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Hi
Does anyone know much about fibre broadband installs?
We are building a house at the moment. There was previously a house here, but it fell in to disrepair and had been vacant for about 10 years. The previous house did have a telephone, but so far we haven't found how it reached the house either in the ground (whilst digging foundations) or at high level (there is no obvious route given the layout)
We aren't bothered about a traditional telephone line, and want to have fibre from the begining.
The house is hidden behind some other houses within a town, with its own 30m driveway between the other houses. The majority of our services run under our driveway.
Openreach Fibre Checker shows "Build Planned between now and 2026" when I input our postcode.
There are a couple of local fibre companies that can offer it (Box Broadband and Hey Broadband), but one thing I don't quite understand is if I get them, then can the fibre line subsequently be used by other operators once the contact expires, or am I stuck with them forever after?
Do these companies (or Openreach) just install fibre to the plot boundary, or all the way in to the house?
If I was to lay some ductwork under the driveway, would that be useful to them? If so, what would be the ideal emergence point for the ducts and what would need to be at either end of it to allow them to tie in to their fibre network?
We don't expect to be moving in to the house and needing internet for at least another six months, but if any trench digging is needed then we would ideally do it in the next month or so whilst we have similar ground work taking place.
I've contacted some of the fibre companies, but it is difficult to get any information from them about the best way forward or a survey unless I sign a contract, which ideally don't want to do as we don't actually need any services for at least six months.
Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
We are just changing fibre provider. Our current provider UPP was subject to sanctions against its Russian owners and there was a forced sale to Virgin Media. Consequently we have chosen to exercise our right to break contract and go with Lightspeed who also serve my area.
Anyway to answer your question, Lightspeed are due to take over this Wednesday and last Friday they turned up and ran their own piece of fibre from the same telecoms manhole to the house. Apparently the two networks are separate so whilst they use the same tech they use their own cabling.
Ours all runs through ducting that was installed when the house was built in the late 1980s.
Laying the duct will be very useful, Openreach have guides https://www.openreach.com/building-developers-and-projects/fibre-for-developers/guides-and-handbooks
You need to check your property is registered with Openreach*, if there was a phone line there before then it probably is. Openreach duct can be used by most of the providers if they are using other openreach infrastructure in the street.
Duct to the edge of your property would be useful but you won't really know where to place it without a survey from them. You could run it to the of the drive and find that it needs another 100 metres of duct down the carriageway, or they may stick a pole at the end of your drive in which case you could have just let them take an overhead wire to the house in the first place.
*unless you want to use one of the other providers. I think cityfibre are the only other mainstream provider that offers their infrastructure on a wholesale basis to service providers.
You need to check your property is registered with Openreach
It comes up on the Openreach search, but the vague "build planned between now and 2026", we are probably unable to wait until then before sorting something out.
Duct to the edge of your property would be useful but you won’t really know where to place it without a survey from them. You could run it to the of the drive and find that it needs another 100 metres of duct down the carriageway, or they may stick a pole at the end of your drive in which case you could have just let them take an overhead wire to the house in the first place.
The end of the drive is about 3.5m width. There is then a short length of driveway of about 5m that is shared between us and one of the road facing neighbours, it then emerges on to a residential road. I could put a duct along the hedgerow that runs alongside our drive, but wouldn't want to dig in the shared bit.
Given the layout, I'm not sure if overhead cables would be possible without impacting trees with TPOs on them, or it running across a neighbours garden.
Thanks for the link @murray
am I stuck with them forever after?
this happens with Gigaclear; they do all their own installations, and as a result the list of alternative providers is very small.
So every 18 months i phone up and beg for a discount.
Their installation page should answer most of your questions though https://www.gigaclear.com/installation
I mean your specific address, for a basic line, not broadband. Choose a service provider and go through the motions of ordering a basic line to see if it knows your address. If it was a greenfield site and you built a house, you would need to register it before ordering a line.
Regarding the route, hopefully your deeds give you a right to run services along the shared section of drive, however overhead wires can (and more than often do) fly over a neighbours garden subject to minimum heights...without permission if access isn't needed. If there are poles in the street this would be openreach's preference. Trees are not normally a problem unless the trunk is directly in the way.
I would also do a check on city fibre to see if they plan to install in your neighbourhood. If they do then the fibre from them normally comes in from poles.