Netomnia Apologises After Damaging Customer’s Openreach FTTP Line and Kit
Alternative UK broadband operator Netomnia has apologised to one of their YouFibre ISP customers after an engineer they sent out to install the new full fibre connection botched the setup, not least by ripping Openreach’s existing optical modem (ONT) off the wall and using the incumbent’s own fibre cable to finish the job – breaking a second FTTP connection in the process.
Before we get started it’s important to underline that, for the most part, engineers that enter your home to install a new broadband service will generally do a clean and professional job – that’s just as true of Netomnia as it is of any other UK network operator. But there are always rare exceptions and over the years we’ve covered plenty of hatched jobs, where for one reason or another an engineer leaves behind more than just a mess.
The latest example of how not to install a full fibre connection comes from the Derbyshire (England) town Ilkeston, where Netomnia’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network recently started to go live. Jack, one of ISPreview’s readers, then decided it would be good to get YouFibre to install the new service as a complement (NOT replacement) to his existing FTTP line from Openreach, which was separately managed by retail ISP Olilo.
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Granted it’s not particularly common for consumers to have two FTTP lines from different ISPs installed to the same house, but there’s no reason why you can’t do it. During this process engineers are generally expected not to touch the fibre line and kit of rival networks (some exceptions exist for the management / removal of old copper lines, but that’s not relevant here).
What went wrong
“After [Netomnia’s engineer] had left, I noticed the Openreach ONT was unplugged on the floor and the Netomnia ONT was in its place on the wall. I had no internet service on Olilo as a result, and after moving the Ethernet cable from the YouFibre router into my own, had no internet service on YouFibre either and had to call their support team, who then fixed the YouFibre line,” said Jack before realising the extent of what had gone wrong.
Olilo later arranged for an Openreach engineer to visit and repair the broken line, but when their subcontractor, MJ Quinn, arrived to assess the situation he discovered a much bigger problem. According to the engineer, Netomnia’s engineer had used Openreach’s external wall box (CSP – Customer Splice Point) for their own service and had also unplugged Openreach’s fibre cable at the CBT (Connectorised Block Terminal) in the road and plugged it into their own network. Not to mention the drill holes left inside the house around their ONT.
A second engineer visit was then actioned to confirm the best fix and both agreed that Jack would require a new fibre installation to correct the problem, which has since taken place. “I now have 2 fully working broadband lines from Openreach and Netomnia, but with unnecessary damage to my property … as well as having had an entire broadband line down for 4 days due to the negligence of YouFibre. Despite contacting YouFibre many times, their communication has been lacklustre. A complaint was logged on 17/7/2026 which has still had no response at all, despite being promised contact within 48 hours,” said Jack.
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A spokesperson for Netomnia told ISPreview:
“We regret the disruption and inconvenience experienced by the customer. We take the standards of our engineers and installation partners extremely seriously. We are aware of the installation referenced and have reviewed the circumstances internally. We have taken the appropriate steps following our review and will continue to monitor and investigate the matter as required.
To date, we have found no evidence of any wider issues. Incidents of this nature are extremely rare given the volume of installations we complete, and we remain committed to delivering a high standard of service and working responsibly alongside other network operators.”
According to Jack, Openreach’s second engineer had indicated to him that they’d seen similar issues in the area from Netomnia in the past, although after asking our sources we could find no evidence to corroborate that claim and Openreach declined to comment.
Olilo are understood to have since passed invoices for the repair work from Openreach onto YouFibre and are awaiting payment, while Jack is still struggling to get much communication from YouFibre: “It’s interesting that they claim they have taken the appropriate steps which seemingly don’t include talking to their actual customer,” said Jack.
UPDATE:
Since writing this article late last week we understand that Jack has cancelled his YouFibre service and NanoFibre, who were the contractor for YouFibre, have agreed to pay Openreach for the reinstall and to tackle any cosmetic damage to the property. NanoFibre’s engineer, the one responsible for the original damage, has also written a personal letter of apology to Jack.
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“Seems like an odd situation where their contractor is left dealing with YouFibre’s customer directly and I hear nothing from the actual company I signed up with,” said Jack. Curiously, after cancelling, YouFibre did contact Jack but only with a sales pitch, as it seems their sales team wasn’t aware of his recent experience.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’m seeing this alot now from all altnets.
So an alot caused this? Interesting.
Wow now I’ve seen some botched installs in my time but thats new levels…. stealing the last mile line from the competition, reminds me of the days cable and sky chopping aerial cables to feed their own coax.
