Phone line replacement

[slowworm]

Does anyone know who to contact or where to find out details about work on their phone lines?

There are workers puttting up a new cable on our telegraph poles. However, they don't speak English or know much about the work. Their contact number is not UK based or helpful. Our supplier doesn't know, although they have been very unhelpful recently so may be able to find out but will not.

We did have a contact of a BTOR engineer who's done work on our poles but he's can't help as the work has been contracted out.

I assume BTOR are installing fibre but when we check online we get told they aren't. I'd like to find out what's happening as initially the works looked a bit dodgy but now I need to know when they will need access to our house to install the fibre stuff.

Apologies for another non-bushcrafty thread but I vaguely though there were one or two phone line engineers who are.members who might know.

 

[Snake]

Are they just leaving it as a coil at the end of each cable run? if so then yes that is the rollout of fibre, they did that around here, and like you said it was cheap contractors that did the initial stringing up of the cables,

In our case the 'supervisor' could speak English and told me that they were only installing the cables and were not authorised to connect them together.

A couple of weeks later an Openreach chap turned up with the joiner boxes and linked all the cables together, and did whatever else they do.

I was still not told anything about being transferred over to fibre, it was when my contract ran out with bt that I had a look around and found that fibre was now available to me, so I started the new contract (EE) and after sending me a new router, an Openreach contractor turned up to finish the install from the closest pole to the house, this is where the fun started for me as it's down a farm track, they still do the install for free, but as the original install stopped at the edge of our property the last 200m of fibre was not layed in, and the 'contractors' don't carry cable any longer that 100m, he then had to push the job up to an Openreach person and they would have to come another day.

 

[slowworm]

Are they just leaving it as a coil at the end of each cable run? if so then yes that is the rollout of fibre, they did that around here, and like you said it was cheap contractors that did the initial stringing up of the cables,

I'm not at home at the mo but they do seem to be leaving coils and just attaching to the poles. A non-BTOR company did the same sort of thing when they put in fibre to some properties, now it seems to be BTOR.

The poles are technically on our land and as the contractors have been wandering about our property I'd expect to be told first. Another issue is were waiting for the old copper line to be moved from a condemned pole to a new one they've put in, but they've attached the new cable to the old pole...

To add to the confusion we've now just had an email from BT saying we will not be getting fibre this year (we are on an email update list).

I suppose my best option is to stop a passing BTOR van when I next see one and ask a local engineer. Sort of sums up comms companies these days - it's impossible to get any useful information out of them!

 

[Snake]

I'm not at home at the mo but they do seem to be leaving coils and just attaching to the poles. A non-BTOR company did the same sort of thing when they put in fibre to some properties, now it seems to be BTOR.

The poles are technically on our land and as the contractors have been wandering about our property I'd expect to be told first. Another issue is were waiting for the old copper line to be moved from a condemned pole to a new one they've put in, but they've attached the new cable to the old pole...

To add to the confusion we've now just had an email from BT saying we will not be getting fibre this year (we are on an email update list).

I suppose my best option is to stop a passing BTOR van when I next see one and ask a local engineer. Sort of sums up comms companies these days - it's impossible to get any useful information out of them!

Last time they changed any of our poles, the company changing the poles swapped the wires over, and were not very keen on my insistence of leaving the old pole behind.

As for the new cabling, I hope it all works out in the end, but I never expect them to keep me informed

 

[Pattree]

I asked for an old pole when they replaced ours.
The Polish (well he was!) team leader would have given it to me for fire wood but persuaded me not to take it.
Apparently the tar quickly clogs up any saw that you use on it including chain saws.

 

[slowworm]

They've surveyed the old pole at least twice, tried to replace it at least once and finally only managed to put the new one in when the team leader spoke to me and we agreed what to do. Still waiting for the change over but we have been promised the old pole! I expect the other condemned pole will fall before being replaced.

I wouldn't burn them but it will be useful for a gate post.

 

[Snake]

I asked for an old pole when they replaced ours.
The Polish (well he was!) team leader would have given it to me for fire wood but persuaded me not to take it.
Apparently the tar quickly clogs up any saw that you use on it including chain saws.

They make excellent gate posts, and dont rot off as quick as S/H sleepers