BT Full Fibre 500 external work fibre cable on neighbour's premises

[sk4]

My  Fibre 2 will be upgraded to Fibre 500 in two weeks time.

My home is connected to my neighour with a common boundary wall.

Open Reach ( OR) visited a few days ago to complete the external work by running an existing spare fibre cable  from my neighbour's  driveway  70cms to our joint boundary wall terminating on an external grey box on my side. OR did not think there would be problems.

Neither our neighbour or his landlord was present while this work was carried out.

Just wondering  whether  the neighbour's landlord can legally object to the 70cm of cable fixed on his wall providing my Full Fibre service and force  BT to reroute this the long way round.   The 70cm of cable is fixed to the neighbour's wall  does not appear to be  interferring with anything.

Would appreciate any thoughts about this.

Many thanks

[iniltous · Accepted solution]

The cable from the footpath to a CSP ( the grey box you refer to ) is a single fibre , so a second cable from the footpath to the CSP  is needed ( but a CSP is capable of housing the splices  of both external cables and having two ‘internal’ optical cables exiting it , one for you one for your neighbours service .

Presumably your neighbour ordered FTTP and had it installed before you , so some work was done to get the CSP on the their house wall ( pretty close to , if not exactly on the centre point of the two properties )it could be that the CSP was going to be on the exact middle point but buried services meant it couldn’t be on that exact point .

Can your neighbour complain about the short amount of ‘your’ cable on their side of the boundary and ask for it to be removed ? , probably is the answer to that , but it’s difficult to imagine what the original Openreach design was , and if you and your neighbour were always designed to use the same CSP , or the OR staff or contractors looking at your job saw a ‘shortcut’ and used the neighbours CSP rather than fitting your own because and it was easier  to do that than what was designed to be done .

Perhaps you can add some images or a diagram to better describe what’s been done ….was a new duct provided from the footpath to your neighbours wall , if so did the duct run entirely in your neighbours front garden ….in the footpath outside both properties, is there a Toby box this duct comes out of …if there is , is there also a Toby box for your address or was the Toby box in the footpath sited so both properties could be served ?, perhaps there is no Toby box but the ‘scar’ from the excavations goes to a footway jointbox , or perhaps a duct always exists and both your and your neighbours copper cables were on your neighbours wall and you never noticed.

In short , your neighbour could complain, if they did , OR would have to revisit and come up with a solution that avoids your neighbours wall ….but hopefully your neighbour won’t complain about this pretty insignificant thing …but a bit more info is needed to be sure .

[sk4]

Many thanks for your comprehensive reply.

[sk4]

Thank you again for your most detailed reply.

I thought I would add the following for completeness. I am not sure about taking a photo of my fibre cable fixed onto my neighbour’s wall without their permission so I will do my best to describe the situation.

Your are absolutely correct in mentioning that my neighbour has full fibre a few years before myself.

I believe this  fibre runs from the BT box junction in the pavement under my neighbour’s driveway and out of  the metallic ducting upright abutting against their wall before finally terminating onto a grey plastic square box on their front wall. This is not a new ducting  but  the original  ducting  used by their old copper cable long recovered .  I have a similar arrangement for the copper cabling for my BT Fibre2 broadband service which is soon to be upgraded by Full Fibre 500.

When the OR engineer visited, he first opened the box junction ( cover marked Post Office Telecomms)  in the pavement area probably to check where the existing fibre cable was going. He then  took a spare fibre from the rising metallic ducting ( abutting my neighbour’s front wall) and ran a 70 cm fibre cable ( fixed to my neighbour’s front wall) before terminating onto a new small grey square plastic box on my side of the shared boundary wall dividing our homes.

Presumably this frequently occurs where a fibre cable serving  one customer runs over a neighbours land.

[iniltous]

Openreach ducts aren’t metallic but plastic,  if your address has its own duct appearance, it’s odd that the technician used the duct to your neighbours wall and not the duct to your own wall  (that’s if I understand what you mean by saying this )

This is not a new ducting  but  the original  ducting  used by their old copper cable long recovered .  I have a similar arrangement for the copper cabling for my BT Fibre2 broadband service which is soon to be upgraded by Full Fibre 500.

If it were simply convenient from the tech to use next doors duct  to your neighbours wall and then span a short 70cm distance to your house wall rather than use your own ducted feed and the neighbour complains about this small amount of cable ‘on their wall’ , then it will have to be done again following what was probably the original plan , which would have been to use the duct to your own house wall and not the duct to your neighbours wall (  and again that’s assuming you have a duct on your wall , if you do I can’t understand why they didn’t use that in the first place )  .

Unfortunately it’s still not clear to me the way things exist already on your house ( not your neighbours FTTP provision ) but the way the copper service were originally provided, hence the request for a photo or diagram , although I understand the reason why you don’t want to provide one.

Generally FTTP follows the original copper service method  , so if your copper pair comes up on your own wall then your FTTP should also appear at the same point , if your copper pair  was also 70cm on your neighbours wall then the FTTP will also be 70cm on their wall , but that wouldn’t be cause for complaint if they never had an issue with the copper and a fibre cable  replaces it .

If the builder , when the houses were constructed only provided a single duct for two properties that would normally be exactly on the centre line between the two addresses so it can be accessed from either side .

The only real variation to mention is ex local authority housing , where it wasn’t an issue to run neighbours cabling over your wall , obviously back then the resident didn’t really have any say , the authority had a blanket permission for this type of thing ….if housing is sold off to private owners, this easement is part of the conditions of sale so the new owner can’t request the cabling be removed.