It’s crazy. Still, I’ve had no official response from YouFibre/Netomnia. I’ve just been dealing with their contractor directly.
Damn, the merger hasn’t even officially been approved and Netomnia out here acting like VM do already by ignoring complaints.
He is not alone. Netomnia contractor was about to use OR cable as well, but I had live OR connection.
I think it’s happening because most of customers switching to Youfibre or they just trying to save money or it’s just easy to use existing cable, who knows… .
I live in Wisbech (PE13)
I wouldn’t be surprised if that engineer has been asked loads of times by householders to remove old ONTs as 99.9% of people won’t be operating two lines and ideally wouldn’t want multiple boxes on the wall. Not an excuse but perhaps he thought he was doing this customer a favour. YouFibre’s customer service sounds unmitigatedly awful though.
Even if a customer asked for the Openreach ONT to be removed, it doesn’t belong to the householder and should be left in place. It says quite clearly on the front “Property of Openreach”.
In this case, the installer was lazy (and/or rushed) and decided they could reuse the fibre instead of putting in a new one.
You could be right.
Sadly, shabby work is everywhere and getting more of it, or it seems that way.
Goes both ways sadly, see openreach doing it alot more.
I am not sure if it is a lot more, but they certainly do shabby work, well, their contractors do. One of my brothers had shabby work done when he had BT fibre installed.
Openreach or one of their contractors, left cable hanging from the pole by me months ago, it was moving around in the wind and could have easily hit someone.
Someone did not replace a cover correctly down the road, but that could have been Zzoomm, but I don’t see why Zzoomm would have been in there. It was dangerous.
Seems like a continuation of how where BT/Openreach infrastructure was sometimes removed or disrupted when the cable phone line went in.
Use of Openreach’s fibre all the way into the pit is also quite concerning. A pitfall (pun not intended) of PIA as it makes such vandalism so much easier. What powers do OR have to protect its customers and punish operators who do this?
They aren’t using Openreach fibre into the pit but into the home. Spliced into the Openreach fibre at CSP.
@Polish Poler – my reading is that they reused the fibre all the way back:
“…and had also unplugged Openreach’s fibre cable at the CBT (Connectorised Block Terminal) in the road and plugged it into their own network”
Trashing the ONT is one thing, but reusing OR fibre is quite another!
@BenInLondon: I think Netomnia has a CBT in same joint box or on the same pole as Openreach. The lazy Netmonia tech, instead of running a new drop cable, reused Openreach’s cable by disconnecting it from the Openreach CBT and plugging it into the Netomnia CBT and, inside the house, unscrewed the Openreach ONT to disconnect the fibre for the Netmonia ONT.
None of this is new, as some installers for Sky and Virgin Media were notorious for ‘borrowing’ aerial cables for their installations and leaving the customers wondering why Freeview no longer worked.
A bit surprised this has made an article , I’ve been in telecoms for 15 yrs plus mostly on install side , this is daily occurrence and has been for years , cables ntl and bt both doing it to each other, sky and bt both doing it to each other , now altnets and don’t believe bt still don’t do it back to each other , usually its installer error(laziness to drill a new hole ) or customer asks for no new holes and they forget to mention that bit in their complaint .
Surely then the surprise is not that this made an article, but that we don’t see more articles like it more often?
Even if the customer was switching, they may want to switch to someone using Openreach in the future.
I can’t imagine Netomnia being too happy if Openreach did this to their installs when a customer switched away.
I can understand a customer wanting the old ONT removed. It feels like Openreach could probably supply a dust cap and a returns bag for the old ONT, and mark the property as needing a new ONT. This would help in the future when switching back to Openreach (the ISP will knoyan engineer visits required)
The principle here is that the ONT belongs to the Network Provider, it should remain in situ and in no way should a competitor (including PIA) utilise a competitors cabling. Installation for other services ISPs becomes more costly if records are wrong and there is extra work for the installer to work out what has gone on. It should be more than just the recovery of costs, I would have thought Netomnia has breached its PIA agreement.
Openreach provide a CSP and the worst case should be recovery of the in/out cable.
Most consumers will not be aware and whilst most consumers are likely to stick with their first FF network supplier I think there should be more consumer awareness in any communication when there is an engineering change moving between ISPs. i.e if you are moving between networks its clear that the customer needs to request the removal of the old FF if they don’t want it (number is on the ONT).
The other thing is for ISP/Network processes to include clear flags when it is a New install and a move. Particularly where the change is an ISP that utilises differeent Networks.
