Over the year’s ISPreview has seen a few cases of wonky UK home broadband installations. The latest example comes courtesy of F&W Networks and supporting ISP Hey! Broadband, which post-install informed one of their customers that they “do not bury ducts, you will need to bury them yourself” (i.e. leaving fibre exposed across a front lawn).
According to the most recent update, F&WN, which is being backed by investment from Maestro Capital and Foresight Group LLP, has so far managed to extend their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 360,000 UK premises (up from 250k in Feb 2023). But we must stress that most of their customer installations have been much more professional than today’s example.
The situation first came to our attention during the week after one of our forum members, David, posted (here) about his rather unusual experience of getting the new service installed. The service itself had already taken the best part of two and a half months to arrive, which is a whole other story that we won’t unpack today, but suffice to say that there was one final bump as the finish line was crossed.
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In short, the provider’s engineers turned up, did the installation and then left. All of which sounds fine, except for one slight irritation. “They left me with a wonderful plastic tube running down the front garden and over the paving around the front of the house post-install, which I thought was a simple error that they had made by forgetting to bury it,” said David.
Upon querying this, Hey! appeared to positively acknowledge David’s request for the cable to be buried and said they’d respond to him soon. But when the response came, David was surprised to be told: “We do not bury ducts, you will need to bury them yourself,” which he promptly did – during a 30c heatwave (although some duct is still running across the paving outside the house). A second communication confirmed this stance.
Over the years we have occasionally seen network operators, or at least third-party contractors working for such operators, conduct shoddy installations that result in fibre ducts (cables) being left exposed over the top of lawns, through bushes and alongside fences etc. Virgin Media has come up a few times for doing something similar.
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However, generally speaking the approach, which F&W / Hey! appears to be suggesting is acceptable above, is by no means a standard practice or even recommendable. Leaving a cable, whether in semi-protected ducting or not, exposed across a lawn creates a variety of safety (trip hazard etc.) and other risks (lawn mowing, exposure to wildlife and drunken teenagers etc.). In addition, not everybody is healthy or able-bodied enough to do such work, while the risk of network damage increases when left up to regular Joe’s.
Operators will normally dig any cables for the final drop into homes underground or, when deployed from a pole, run it overhead. In addition, we could find no clearly communicated references to this policy on either F&W or Hey!’s respective websites, and it’s definitely a catch that consumers MUST be made fully aware of BEFORE they part with any money. Naturally, we put these concerns to F&W.
A Spokesperson for F&W told ISPreview:
“As per our installations team, we would normally go down the side of the lawn, but it’s not normal practice for us to leave bare fibre as the external duct rated fibre cable is encased in an external duct.
In saying that, we have also experienced many customers not wanting F&W to dig on their land hence why we advise customers if they want to bury, they are able to do it themselves.”
Just to be clear, there can indeed be situations where an end-user may optionally choose to handle the final drop themselves, which is something that can be discussed with your operator beforehand (they may or may not agree). But in this case, the customer was not expecting the outcome they got and hadn’t requested it.
Furthermore, the operator didn’t leave “bare fibre“, it was put through a duct, which they then laid on top of the grass (and paving) and left. F&W have since informed us that they’re now “working with the customer to find a solution“, although David hasn’t heard from them again and such discussions may be somewhat academic, given that David has already completed the installation.. himself.
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The key lesson for consumers in all this is to discuss with the operator or engineers, either beforehand or on the day they arrive, precisely what they’re going to do and how they plan to secure the cables. This way there should be no surprises. The engineers will probably do this with you anyway, but it’s always wise to double-check.
Otherwise, the unusual situation, which hopefully won’t be repeated, follows only a week or so after F&WN confirmed that they were having to respond to a difficult climate by scaling-back some of their build plans and notifying some staff members of future redundancies (here).
UPDATE 9th October 2023 @ 6pm:
F&W have now offered to complete the remedial works as a gesture of goodwill. According to David, the reason they gave for not burying any ducting was that it’s an extra cost that would be passed onto consumers, so it’s expressed as a cost saving measure both for the business and the customer.
