Excuse the badly sketched drawing but it was easier than describing fully. My parents currently have a virgin fibre cable running to the house. It comes from an access point in the pavement, cuts diagonally across the lawn (a few cm underground) and then pops back up in the corner of the lawn and runs along the base of the side fence to the connection box on the side of the house. The second virgin cable then comes from that box, along the front of the house to the other front corner, and then through a hole into the house (which ends up under the stairs, which is where the backs of the phone and power sockets are). It then pokes through an internal wall into the virgin plug point the router plugs into.
They are now moving from virgin to bt/openreach fibre (it's significantly cheaper for the same service), so need a new installation. They obviously want the cable to come in the same place, and the plan is to remove the virgin cable and have the openreach cable come into the house through the existing external drill-hole so we wouldn't need new holes drilled in the front of the house.
However they had the first 'inspection' visit today, and the person seemed to be saying that their 'preferred' approach would be to cut across the lawn and under the driveway, digging up the herringbone-brick driveway bricks in the process.
Which.... seemed like an expensive option, and was surprised that it seemed to be their preferred choice. The guy said that there would be a second inspection with someone who was actually 'in charge' to be done to make the final decisions etc and then a third one for the actual work to be done. We had a text regarding the final install date as like 8 weeks away.
Our concern of course is them digging up the brick driveway and then not restoring it correctly. My parents are stressing over it being done poorly, bricks being broken or replaced incorrectly etc. I guess I can't blame them, driveways are expensive and it's a lot to deal with at their age.
I had thought they'd just run the cable the same way as the existing virgin one, rather than digging up driveways and making trenches. Unless fibre cable is a LOT more expensive than I thought, and a couple extra meters of cable costs more than a day of contractor building work lol.
Unless they have a policy where all cabling needs to be ducted underground. Which makes sense I guess. Figured I would just ask the question, maybe someone here has some insights that will help!
Pink line is the virgin cable run. Blue is roughly what the openreach guy seemed to want to do.
Edit: I'd already checked the bt details page and the house is listed as "Single Dwelling Unit Residential UG partial Direct In Ground" and the guy said the old phone line is armoured cable so there's no existing ducting to use unfortunately. And this street doesn't have poles either.
