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OR reports Direct In Ground but we see a duct

lbres — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 15:12:50 GMT

Hi All,

Hoping you might be able to help. Understand this isn’t an OR forum (and BT consumer is separate) but I thought folks here might have knowledge. I have FTTC currently and am trying to get FTTP installed.

Based on an FTTP On Demand desk survey I have been told that my property is fed by a Direct In Ground feed. On the outside of the house I can see a BT66 junction box as well as a grey plastic type going down into the ground from it. When digging down I see it goes down further than my 20cm hole in the ground. On the pavement outside the property I see BT branded manhole cover that I assume my phone line goes into.

My question is - could the OR survey be wrong? Could I actually be fed by a duct from the manhole cover and OR need to update their records? If so would that affect the quote that I got back from FTTPoD?

Cheers!

Re: OR reports Direct In Ground but we see a duct

iniltous — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 15:43:05 GMT

Is your quote a desktop quote , to give a ballpark figure or the paid for survey that’s the basis of contractual quote , so you have paid around £300 already ? , with FTTPod there is a free desktop survey , and if the costs are not off-putting , you pay for a ‘proper’ survey .

If a free desktop survey , then it’s possible that although you reside in a DIG area , at some point in the past , to restore copper pair service , a new duct and cable were installed to get around a fault on the buried cable , this wouldn’t be known at a desktop survey, but that’s why a desktop survey is just a guide to the likely cost , not a contractual price .

If it’s based on a ‘paid for’ survey , AFAIK, the costings are not broken down into individual sections, like footpath to house , so if your ‘garden’ were ( for example ) 10m in soft and 1m in footway , it would simply be included in the entire excavation quote , so if ( for argument sake ) a further 30m in soft some distance away from your address were also needed , and an extra 49m in footway , remote from your house , the quote would be for 40m soft and 50m footway in total , you wouldn’t know the way those totals were broken down .

If it’s a desktop survey price , and you subsequently pay for a bespoke survey, if the duct that exists was overlooked, then a reduction may be made , but it’s just as likely that the ‘real’ survey would uncover costs that were not part of the desktop quote .

Re: OR reports Direct In Ground but we see a duct

lbres — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 17:42:43 GMT

This was the free quote part of FTTPoD. The quote was for around £24K which is very off putting.

OK, this is very helpful, thank you. Sounds like I’m kind of screwed for a little while until OR come back to deal with DIG properties like this, or I can pay the £300 for a more in depth survey with no guarantee on cost reductions.