Hey! offer a “bespoke installation” service for a charge of £80, which may or may not cover this sort of thing. But David was never offered this, or any other options, and the lapse in effective communication is really where problems like this one arise. The pressure on operators to be aggressively competitive on price is another issue (sometimes you can cut too many corners).
Thanks for publicising this one Mark. Maybe Hey will decide they want to bury the cable under the paving at the front of my house after this, who knows.
I suppose it shows how desperate some people are for a FTTP connection that they’d put up with such a poor and unprofessional service. If Hey! and F&W Networks really believe this is in any way acceptable, imagine the skill and competence with which they conduct the rest of their business.
If I were you I would cancel your direct debit immediately. Do not tolerate nonsense like this.
@Bob
The problem with this idea is that it could negatively affect their credit rating, the debt gets sent to collections, etc. Potentially causing more issues e.g. struggle to get a new ISP.
I would at least wait and see how they react to this public humiliation.
You need compensating for the work you had to do burying it under your lawn.
As others have said don’t tolerate this for one second, you should have contacted the HSE to be fair but I’ve also conducted my own civils work on my property in the past to route Virgin Media’s cables.
I won’t do that again, not without billing them anyway.
Hey! What’s wrong with you?
You’re looking kinda down to me
‘Cause things ain’t getting over
Listen to what I say
Got to turn around
Got to turn around (and bury that cable)
When I moved in, found that previous renter had Virgin. Mormons , Virgin engineers, installed cable over garden grass, then around all bungalow to front of house. Cut BT cable to connect their cable… ..
Trouble is the way these so called engineers are trained and paid. They are given the bare minimum of training and are paid a fixed rate per job so they do the bare minimum they can get get away with. The staff turnover in these companies is horrendous. The engineer for the contractor who did my Openreach installation had a few months earlier been working in an office at Honda Swindon. He wanted to cable tie the drop cable to the back of the drain pipe. I insisted it was clipped to the wall. My best advice is watch them like a hawk when installing and don’t be afraid to intervene as necessary.
To be fair, this does vary a lot between operators. But many of the operators I’ve seen do ensure that their installation engineers know how to do the customer side properly. I’d also expect to be seeing a lot more complaints about this side if that wasn’t the case and review scores would be widely negative.
Attaching the cable to the rear of a drain pipe is incredibly common and can result int he cable being far less visible.
Nothing wrong with it
When my parents had VM installed, we made sure to get them to send someone out before any work was done, to see if they would install it the way we wanted and he made notes.
Good thing we did this because one morning they woke up to find some people installing the outside cabling in preparation for the VM engineer coming some days later. The install they did was more or less following our instructions.
When the work you can see is so poor, you can imagine the standard of install they do and what they are treading on in the chambers.
Installs can be fickle.
We found out that our cable connection was being shared with our neighbour, not acceptable as each serviced house should have their own drop connection. A repull and full reinstall was subsequently done.
As there is a chamber outside our house, virgin contractors – decided to run a full buried duct connection from said chamber to the house, via the driveway, not stopping at the property boundary.
The duct, was fully buried and made good, with asphalt and aggregrate, in comparison, to the previous connection which had a t-connection at the boundary and an overground pull through where it termined at the omni box.
The distance between the boundary and house is a to 10 metres, as the property is offset from the public highway.
Can’t complain at the install as its fully covered and can’t be damaged or tampered with.
Poor show from Hey! Broadband but if it was my only fiber option I’d be out with my spade.
Exactly. Meanwhile, openreach dug a trench and put in a new duct for my fibre install and only after it reached their existing manhole, changed their mind about installation and now can’t provide. This is after 6 months of faff. If I could go elsewhere to an altnet and do my own work, I would. BT OR are useless. Unfortunately that’s not an option for me, so 5G FWA it is for me.
FTToD in another form.
Fibre To Terminal Over Daffodils.
Nice 😀
Lmao
Mayaswell resort to pigeon internet at that point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
This appears to be standard practice for them, argument being that the fibre is not exposed as it is in duct (??!)
