Round here there are so many road closures and traffic lights that one has to refer to one.network just to see if it's possiblt to get to the shops, clinic, railway station, and sometimes even with that tool to assist, we can't get there.
These all seem to be due to Virgin Media. What are they up to? A week or so ago I did see some cable pulling going on, a day or so after one of the local roads had been cut for a couple of days.
Here, it's water or gas causing the road to be dug up.
Around my way all the cable/fibre has gone along the pavements, both when initially installed 20 years ago and more recently by CityFibre. There was/is disruption but no road closures.
Replacing or re-lining the gas main has however resulted in ongoing road closures, often up to 6 weeks in duration each time.
Project Lightning:
Humph. So does that mean that at some point I may have a choice as to who provides me with FTTP? Or will that more likely depend on who my ISP (PlusNet at the minute) signs up with?
Potentially yes (assuming it is Project Lightning works).
VM currently don't have a wholesale offer, so other ISPs can't use their network. That may or may not change in future.
Theo
OK thanks for that. Obvs I didn't realise that others than Openreach were pulling fibre. I guess this could lead to duct wars too.Or, as I did see in a newspaper report, overhead bloody cables where we have none at present.
There are dozens of companies pulling fibre at the moment:
Openreach is obliged to rent them space in ducts, although many prefer to install their own ducts to avoid paying rent by the metre, perhaps using OR for difficult bits (across main roads and similar).
Generally it seems like they are replicating the existing infrastructure (buried or poled) but there may be cases where the existing can't be used, and new poles are installed.
Theo
We get our phone service by an overhead line and that's also how the fibre reaches this house. It's all provided by OpenReach, but my rental for fibre goes to Kingston Comms.
BT have FTTC in this street (80Mbps), and virgin put in their own ducts and offer FTTP (500Mbps or faster), but you have to have virgin as your ISP, it's not like CityFibre where several ISPs offer service over the same fibre ...
Actually what is going on around here is isolated road blocks for a couple of days (but lots of them scheduled), rather than long stretches of raod closed and long trenches being dug.
FTTP? Around here they only do cable to the premises. Not saying it isn’t fast but just for clarity I think it’s important that we be accurate about what ISPs are offering. I suspect it’s FTTC + cable but it’s not FTTP.
Tim
If you read TFA linked above, as of Q3 2022 they had 1.7 million on FTTP and were planning to deliver "up to" another 7 million.
Theo
Yes, they never dragged their coaxial network this far out of the city, so about 25 years later we got the first round of their RFoG (radio frequency over glass)
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