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[spudgun]

Good afternoon everyone,

I live in an area that has appeared on the published Openreach information as being part of the FTTP rollout.

Over the last week or so a contractor (sadly, just a plain white van with no logo) has been opening the BT branded duct covers round by me and inserting blue or orange cord into them. They have also been leaving numbers in green pain on some of the duct covers (e.g. 234, 128) that don't seem to fit into any pattern that I can make sense of.

They did part of the road that I live on today and I was going to ask them when they were at the duct that is right outside my house, but they only did one side of the street and then cleared off.

Any of those 'in the know' that have any idea what this was all about, what the painted numbers might mean and why they didn't do all of the ducts?

Many thanks in advance

[Black Sheep]

Hardly anything to go on here at all, so can only ever be guess-work/speculation ??

OR contractors are usually liveried, but it's not unknown for a replacement unliveried vehicle to be used whilst the other van is undergoing maintenance, etc.

Conversely, it could be an Alt-Net taking advantage of the PIA offerings ??

[tiffy]

When my local area was "fibred" earlier this year by OR sub-contractors, all UG distribution, the footway chamber markings appeared to be a reference to the installed CBT (if that's the correct terminology) number of ports and the number of properties fed from the chamber.
In my case "X4/4" where a 4 port CBT was fitted and 4 properties would be fed from this chamber.

Possibly not a standard but peculiar to the OR sub-contractors in question, in my area, KN Circet?

Strangely enough my CBT is still "virginal", I'am waiting until end of FTTC contract with ZEN in December and my 3 neighbours are happy with their existing ADSL/VDSL service and reluctant to have their front gardens "ploughed" for fibre access, existing POTS cables are DIG.

[spudgun]

Hardly anything to go on here at all, so can only ever be guess-work/speculation ??

OR contractors are usually liveried, but it's not unknown for a replacement unliveried vehicle to be used whilst the other van is undergoing maintenance, etc.

Conversely, it could be an Alt-Net taking advantage of the PIA offerings ??

Thank you for having a go at the slim trail of breadcrumbs that I have to follow - i'll keep my eyes peeled locally to see if/when they appear to be working in the area next to see if I can get more details of who they are and what they are up to

[Black Sheep]

Thank you for having a go at the slim trail of breadcrumbs that I have to follow - i'll keep my eyes peeled locally to see if/when they appear to be working in the area next to see if I can get more details of who they are and what they are up to

Please do, and if you get any piccies to post up, we may be able to make some kind of sense of their 'code'. 

[kitz]

Over the last week or so a contractor (sadly, just a plain white van with no logo) has been opening the BT branded duct covers round by me and inserting blue or orange cord into them.

It was contractors who did the rod and roping around here.  I was told by the guys doing it that my house was the only one nearby where the duct was clear and they managed to pull the rope through.   The rod they used was orange and they left blue nylon rope in place up the the BT66.   I've checked a few neighbours houses and I they dont have rope in place.   

[spudgun]

Here are some pics from a bit of a walkaround yesterday

Pic 1 - in the main chamber by the FTTC cabinet (Huawei cab installed by BDUK funding April 2014) and associated telephone cab with G.Fast pod (added in approximately September 2018)

Approximate co-ordinates - 51.950418147036, -2.0730838519977617 - Street view image is from 2011 so you won't see the FTTC cab or G.Fast pod. The FTTC cab is on the grass opposite the telephone cab

Pic 2 - BT branded covers in pavement with green writing on

Pic 3 - More BT branded covers - from what I noticed yesterday, the numbers are sequential in the direction that the cable run probably goes in to the cabinet - however, not every cover has a painted number on as some are missed out. So i followed a route that had 205, 206, 207, 208 etc. yesterday. The entire area from these photos has their telephone supplied by underground ducts and was built in the early-mid 1990s, however, there are one or two older properties scattered around within a half mile radius that are served by overhead lines.

It is weird, however, that in every street the markings are only on one side of the covers on the pavement even though there are houses on both sides with covers outside. I know that there is BT equipment and joints in the side that doesn't have markings, however, as I've seen inside the BT branded cover that is outside my house (which is on the side of the road with no markings on) when I had an engineer visit to fix a fault a few years back. I can't find a picture of something similar, but inside the BT branded cover outside my house there are is fairly large cable which runs in to a black plastic housing that is about a foot long (iirc) that is shaped a bit like a bell jar and the cable also continues to the next cover a little further down the road.

There are also some covers with additional code next to the number - but as I am limited to 3 images per post that is coming up in the next post....

[spudgun]

Here is the final image with additional writing of some kind on the BT cover.

