Hey guys, could anyone offer advice:

I have a phone pole right outside my house and a guy was installing fibre to the pole today and live next week.

What is the cheapest or easiest way to get fibre from pole to socket in the house?

It’s under a meter to the property and/or I have dug a duct for the line in the drive.

Thoughts or helpful advice appreciated.

Ells x

Cheapest way is proably to hang the fibre on a catenary wire between the pole and your house – as they do with phone lines etc. That’s what City Fibre are doing around here.

I can put the cable in the ground and just leave open reach to connect near the pole?

Cost wise, am I going to get my pants pulled down for this?

Is this an Openreach install.? If so then you just need to apply for it and they will come and string a fibre cable from the pole to the house, there’s a grey box goes outside the house and the ONT connection goes inside.

Unless it’s some fly-by-night crew doing the rollout you shouldn’t be paying anything other than the standard install fee.?!?!

Or am I misunderstanding the question?

You need to ask your provider who will get Open Reach to connect you up. I suspect they will use whatever standard method is available / permitted.

Is this an Openreach install.?

Good Q. OR don’t have fibre to the poles in Cambridge, but CityFibre do. They resell via Vodafone.

Likely!

Our fibre install is all pole based but I’m way out in the sticks..  There’s a Fibre node on a pole about 3m from my house and they ran a cable from there to the corner of the house at the roofline and then down the wall from there to the box.

Openreach are using poles up here too.

Just had our install FTTP done, cost £30 when we signed a new contract with Zen Internet.

Took 2 vans, 1 with a hoist and most of the day to do, so I reckon we got excellent VFM there.

Can you request the cable to be in the ground if I dig it or can I simply do that at a later date.
There are others in the road and we wanted to get the lines to the houses put in the pavement or in through the gardens. Disc cutters down the edge of pavement and then backfill is the modern way but insure on cost?

Is it possible to come onto my property and then down over the other properties to save cash and have a clean over head free conne tiin to the other properties as well?

A friend (used to be on here as PiB) moved to a village recently and was having problems with broadband. BT came out a few times to sort the problem, sending 2 blokes each time. When Pete asked why 2 blokes they told him that it was on the system that the owner (previous!) was a bit of a nasty customer and the records hadn’t been updated.

Just had our install FTTP done, cost £30 when we signed a new contract with Zen Internet.

Took 2 vans, 1 with a hoist and most of the day to do, so I reckon we got excellent VFM there.

This for me also although it only(?) took them 3 hours or so. There was a surprising amount of work however I have been mighty impressed with the actual connection. Been faultless and very fast…

Note this is not something you can DIY. FTTP has to be properly installed, you can’t just lob a cable out and ask someone to tie onto it…

Note this is not something you can DIY. FTTP has to be properly installed, you can’t just lob a cable out and ask someone to tie onto it…

This!
OP it’s not an easy task obvs requiring you to take out a special contract for FTTP supply – you can’t just change the connection.
And I’d be very wary about having other peoples fibre coming across your property.

If it’s Openreach fibre, the website has info of the CPs that offer fibre broadband. If it’s an alternative supplier renting space on the pole, you’d have probably been leafleted or Facebook spammed to let you know who the supplier is.

Either way, if it’s pole mounted fibre ports, it might not be possible to feed you and your neighbours underground as for that you would have fibre ports in a footway chamber.

If your neighbours want UG feeds across your property, you will need to sign a legal wayleave to ensure there is a future right of access to maintain it.

PS Although the engineers told you it will be ready next week, they may not have the full picture, the main network cables could be waiting for digs or traffic management and that can take months.

You won’t be able to do anything yourself. The fibre install is very specialist and the fibre cable is quite fragile so Openreach won’t let anyone else touch it.

From the sounds of your setup I doubt Openreach would run the cable underground from the pole, as was mentioned above this requires a different type of node and would be put underground at an access hatch.

PS Although the engineers told you it will be ready next week, they may not have the full picture, the main network cables could be waiting for digs or traffic management and that can take months.

This was my experience as well, even having spent many hours chatting with the Fibre team Project Manager and having a direct line to him to facilitate installs in the area it was still a couple of months between the fibre being strung up to all the endpoint poles and it actually being available to order.

the fibre cable is quite fragile

Yes and no…

When in a cable, it can be pretty strong in tension, I used a length of fibre jumper cable as a pull start cord for my large compressor (generator) for several years…it was only meant to be a desperate bodge to get the thing started one day but lasted better than the rope they normally use! I just knotted the ends and it was also too short so it would snatch out of your hands at the end of the pull 🙂