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Message 1 of 5

Digging or ducting

Our estate has a mix of both directly buried cables and some ducting.  It seems that Openreach have just decided to add the small FTTP access boxes anyway (at the boundary of the properties) but my line goes under a large amount of shared drive.  I dug down a few weeks ago and my copper cable goes into a duct (on its own, green plastic about 2" diameter) into a traditional BT pit where the fibre kit has been installed.  Obviously if that's still intact (hasn't collapsed) and can be pulled through I'd far rather they use it

Do they carry out a survey before FTTP digging, could I get them to see if they can use the existing duct, not every house has one, it depends on where the cable went

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Message 2 of 5

Re: Digging or ducting

Openreach and BT before that have never used green duct , it is much more likely to be Virgin Media duct , or the cable company before VM took over ( they do use green duct ) .
If the area now has access to FTTP from OR and was previously a DIG estate ( so armoured cable direct in ground ) then the access toby boxes built into the footpath should be placed , where possible, opposite ‘soft’ surfaces ( like grass ) to simplify the install from the toby box to the house , obviously sometimes that won’t be possible and ‘hard’ surfaces need to be crossed .
Post the survey return from the DSL checker for your address , the survey return it’s below the predicted speeds etc , and states what type of install to be expected , something along the lines of   ‘ built to curtilage, hard ‘ or something like that.
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

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Message 3 of 5

Re: Digging or ducting

Thanks,  I agree green is odd but there is no Virgin (or others at any time) here and it was put in in 1987, the cable isn't armoured either and there is only the BT copper in it.

Tried the link and got "Single Dwelling Unit Residential UG partial Direct In Ground." but it is KCI2 Assure so maybe they need to check

Did builders ever instal ducts?  The 'route' runs under a tarmacked shared drive so I could imagine they put it in place before BT?

If I do have a duct (wrong colour even) and its being used by the BT copper (that I'm sure of) will Openreach use it

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Message 4 of 5

Re: Digging or ducting

I rather think they will take the easy option.

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Message 5 of 5

Re: Digging or ducting

Is there any  ( BT as it’s from 1987 ) ‘furniture’ on the external house wall ?, normally on a ducted house feed you would expect to see a connector bend 4a , a capping 25 and  a cover 101 or BT66 , DIG cables often went directly inside property’s or into something like a BT66 on the external wall , with no plastic covers to make it look ‘better’, occasionally if a DIG cable had a fault , an individual duct and cable would be provided as part of the repair ( if a contractor was used they possibly could use what they had to hand and that may have been VM duct if they did work for them as well as BT/OR .

Irrespective of the colour of the duct , the survey note suggests that they are not aware of it ( otherwise it would say ‘served by 2.5inch duct 56 or congested duct )  , your network survey indicates that ‘service delivery’ will need to do their own survey to establish the appropriate method of delivering service   ( KCI2 ‘keeping customer informed’ , indicates a two stage approach ) , OR  should make themselves known  to you on this initial visit, you can discuss your requirements at that point.

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