The impossible installation...

[#1]

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@bmc wrote:

@RobPN

What's a CBT?

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@bmc

CBT = Connectorised Block Terminal

.which is the what I believe @krusty was alluding to in the post before mine.

That is the type of equipment provided for a 1-stage FTTP install (as opposed to the manifold used on the older 2-stage install) and they come with several different combinations of ports on them.

Approx 1:56 onwards ...

[#2]

https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-setup-Wi-Fi-network/Is-this-a-Distribution-Point/td-p/1758954

That link may help more or confuse but @icethudog pic shows a covered cbt if you zoom in..

The reason i suggested a new trench is that (assuming theres no existing joint boxes between the pole and @icethudog house (ie no OR infrastructure) the new cable's have copper plus fibre, there'd be in theory no reason to use the existing ducting ..

And creating your own trench and ducting is fine with OR (massive thread on Thinkbroadband) and others have done it where costs where too high when quoted by OR for fibre.

All i'm trying to do is reduce the min £1k excess charging ..

@icethudog it might be worth putting the issue (along with the pics) on the thinkbroadband forum in the fibre section.. Luv pn forums but theres more bt bods around on that forum.

[#3]

@RobPN

Best video I've yet seen showing FTTP installation.

I've not heard the term CBT before - I simply use Distribution Point. I've attached a picture of the underground 8 port/node DP which serves my house. Where the network install team were able to gain easy access to the house ducts they left blue draw rope in place.

@icethudog

The "bullet" shown in your picture could well be an old style install which requires fibre to be "joined" (fused) rather than being pre-connected. The long loop of cable allows the bullet to be brought down to street level to be worked on.

If your house is the flash of orange behind the trees then to lay a cable you'd need to cross the field, go under the gate (or hedge), under the road (tarmac?) under another fence and then under/through an area of shrubbery plus any hard standing beside your house.

Not an easy job and if you were to do it yourself you'd need at least two wayleaves - one from the owner of the field and one from the road owner. Not cheap!!! One last thing you could look at is where your phone line enters the ground from the pole and where it appears at your house. Is there any sign of a cable duct?

I see my favourite wizard ( @Gandalf ) is posting today so he must be back from leave (hope you had a good holiday). Perhaps he'll be able to cast his expert eye over this when he's got the time.

Brian

[#4]

Hi there. I'm sorry to read of the problems you've had with your FTTP installation.

If you haven't already I'd recommend querying this with Openreach here: https://www.formwize.com/run/survey3.cfm?idx=505d040e0b080d as they may be able to clarify this and provide more info to you.

Hope this helps.

[#5]

Ok. A whole lot to go on there!

It's just a farmer's field, a fence, and about 10m of grass to the house. Good relationship with farmer so no issues there, it's just a bit of a pain trying to lay it. Where would we get the cable from anyway?

Existing cable just disappears into the ground. As we've not been in the house long we've never had cause to investigate other than for this, it just goes underground there and we have a phone line. Even OR couldn't find which pole it connected to, another reason to not spend a speculative 1k to push a rod down there! They actually had us down as having overhead cables, so something wrong in their records.

@Gandalf, the survey - OR already told me that they just can't install without large cost, or is there something more behind the survey?

[#6]

Was just a suggestion to see if they can provide you with more information as to why the excess construction charges are so much for the relatively short distance.

[#7]

@Gandalf

Was there nothing in the OR reports from the original order which might give a clue as to what the problem is.

@icethudog

I think I "mis-read" the picture of the pole. Is the gate that's visible the gate to the field - in which case the trench would be across the field, under the hedge, through the trees and then to your house. Do you own the land behind the fence?

You would probably only be required to lay ducting (with a draw rope?) so that when OR turned up they could simply draw the fibre cable through and do the install.

This would require OR's agreement in advance so it's worth asking the question if you're prepared to do the work.

Lastly, does the phone line "appear" on the side of your house? If it does and it is not a hard surface you could gently dig down to see if there's any sign of a duct (very, very gently - you wouldn't want to damage the phone line and get charged for the repair).

Brian

[#8]

I'm actually struggling to find the FTTP order we placed, maybe I'm looking at the wrong account.

@icethudog can you send me a PM with your username?

[#9]

Scrap that, with the help of my colleague @HarryB we've found your account.

[#10]

From looking into this something doesn't seem right here as it's my understanding that our suppliers would pay the first £1000 of excess construction charges for an FTTP order, so I've discussed this with them and the adviser I spoke to believes that they've made a mistake with the costings.

I'll re-open your ticket and update it with more information.

Thanks for flagging this to us here.

[#11]

Great, thanks everyone for your responses on this.

[#12]

Hopefully everything will go ok this time for you. The pictures alone will help PN and OR actually.

[#13]

@icethudog

Better luck this time!!! Do let us know how it goes.

Brian

[#14]

Fingers crossed!