Personally my view is that ONTs should not be simply installed in the first opportunity for a hole in the wall and power socket but more thought through. Ideally ONTs just like your electricity meter should be in a utility cupboard, garage etc. This incident looks extreme but I can see this increasing. The cost of this doesn’t just impact the single customer.
An unnecesary mess.
Maybe there needs to be a change to the rules such that installers are allowed to replace the ONT of the losing provider rather than just adding a new one. It’s not good for competition if customers are deterred from switching due to excess boxes and holes.
@john_r Removing the competition’s boxes from somebody’s house is good for competition?
Certainly an interesting perspective..
@Retro The box can easily be put back if the customer decides to switch back. Point is saying that you _must_ have two boxes and holes and set of cables in your house, or even 3 or 4 is kinda ridiculous and impediment to people switching. It’s a bit more expensive for the infrastructure provider to re-provision service if their ONT was removed but that’s their problem. Maybe with a formalised process most customers can even do it themselves.
@Retro The idea being, that for those “sensitive” about the number of and/or look of the “boxes” both inside and outside _MIGHT_ be more inclined to switch to other networks if the new network remove the old networks gear first. For most people I have spoken to, they don’t really give a crap about them, unless they are put in a silly place, so dunno how much of a big deal it really would be.
Personally, it doesn’t bother me, But I’ve always insisted that the “boxes” are put where I choose them to be put, so you wouldn’t notice the brown Telewest box, grey Openreach box on the outside of my house most of the year because they are hidden behind a brush (the brsk/netomnia install never bothed putting a CSP on the outside of the house, as I wanted the ONT directly above the hole drilled for the fibre, and brsk installed a nokia ONT with a wall mounted “spool”/csp which the ONT then clips onto. inside, the ONT(s) (I packed up the OR one after service on its line was terminated) and the old phone sockets sit on the other side of the wall, in the corner of the living room with a sofa in front of them so you wouldn’t know they are there without going hunting for them)
This doesn’t surprise me one little bit.
I had a similar experience but with a provider called Connect Fibre. They sent 4 engineers to do what looked like 1 persons job, and still did it incorrectly.
I ended up cancelling my subscription and should have taken the warning flags when their contractor in the street was photographed throwing human excrement in to our neighbouring farms field a year ago (circulated via our parish).
What I find most shocking is that companies like these (maybe not youfibre) are taking tax payers money in the form of goverment contracts and then treating the areas with total disregard.
Ofcom only regulates and investigates pricing/customer service issues… not the installation phase. BDUK, a civil service outfit should have people physically out supervising these companies, not just getting monthly reports.
Same principle as copper when everything behind the front plate of the NT5 was the responsibility of Openreach and no one else was allowed to touch it (at least in theory). Likewise the ONT & everything upstream of it is Openreach’s property & they are the only ones allowed to touch it.
Openreach did the same in my town when installing underground cables and ducts, just after VM had installed their cables two weeks earlier. Openreach damaged the toby box’s to 5-7 properties and there was an avid discussion between them and VM! The local Council weren’t best pleased as it took 5 goes to re-instate the pavement in this road.
Inevitable, unfortunately, when contractors are paid a piece rate and the installation quantities required to get near the advertised expected earnings becomes apparent. Spot checks of installer work could go a long way to fixing this, but I’ve never heard of it happening.
This really does show how strung out the supply chain is.
Nanofibre failed to do the job properly
Netomnia failed to support the customer
You fibre failed to confirm satisfactory completion.
Not good all round!
It’s no different elsewhere
BT sell you a service, Openreach own the network, MJ Quinn come and do the install. And yes, we all probably have cases where the same failings to properly support customers happened!
Literally no different to YouFibre & Netomnia
Oh dear, used to see it daily until measures were put in place. Doubt those same measures exist now though.
My YouFibre install guy cut my old virgin HFC cable too. Lucky it’s unused but they really should ask
Unacceptable behaviour from any contractor, and the same from YouFibre for how badly they have handled this. Although I am becoming ever so unsurprised by it. Level 1 customer services is that bad I’ve person decided to skip it as much as possible and go over their heads to someone who can actually solve the issue.
Personally I had a much more pleasant install process with Nanofibre, but that was via brsk, who in my experience had much better levels of customer service than YouFibre have today.
This is clearly a contractor mess up, but the contractor is working on behalf of contractee, YouFibre! The customer doesn’t have direct contact with the contractor (lol, not like the customer does with YF either at this point…), so its YF job to make it right with the customer.