Plastic flexi ducting isn’t really suitable for burial regardless, a shovel would go straight through it.
Trouble is there doesn’t appear to be any regulations (unlike gas and electricity) as to what depth fibre optic cables need to be buried. From what I’ve seen even the street ducts appear to be very close to the surface and 1 spade from disaster.
I know for a fact on my street the virgin media isn’t 5 inches under the pavement with just some tarmac chucked on top of it. Its high time OFCOM had some legislation on cable installs on streets and in peoples gardens.
Fibre depth under pavements and roads is regulated under the same rules governing depth of the other utilities.
There’s NJUG codes of practice for the minimum depth utilities have to be buried at, and even the distance apart and from the kerb, but of themselves they don’t carry force of law. For gas and electricity HSE can use non-compliance as evidence of failure to protect employees and the public, so that means there is in effect a law on the minimum depth for those.
For cable TV/comms, the recommended depth is minimum 250mm in tarmaced footway, for telecommunications it’s minimum 350mm. The NJUG recommendation for all types of comms lines is a minimum of 350mm for all land not open to vehicle traffic (public or private), so if F&W could read NJUG guidance, they’d realise that laying a bit of cheap crappy conduit across somebody’s lawn is not compliant with normal practice, and it should be buried at least 350mm (say 14 inches) deep.
This was indeed an intriguing article, Mark. I’d like to share my personal experience with both F&W and HeyBroadband, as I embarked on this journey approximately 1½ years ago. Throughout this period, I’ve encountered both positive and negative aspects related to their services and installations.
It’s crucial to emphasise that a substantial portion of the installations is performed by third-party contractors who are not directly employed by HeyBroadband. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that some of these third-party contractors may not receive sufficient training and support to carry out installations professionally, leading to suboptimal cable installations. In fact, a few of them might simply be individuals with “Man With Van” who have been subcontracted by these third-party companies to handle cable installations.
My journey with HeyBroadband began in February 2023 when I signed up for their services in the High Wycombe area. I was particularly eager to access Fiber, and I had even considered FTTPoD before moving into my current residence. However, the cost proved to be astronomical, at £14,000. So, when HeyBroadband arrived, I was thrilled.
In my case, they utilised “BT” ducting to deliver the cable to my house. Therefore, I was quite surprised to see the pictures of and the commentary on the poor quality of some installations. I guess my question to David is, when you speak to them, see if you can convince them to use the BT ducting to feed the cable to your property.
Having said that, HeyBroadband contractors dedicated a substantial half-day at my property to ensure the fibre installation met my specific requirements, which was under the stairs. They accomplished this by drilling a hole and threading the fibre cable through the downstairs toilet, past the stairs, and ultimately under the stairs. While there were some imperfections in the process, the overall installation can be considered decent, and I would rate it as a 3 out of 5. Additionally, they unintentionally damaged a toilet roll holder during the installation, but they promptly compensated me for the damage.
In terms of service performance, it generally met my expectations. However, there were some peculiarities. For instance, when I ran several speed tests, they didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, they rely on the router’s built-in speed test, which consistently indicates that their service meets the expected speeds (I’d like to note that my speed tests were conducted with a Cat6 cable directly connected to the router).
One notable area of concern is their customer support. I encountered a routing issue that took them a staggering four weeks to resolve. What’s more, they had fixed the issue before even informing me. Furthermore, their support operates only from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, which means that if your service encounters problems in the evening, such as at 19:00, you won’t have anyone to speak to until the following day. They also lack emergency contact details.
In summary, despite experiencing slightly slower speeds (700Mbit instead of the promised 1Gig), I find HeyBroadband to be a better option compared to Openreach. In general, it has worked 98% of the time with far better speed i would have got from any Openreach solution.
> I guess my question to David is, when you speak to them, see if you can convince them to use the BT ducting to feed the cable to your property.
Our BT duct has been smashed in completely since the house was built in the 70s, sadly. Their original plan was to use this, but evidently the couldn’t.
