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  • Fibre broadband
  • 1
    cudubh
    Full Member

    I need some advice.  I live in a slightly rural part of central Scotland.  20 minutes out of Stirling so not exactly the middle of nowhere.  Until recently I was using EE 4G broadband but it was getting slower day by day so gave up on that.  Despite not wanting to I am now using Starlink which does what I need but is expensive.  Two weeks after getting it I spotted a man up a telegraph pole in the field behind the house so wandered over and sure enough he was from Openreach installing overhead fibre.  I had checked before getting Starlink and it looked like a year minimum before anything would happen.  It stopped at the pole in the middle of the field.  A few weeks later they were back and extended the overhead fibre but not to my house.  Where the original line stopped there is a branch to a neighbour.  The line stops at her house.  The line was extended to her house.  The main line serves my nearest neighbour and me.  The line to that neighbour was installed but not to me.  The distance is the same and we are both the respective ends, nothing further along the line for either.  The reason given for not doing is was that it was not economic.  It is the same distance to my nearest neighbour so that is BS.  It is the same cost for each property.  I have been told I can get a voucher under the R100 scheme but all I really want is common sense and someone to connect me in the same way as the neighbour.  I don’t think the line is live yet, there are connections to be made to the cabinet somewhere but it feels like I need to deal with this now or I will be stuck paying Elon a fortune indefinitely.

    2
    Cougar2
    Free Member

    Sadly, “common sense” and “Openreach” are rarely used in the same sentence without being accompanied by words such as “unlike.”

    A mate of mine had exactly this problem years back when “super fast” ADSL was being rolled out. His next door neighbour was eligible, he wasn’t because he was deemed to be too far from the exchange. By about eight inches. For a couple of years the two neighbours agreed to share the costs and strung a length of Cat5 between two bedroom windows.

    cudubh
    Full Member

    Sounds about right.  Common sense seems in short supply pretty much everywhere.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    You need to work out if it’s residential fibre or business.  If business, sometimes high ups get a connection funded for home working, the work is chargeable and could easily be well north of £10k, plus line rental of £10k a year or more!  And although the fibre is there that doesn’t mean FTTP is around the corner as all the exchange kit is completely different.

    If residential you should be able to see a CBT on the pole, although that’s not conclusive evidence as sometimes they still use them for business. (Image search (CBT Fibre).

    1
    Cougar2
    Free Member

    Playing devil’s advocate,

    If you exceed the specified transmission distance limit then there is a risk – albeit small – that they provision an out-of-spec line and it doesn’t work properly. So then you’re on their case complaining. Or it works and now your next-door neighbour on the other side is making the same argument, how come you get connected and they can’t?

    Back in my support days we used to see this with out-of-warranty failures. Something would die like 12 months and a week from purchase and whilst we felt for the customers we weren’t allowed to provide a FOC fix because where do you then draw the line? Say we offer a goodwill repair to someone a week out of warranty, what happens with the next caller who’s eight days out, or a fortnight, or a month? There has to be a hard line in the sand even if it’s “12 months and secretly up to another 14 days.” At some point there has to be a cut-off where we say no. Applying “common sense” here is simply introducing inconsistency.

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    Go Fibre are installing fibre in parts of our village.

    Sales rep approached me in the shop.

    Pity no one can sort out the 4G coverage.

    cudubh
    Full Member

    Spooky, the two other houses are retired folks so definitely not commercial at all.

    Cougar, it would be consistent with my luck to be half a bawhair beyond the distance.  I will keep going and see what I can do.

    Thanks folks.  At least I haven’t missed some really simple solution.

    guest1
    Free Member

    We have a similar situation here in our remote area, where open reach have installed several miles of new fibre cable and have connected 5 houses to their network (ours include).  At least 6 other houses are not being connected, despite the new fibre running close by (in 2 cases, the trench for the fibre cuts across the end of their property boundaries).

    Interestingly, all of us who were connected had all requested it several times through R100, our local councillors & MPs. The non connected households all want fibre, but haven’t ever officially requested it.

    Make it known that you want fibre installed!

    We were ‘too far from the exchange’ to get any standard broadband through a phone line so were reliant on a 4g router. We can now get up to 1000mbps (we chose to pay for approx 100mbps, which works really well).

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    I live in a small rural(ish) village, they installed fibre to the housing estate earlier this year. 3/4 of the estate can get fibre, the rest can’t, guess which I am in..

    1
    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Fill this out if you think you’ve been missed and the availability checker is incorrect. In the notes state the address of the neighbour that has got fibre.  Might be worth waiting until you know their new service is connected and fully working.

    Struggling to get a direct link to work strangely, 3rd attempt. Scroll to the FAQs and it’s about the 4th question…fibre checker is wrong.

    https://www.openreach.com/broadband-network/fibre-availability#accordion-00ebaa22dc-item-2f64a9c3ec

    1
    cudubh
    Full Member

    Spooky, thanks for your help.  I will give that a go.

    1
    prettygreenparrot
    Full Member

    There are these places called cities that have all the broadband you could want. Though you would have to trade rural idyll with biking out of the front gate for car-infested hellscape.

    Hope it works out and you get super fast rural broadband for cheaper than starlink asap.

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