If your property had a duct then there wouldn’t be the need for a new toby box in the footpath opposite your property….., no duct was the default situation for property built in the 1960’s till the early 1990’s.
What does the 30m refer to ? , is your front garden 30m in length and 25m of that is tarmac ? or have you have seen a toby box 30 meters away , and from there it’s 25m in the public footpath and 5m across your garden ( your garden being around 5m long ) ? , if the second option, are you sure there isn’t there a closer Toby box than the one you have seen ? , if there isn’t , then it’s not really built to your curtilage ( the boundary between your property and the public footpath ) , the correct survey note should be ‘partial DIG’ .
As stated , built to the curtilage soft should mean that at the boundary of the public footpath and your garden opposite your house there should be a new Toby box and from there to your house wall it’s should be mainly soft surface, ( that’s to the proposed location where the new excavation would meet the house wall ) it’s not necessarily where the existing copper line enters , if the route to the most convenient point on the house wall had mainly to cross hard surfaces like concrete, tarmac, brick pavers etc , then the correct survey note is build to the curtilage hard .
When the civils teams install toby boxes they try to avoid being opposite driveways and hard landscaping and opposite lawn ( soft ) surfaces , but obviously if someone had nothing but hard surfaces outside their property then it’s impossible to avoid them , footpaths can also be pretty congested places with other buried services , so the ‘best’ location for the Toby box may not be available as other buried services are blocking that location.
This method of service of providing a toby boxes outside each property , or one outside a pair of semi’s is the same as what the cable industry did 30 years ago .
TBH, from your point of view , provided you agree to the excavation route , then it’s not really of any consequence to you if it’s soft or hard surfaces , a survey network note ( SNN ) is a guide for Openreach , this would only affect you if the excavation required was so great that the excess costs involved would require you to make a contribution towards them .
So in your case , it’s two stage installation, and the first stage consists of a visit to explain what’s required and the proposed route and if you are happy to proceed ( there will be situations where a scar down a newly landscaped garden/driveway means the householder changes their mind after being told what’s necessary ) but assuming you consent to what’s needed , an excavation and duct are installed from the nearest toby box to your house wall ….the first stage techs may also install the optical cable through the duct to the house wall once they have the duct installed , or may leave the duct roped so the cable can easily be installed by the second stage engineer …either way , once the first stage is ‘booked off ‘ , the second stage appointment can be arranged ( this is the contractual date ) and the external cable is provided and spliced at a newly provided CSP block on the external wall to an internal optical cable which is ran to the location of the ONT inside the house , and the service authenticated, router connected etc .