So basically “hey! broadband” is subcontracting out the cabling work to the lowest bidder. Just like everything else in modern Britain it just goes to show how awesome capitalism is!
If the house was built in the 70s then it’s more than likely there is no duct. An armoured cable is t’eed off from a main feed running down the footpath and brought directly into the property.
Who a supplier you contract with uses to provide service to you, and their contractual relationship with their subbies, is utterly irrelevant. They have a duty, themselves, to you to ensure all works meet the relevant laws and regulations. They need to have appropriate measures in place, by employment contract or contract for supply, to ensure anyone working on their behalf does so.
Meanwhile, in the real world…….
Your front lawn is supposed to be a place of beauty, not a utility cupboard. This is unacceptable
Nothing but good things bout KN Circet here in N.Ireland, very tidy job on a DIG FTTP install.
No different to Jurassic Fibre (RIP) chucking fibre in a gutter as that’ll do.
How much slack is there in the cable ? eg for wall cables eg electric there are zones where you
are expected to run. Never buried diagonally. Needs to be able to run along the fence, even if visible, for a start.
Let’s call it for what it is. Cowboy installation. Doesn’t matter if contractors are used by the company, the internet company is responsible.
Thankfully I have decently fast 5g mobile internet at home
I wonder if the emphasis on a free connection isn’t helping here. Charge the costs of the installation to the customer and avoid needing to lock them into a 24-month contract, and then both sides know where they stand – the customer won’t accept shoddy work as it wasn’t ‘free’, and the provider knows that they need to provide something equal to the value of the installation charge. It also gives customers a number to ask for as a refund if the installation is substandard.
Openreach are laying off Fibre accredited engineers now. Installs slowing and almost zero services, looks like diminishing returns.
Hey!Broadband don’t use Openreach.
No, but the same industry “headwinds” are affecting Openreach too.
The next 12 months are going to be “interesting”
Dear David, I’m deeply sorry to hear about the issues with BT ducting and the poor installation. I hope that Hey do get on and sort this out for you as many other ppl have pointed out, this is just not acceptable.
In my humble opinion, this situation highlights a significant challenge in the UK. In my view, fibre optic infrastructure is similar to any other critical infrastructure projects that require effective government management, free from corruption. Ideally, the government should have taken the lead in the rollout of fibre, treating it as they do with roads and transportation infrastructure. However, what we have instead is a multitude of companies engaged in excavation and competing to install fibre in some areas while leaving others without any providers.
This situation also reflects a lack of determination. Consider the London Tube network, where it’s only in 2023 that they are now contemplating the installation of 5G. Take a moment to let that sink in – 2023. Why the delay? It appears to be driven by someone’s desire to profit from the situation.
The delay is PURELY because of state intervention. If BT didn’t have a state sponsored monopoly then we wouldn’t need to wait for the multitude of companies to cover market gaps in 2023
Sam: meet Virgin Media O2, formerly ntl:Telewest, and lots of predecessors. Partly a thing due to explicit government decisions to ensure there was no state-sponsored monopoly. Went badly though that was more to do with Sky than BT.
If you’re interested in state-sponsored monopolies there are a fair amount of national broadband networks around the world to look at.
Virgin is a positive and definitely gave people a choice, regardless of how you BT shills feel about it
Glad you agree that for at least some there was a choice, so no state-sponsored monopoly. No idea where any opinion was offered on VM.
Cable would’ve reached into more of the UK however as mentioned satellite TV really hurt the cable companies, as did build costs and financing. None of which were anything to do with the state. Quite the opposite, actually. BT were refused permission to broadcast TV by the state in an attempt to encourage competition from the fledgling cable companies and satellite broadcasting.
Largely late to the full fibre game as the business case wasn’t there to build earlier. BT had to sell access to their network wholesale and what BT offered was good enough for most until relatively recently.
What would you have had the government do differently?