If you need large images to see this is higher res, please let me know and I'll add them to an image hosting site.

I doubt any of this will help too much, but I thought it might be interesting to document this in case anyone else sees strange markings appearing and wonders what they are

[Black Sheep]

Well, I have to say - I've not seen that kind of marking before or the sequential numbering ??

What follows is purely speculation, or best guess .... and even that might be wide of the mark ?? But, it could be the TRR gangs (Test Rod & Rope) in that particular area, favour giving a 'naming convention' (or numbering convention) to the chambers for their 'box-to-box' diagram they have to produce for each PON.

On the B2B diagram,  it will generally say 'roped' between box 1 & 2, box 2 & 3, box 3 & 4 etc etc ...... blockage between box 7 & 8 (with distance to blockage taken from both boxes). 

Or, as mooted earlier, it could very well be an Alt-Net utilising the PIA scheme to access OR duct space ??

I may have a look at the grid co-ords at some point if I get time, to see if it sheds any light.   

[burakkucat]

Approximate co-ordinates - 51.950418147036, -2.0730838519977617 - Street view image is from 2011 so you won't see the FTTC cab or G.Fast pod. The FTTC cab is on the grass opposite the telephone cab

I see Hayfield Way, Bishops Cleeve, Gloucestershire.

(Could they be the markings of an operative from the "doughnut", located in Cheltenham?    )

[niemand]

Haha no. If they wanted to do things on Openreach's plant they'd have Openreach do it.

[spudgun]

Well, I have to say - I've not seen that kind of marking before or the sequential numbering ??

What follows is purely speculation, or best guess .... and even that might be wide of the mark ?? But, it could be the TRR gangs (Test Rod & Rope) in that particular area, favour giving a 'naming convention' (or numbering convention) to the chambers for their 'box-to-box' diagram they have to produce for each PON.

On the B2B diagram,  it will generally say 'roped' between box 1 & 2, box 2 & 3, box 3 & 4 etc etc ...... blockage between box 7 & 8 (with distance to blockage taken from both boxes). 

Or, as mooted earlier, it could very well be an Alt-Net utilising the PIA scheme to access OR duct space ??

I may have a look at the grid co-ords at some point if I get time, to see if it sheds any light.   

Thank you for your thoughts, i'll be interested in anything that you can see on databases that aren't available to Joe Public.

I'll keep an eye out tomorrow when I take the dog out to see if I can see anyone 'in action' so to speak.

It does seem odd that in all 14 of the roads I've seen with the markings that they are only on 1 side of the street. Pic 6 below is taken from street view for one of the streets (just round the corner from the cabinet in the earlier post)  and shows that there are properties and BT covers on both sides of the street, but the markings are only on the left hand side from the perspective of the photo.

Hopefully I'll add some more detail over the next few days, if I can see anything else or if I can find some chatty contractors :-)

[niemand]

So this may also be a third party using PIA to get to a new build development or a business.

In fact the more you say the more I'm thinking that's how it is. If they're going in a direct line to somewhere it could be OFNL or some other operator using Openreach ducts to reach a new build FTTP site.

[spudgun]

So this may also be a third party using PIA to get to a new build development or a business.

In fact the more you say the more I'm thinking that's how it is. If they're going in a direct line to somewhere it could be OFNL or some other operator using Openreach ducts to reach a new build FTTP site.

That's an interesting idea, but it doesn't quite fit with the local geography and numbering system. The numbers and activity that i've seen so far are spread across about half a square mile and run from the cabinets in to various cul de sacs where there is no room for any further development. The areas concerned were on the edge of a village in the mid 90s (weird to think this is a village when 18,000 people live here!), but in the last 20 years the boundary of the village is well past these locations and the new developments all have/had either FTTP (although I'm not 100% on that) or Virgin Media built in by the developers and there are no new developments anywhere near these locations as all of the land is already used up and has houses on.

I'll spread my net more widely over the coming days and see if these numbers appear in the streets around where BDUK put FTTC cabs in 2014 and a little further afield where Virgin's footprint is - I'm sure the dog will appreciate going on some new routes :-)

[Black Sheep]

Just had a quick glance at this - the only PON's built thus far off your Exchange are 'new sites' or 'retro new-sites'.

The duct and joint-boxes around that particular area you mention, are for the most part just on one side of the pavements. There's a few that do have more on the other side, such as Nortenham, Haylea and the bottom end of Cornfields.

As for the markings, I'm none the wiser. I mentioned PIA on my first reply to you on this thread and I'm guessing this is what it may be - easy, quick wins for any communications provider. Is there no way of checking with your local Council to get a definite answer ??