We have a new connection on order for a new build house. We were hoping to talk to the engineer when they made their first inspection, but didn’t see them. There are two poles near the house and assume the line will be taken to the nearest corner of the house. This is where the problem lies….. We want the primary line in/box to be in a room on the opposite side of the house and don’t want cable pinned all around the house (dog’s dinner last time they did this) or lots of drilling inside the newly plastered house. The builder can fit all ducting/routing etc if they only knew where the line arrived. Unfortunately BT can’t tell us this, in spite of many calls/chats.
Question – are we allowed to run the connection underground through ducts or do BT/Openreach insist on external routing?

Can’t help directly but they’re now two totally distinct companies and are now operating as such so I doubt you’ll get much joy with BT.

Run two lots of ducting. One to each likely corner.

After another hour on the phone, I think you’re right perchy. Can anyone confirm that they’ll be happy to use our ducting?

Yes.
And yes. If the cable only serves your property the duct is effectively yours with its provided by openeeach or another provider.

Thinking back to when I worked on new build houses, we used to install a 25mm conduit (with a draw wire in it) for the BT point in the house, this generally went either up into the attic or out to the service duct in the stairwell. HTH

Can’t help directly but they’re now two totally distinct companies and are now operating as such so I doubt you’ll get much joy with BT.

Yes and no (legal separation of Openreach from the BT group has been mandated by Ofcom but hasn’t happened yet. However, Openreach has to operate separately from all other parts pf the BT group*).

Back on topic…

As an end user, Openreach isn’t designed to work for you. Openreach’s customers are the telcos who sell you your phone/broadband services.

Unfortunately BT can’t tell us this, in spite of many calls/chats.

So…knowing that Openreach are separate from BT retail, have you opened an account with BT to sell you phone/broadband? If not, have you opened an account with another telco/ISP (e.g. Sky, TalkTalk, etc.)?

Your telco/ISP will then ask Openreach to provide a new line. How Openreach do this (including which pole the line comes from) will be down to them (though there are rules they have to follow).

The only way to get Openreach to do the job you’re asking for is to be there when the engineers arrive to do the job. Determining when they’ll arrive is the hard bit..!

[Obviously this doesn’t apply to Virgin or other niche providers who don’t use the Openreach network to deliver their service.]

*In practice it doesn’t work, hence the formal separation.

If there is line of sight from the rear corner of the house to the pole, and the span is less than 68 metres, the engineer may be able to run the dropwire direct to a rear corner of the house. I know I’d rather do that than pin loads of dropwire around the house off a 3 section ladder. The only reason an engineer would avoid that is if the dropwire will be too low across a road or driveway, or it is likely to result in a complaint from a neighbour (we have ‘flying rights’ to erect a dropwire above someone elses garden, but you would obviously avoid it if its going to pass close to their windows etc)

If thats no good, choose a discrete location for the socket at the front of the house, get the socket fitted and then extend the service using Cat5 cable via your preferred route/builders conduit. You could even ask for the socket to be upstairs where the dropwire is likely to get to the house, and run your extension through the loft and down with your aerial/satellite cable.

Also depends on whether it’s actually a BT engineer who turns up to do the connection or one of there subbies.

I don’t know where the BT engineers stand but I’m pretty certain if you offer to buy the subbies dinner/stand them a few pints in the pub :wink:they will be more agreeable to doing what you want.

Openreach? No matter what you want them to do they’ll f*ck it up. That’s my experience of them.

The sub contractors are paid per job and will look to do a easiest/quickest job, sometimes if its too involved they will kick job back to O/R .Can builder run a cable into loft, then run internal wiring from that point?.If overhead feed you are going to have some cable visable.
Underground to property is neater, but can cost, ducting aint cheap, when on public highway to feed from nearest u/g accses point

I’d like to hijack this thread.

My parents live in a rural location and have painfully slow broadband. There is now a bundle of 24 fibre optic cables, all of which apart from 4 are redundant, going right past their house and the houses of six neighbours all with the same terrible broadband to a 4g phone mast. The sub sub sub contractors fitting the cable said they would be able to utilise one of the spare cables for broadband provision, however phoning their ISP BT has achieved nothing as they don’t understand the situation or the questions.

Any ideas? A green box is all is needed apparently….

Thanks all. Order placed with BT for BBand. O/R engineer has been but we missed him and can’t find out what he/she decided. If we are responsible for the line once it enters the duct (as suggested by ourmanin….), then we’ll just take it through the house.

You are only responsible for any wiring after the socket. Its down to the engineer to decide if what you’ve provided is appropriate to run the Openreach cable through. For example, they are not meant to run more than 3 (or 5) metres of external cable into the house (or duct under the floor etc) as they have to use an internal cable that does not cause lots of smoke in a fire. Also, its very unlikely that you will find an engineer is happy to spend 90 minutes trying to push a tangle of overhead dropwire through a duct…if you are there to help and have put a pull cord in the duct, your chances improve 🙂 I did this for a Sky engineer, however, whilst I was running the coax under the floor, he stuck the dish so low over my door you almost had to duct under the damn thing 🙄

Bigjim, sounds simple but there is a lot more to it than that. First, find out if FTTP/Infinity is planned for your area. Register interest regardless on the Openreach site. Then the cab will need planning permission, civils work for the cab, plinth and ducts, a suitable power supply from existing infrastructure, a rather expensive cab full of electronics, another expensive cabinet of electronics in the exchange, fibre and copper jointing works, and then you might be able to place an order!