Cable TV came to market too late. WE had good terrestrial TV and good satellite TV and Broadband was getting established as well
Not have a nationalized taxpayer funded BT in the first place. The easy question to why socialism is a massive failure is to not have socialism in the first place
So you’ve got nothing. Certainly nothing relevant to fibre network builds in the UK given there’s been no state-owned telco in the UK for nearly 40 years.
@Sam – how is BT funded by the taxpayer?
@Bob – ‘Cable TV came to market too late. WE had good terrestrial TV and good satellite TV and Broadband was getting established as well’
What year was that? 4 TV channels and dial up?
BT being state owned until the 90s is public available knowledge
@Sam – are you older enough to remember the 1990’s ?
BT becoming privatised with the majority of the shares being sold in the 80s in public knowledge. The government selling its last stocks in the 90s also public knowledge however as soon as the majority of the stock went into private hands the business was privatised.
So, given all the stock was into the private realm back when there were no fixed broadband connections in the UK while I can’t speak for anyone else I’m keen to hear how this state-sponsored monopoly prevented full fibre build in the UK or, indeed, the cable companies from building out to more of the UK given their main competition was satellite TV.
Your statement seems more of a blind swipe at ‘socialism’, your having failed to provide anything other than some random ideological statements to back it up. It ended up in public hands a century ago, was majority private about 40 years ago with the rest 30 years ago.
If you actually want to find some telcos that it could be said are in receipt of state largesse to protect monopolies may I suggest Deutsche Telekom or France Telecom, both of whom their respective state still have stakes in?
If you’re looking for an infrastructure monopoly how about Swiss Telecom? There’s them and the cable company, however they lease unbundled dark fibre for FTTP.
BT have inbuilt advantages of incumbency, however those are unavoidable and inevitable. Some things are natural monopolies and are hard to break. We’ve PIA, infrastructure build has been made easier, BT were refused a broadcast licence to give the cable companies a leg up.
The only thing that might be levelled at BT Group as state support would be BDUK but even then that’s debatable. Often they were the best bidder as they were the only large bidder, the format certainly preferred them and others who had bids accepted had problematic delivery.
Still why let facts get in the way of a political rant against the evils of socialism when talking about one of the most competitive infrastructure markets in the world. There was no market for faster than FTTC to speak of. Until that changed there was no business case to build. VM’s original plan pre-Liberty Global was to use FTTC and GEA to extend their reach, not to build new cabled areas, did you know that? They’d have likely gone on to make extensive use of PIA and built out but before Project Lightning started their priority was GEA interconnects with all the Openreach headends.
Fix your dictionary/autocorrect if you get a moment too, Sam. We use ‘-ise’ as a far more common suffix than ‘-ize’ on this side of the Atlantic.
‘Dear David, I’m deeply sorry to hear about the issues with BT ducting and the poor installation. I hope that Hey do get on and sort this out for you as many other ppl have pointed out, this is just not acceptable.’
Hey Anon, just FYI this doesn’t seem to be anything to do with BT/Openreach. The fibre looks like it’s coming from a Toby box installed by someone else, not using Openreach ducts. Think I can see the narrow trench the Toby lives on.
@Sam
BT was privatised in 1984. I think there are 2 principal reasons why cable hasn’t become as successful as it is in the USA, unlike the USA public service broadcasters had a universal service obligation so cable wasn’t needed to get service in the sticks and cheap direct to home satellite service became established before cable got really going. If anything DOCSIS broadband has probably been cable’s saving grace in this country.
The logic is not hard to follow:
– The network was built using public funds
– The company retained publicly funded assets post privatization
– It enjoyed a strong monopoly for many decades to fund current deployment
– There is a high cost and regulatory barrier to entry
– Allowing access to ducts in the 2010’s was what actually lowered the cost/regulatory barriers for competition
– Anon suggested the solution was govt intervention when govt intervention made it a huge uphill endeavour in the first place
@Sam – I hope you understand that once the government privatised (sold off) BT including all its assets they were no longer public assets? Put another way, If you sell your house do you still expect to be able to live in it afterwards?
State intervention bad, state intervening to force private company to share ducts and passive infrastructure good.
Got it.