Its S*”£ like this that makes it near on impossible for me to recommend YouFibre to others unless they are techie enough to handle the BS customer services themselves! Which is a shame, because network wise I’ve had no issues with them, All my issues have come from Bad customer support!
CityFibre suggested they “would knock the BT ONT off the wall and replace it” and I had to repeatedly tell them not to do that and ultimately had to watch them every minute of the internal install to stop them doing it, they just kept asking. They seemed to think I wanted BT’s equipment destroyed, I didn’t and I had never said I did at any point. I was intending to run them both at the same time and the BT line was in use.
I had the very opposite, an Openreach installer “kindly offered” to remove my Netomnia ONT and reuse the fibre when I was having a second line installed.
Why is this a thing? I had to watch him throughout to make sure he performed a totally separate installation and didn’t damage any of Netomnia’s equipment, because you know fully that it’d be me paying the bill for damaging it if it happened, not Openreach.
By “hatched jobs” do you mean “hatchet jobs”?
Virgin unplugged my hyperopic connection and never apologised for me loosing connection for a week.
The “one ONT on a random wall/power socket” model is a mess. It’s bad install architecture and it creates incentives for corner-cutting, especially once a premise has multiple FTTP providers.
For premises with multiple FTTP lines, the practical design should be different: don’t keep repeating a wall-ONT pattern.
If there’s already one FTTP line, don’t force a second wall ONT (extra wall penetrations, more power risk, more clutter). Use an outside, purpose-built fibre distribution/access point (FDH/FDT-style) where multiple ISP handovers can land cleanly.
If there are already multiple FTTP lines, that same outside distribution point should be the standard termination/distribution location—not “reuse whatever ONT/arrangement is already screwed to the wall.”
I don’t want multiple ONTs on my wall. ONTs are extra failure points and add ongoing troubleshooting complexity (power, weatherproofing, the ONT itself, Ethernet handoff, and provisioning).
If the ONT model is being used at all, I don’t see why the FTTP fibre ever needs to be brought into the property in the “wall kit” way; the clean approach is fibre-only to a proper external demarcation/distribution point, then only copper (e.g., Cat6a/Ethernet) should run inside to your firewall/router.
Power is the real constraint for ONTs, but it’s solvable at the demarcation location (proper outside power provision, or solar/battery where needed). The “fix” shouldn’t be more wall ONTs.
Ofcom/Openreach should have enforced or at least provided clearer guidance for multi-FTTP premises: a documented standard for multi-provider demarcation so customers don’t have to gamble that a second ISP will reuse upstream gear correctly rather than adding another clunky wall solution.
In the ideal future world, ONT/router design should minimise “ISP box sprawl”: either ISP integrates where possible, or support a true fibre-to-customer demarcation model that makes BYO firewall/router the norm. As more people learn BYO, this should become more popular—because depending on which contractor is on site should never be part of the design.
This is all about doing the job once: one properly planned external distribution install (with enough capacity—say your “4–6 drops”) is far better than creating a growing pile of wall boxes as more services arrive.
The UK will always be behind other countries like the USA where there ISP’s generally allow the end user to do what they like aslong as they pay for it possibly using 3rd party installer.
The fix for powering the ONT is power over Ethernet. If Mikrotik can put it in a subscription £30 WiFi access point then there is no reason it could not be done in an ONT. We might then see more routers having PoE out on the WAN port.
Ahh, 2 things,
1 companies do what they want until they get out and even then the ‘customer’ just seems to be a inconvenient side issue rather than focus.
2 Ooer, just think if there was on national utility , none of this scapping amongst themselves would exist saving time, money, manufacured ambiguity of ‘owner’, less wast/landfill, polution etc. etc.
And of course a regulator communication that doesn’t cover end to end, er well ,communication’ – Is this a John Cleese educational story?
In my view, ONT is basically a farce—we’re in 2026 and FTTP should mean the fibre is handed to the customer in a form that lets them connect it directly to their own router.
In an ideal world, the “true FTTP” model is fibre in → straight into customer equipment (or at least a standards-based handoff that doesn’t lock the service to ISP-managed conversion gear). If the network supports modern PON (like XGS-PON) and the ISP’s service can be delivered over a standard interface, there’s no reason the customer should be forced into an ONT just to make the connection work.
Its 2026 and open reach are installing GPON. PPPoE was standardized in 1999, and GPON was standardized in 2002. What a joke