coil of fibre which is still there today. Then work started on the village poles with rodding of the underground ducts and more of these boxes and coils on some of the village poles. This work has been has been happening sporadically over the past weeks.

Today work was happening  on my lane again, I believe they were feeding cable down the underground outer ducting they laid in that first week. They also measured the span across the rail crossing and have left a coil of fibre on the far pole for it to be fixed later. I still have no official information.