It really does not take rocket science degree level IQ to understand that BT has had a state sponsored monopoly that crushed all competition which allowed them to not innovate at all, hence why the UK is only at 50% fibre coverage.
Arguing that it’s not BT or the states fault because they sold shares in the 90s is being very disingenuous
A primary school kid can understand that having existing customers to do something is much easier than starting with no customers. Altnets are fighting an uphill battle against the BT monopoly and claiming otherwise is pure shill
Ah the John and Sam show is back in full swing.
BT’s been treated similarly to many other incumbent telcos in Europe. Clearly didn’t have a monopoly in half the UK as VMO2 present. Nothing preventing others building for years beyond the business case. Other nations where the telco operates under similar conditions are well ahead, some well behind.
There’s an incumbent everywhere, and they have the advantage of incumbency. That’s how it is with telecomms. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers are a thing for a reason.
UK late to competitive full fibre builds as demand not really there until recently and the big companies with capital, Sky/Comcast, Vodafone, etc, declined to get involved with build.
I guess you wouldn’t have been up for either an NBN/Singaporean model or Openreach following the Swisscom model?
It’s the sort of installation you’d expect in a third-world country. So glad you have drawn this to people’s attention. Such shoddy work is appalling.
Unbelievable Jeff!!
Who is actually responsible for the Ducting to the home. With Water and gas and eclectic it is quite clear. I would assume it is Openreach but it get bit complex when Alt Nets are involved
Nothing to do with Openreach, who normally work to high standards. Responsibility sits with Hey! Broadband – either they’re not managing their subcontractor F&W competently, or (worse) both Hey and F&W don’t care about the cowboy standard of their installations.
The question was who owns the ducting and who is responsible for maintaining it ?
To be clear even if the property was originally installed with an Openreach duct and the altnet has an agreement with Openreach to use it the altnet is still responsible for clearing/repairing it if it is damaged.
So it appear the Ducting is owned by Openreach but if an Altnet takes on a customer they have to clear the ducting or replace it or even do a hard dig if there is no ducting
The duct is owned by Openreach. The Openreach network ends either at the copper NTE or in the case of an altnet FTTP install at the duct feeding the CSP on the outside of the property.
The altnet may either pay Openreach to repair the duct or do it themselves, same as with most of the Openreach plant altnets use for PIA.
In this case there was no Openreach duct involved – the network operator built their own network with a Toby box on the end so, as with an old-school VM cable install, they’d be doing their own dig to the customer premises.
‘With Water and gas and eclectic it is quite clear.’
Not so clear, Bob. If you’ve received advertisements offering insurance on the pipes going into your home from the local water company they’re there because you are responsible for your water pipes coming into your property and sewage leaving it.
The gas and electricity are, thankfully, clearer. The builder lays them, the DNO adopts them up to the meter and they’re the DNO’s problem from there.
It’s actually pretty clear with the telecomms ducts, too. The builder builds, them, the telco adopts them and from then on they’re responsible up to the demarcation point within the home. In the case of Openreach with PIA the company doing the PIA are responsible for repair if they wish to use them for their own fibre, however if not then it’s Openreach up to the demarcation point.
So what happens when a customer starts digging his trench and hits something like a hidden manhole cover, or tree root just below the surface and there’s not enough cable to divert it around.
Seems bizarre that a company would “install” it like that without informing their customer and obtaining their approval in advance, then at least they could have the trench dug ready for the install.
The Hey! installation should have been cancelled until a solution was agreed with the customer. How does a fibre cable terminated at both ends help anyone to safely bury a cable. Completely ridiculous!!!
Karachi Communications on-sea ?
Somebody’s going to loose their licence !
Is it a variation of the phrase used in that Kevin Kosher film, Filed of Dreams
“Don’t build-it and they won’t come” . . sort of HM Treasury attitude to UK infra-structure.
‘Karachi Communications on-sea ?
Somebody’s going to *loose their licence !
Is it a variation of the phrase used in that Kevin -Kosher film, /Filed of Dreams
“Don’t +build-it and they won’t come” . . sort of HM Treasury attitude to UK =infra-structure.’
*lose
-Costner
/Field
+build it: space not hyphen
=infrastructure
Infrastructure would be somewhat cheaper to build without NIMBYs opposing the build of anything they don’t disagree with, especially when they offer spurious legal arguments against that infrastructure.
People jumping up and down about build quoting laws they’ve no clue about are probably not in the best position to object to works and post on public forums about their objections.
-disagree +agree. If only people like you didn’t only oppose things you disagree with. Double negative.
You misunderstand your having a point for businesses not being bothered with pursuing builds when someone like you is having a whinge about it.
Your curtain replacement bill must be enormous given how much twitching must be going on. Complained about infrastructure build on private property nearby to serve units on that private property because you don’t like it recently?
Same issue in 1990 with the install of Harrow Telecable (Now Virgin) in my area. . they would rather dig-up 100 ft of paving and road surface, rather than come to an arrangement with BT who owned an existing duct, with plenty of excess capacity, which traversed the same space.
I got involved because the one bit of the cable run they wanted to dig-up was under a footpath that ran directly along the flank wall of my property. Everything went a bit quiet and sheepish, when I asked the manager whether they had way-leave from the landlord of the common estate.
The cowboys were even worse then ?
You’ve no idea what you’re talking about Mr Roberts. Zero obligation on BT to allow the cable company access to their ducts and zero obligation on BT to make that access make any commercial sense.
Do you not think that, maybe, across the spending of billions of pounds digging up pavements and roads if it were possible to strike an agreement with BT to use their duct one of the many companies with franchise agreements wouldn’t have tried to do that?
The arrogance thinking that nationwide absolutely no-one building these cable networks had thought of the solution you describe is astonishing.
The Telecomms Act 1984 (?) placed a duty on existing owners of telecomms ducting to share.
Has that provision been overriden, re-voked or repealed ?
As previously discussed you’re mistaken.
Last time you posted on this I believe you claimed it was that these operators needed to use existing infrastructure where possible, not share existing infrastructure. Pick one, they’re both quite different.
FWIW if you were anything like accurate Ofcom requiring Openreach to offer passive infrastructure access would be ridiculous as in your mind the law already requires it. Alongside that others would be able to use Virgin Media’s ducting which they can’t.
Those installers wouldn’t be the semi-legit arm of the team that re-purposed all that copper in Rickmansworth ?
Is there any resemblance between these parts of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire
Have you being feeling unwell recently? time to visit the mental hospital
Those installers wouldn’t be the semi-legit arm of the team that re-purposed all that copper in Rickmansworth ?
Is there any resemblance between these parts of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and the rolling plains of the American Mid-West ?
You have lost the plot.
And your’re maintaining that the current fiasco implementation of broadband in the UK is the result of the laser focused governmental and commercial contribution ? Its a a joke !
Just as well the UK has acquired a surplus of politically and socially correct humourless gits with over-active protective instincts !
Money in a snow blower.
This is just another random comment by Nicholass.
Follow the evidence . . . .most new BT conduit is plastic, buried to at least a spade and a half’s depth (That’s what they did in my garden) . . . some are protected with pre-cast mini-slabs on top . . how many instances of per year of householders action breaching that sort of set-up within the curtilage of their own property . . . probably less than the incidence of copper cable thefts.
If the regulations are silent as to what should be done, then any good and responsible trades person would employ practical measures to protect the conduit at least sufficient to meet the professional standards of the industry.The reluctance to do the right thing comes from cost-shaving greedy installers and perhaps a lack of professional standards in the industry. End of .
Sorry if that hits home.
If you’re worried about the cost of concrete or hardcore capping of conduit . . . . I understand that there may shortly be a surplus supply of autoclaved concrete hard-core . . . the output from another wildly successful commercial/governmental cooperation (Even better than the M4 bus-lane).
Obviously, the autoclaved concrete boys anticipated Kevin Koshers fillum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4X_bdJox8w
At least O’Reilly had the best of intentions.