Openreach unable to complete street upgrade from FTTC to FTTP owing to parked cars

[roland_5]

Openreach engineers have just finished working for a fortnight on our street (serving hundreds of houses) to upgrade their provision from FTTC to FTTP. Unfortunately about 20m was not accessible to the engineers owing to permanently-parked cars, whose owners did not appear in the fortnight the Openreach team was on-site. It seems that at least one of these cars might be abandoned. This 20m is at the exchange-end of the street, i.e. critical for the whole road.

I have contacted Openreach to ask what is their next step. Also if there's anything we, as residents, can do to help them. Their surprising response was they couldn't help, but instead I need to contact my telco (hence why I write here), despite this being firmly an Openreach situation.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any recommendations? If Openreach cannot conclude work do they apply for a court order to move objects? Very frustrating that our multi-year wait for FTTP is delayed further despite nearly all of the work being completed.

[Sturmovich]

It's very frustrating.

Last year upgraded the main street in our estate with fibre, but none of the cul de sacs connected to it.

Now they say there are no plans to upgrade the cul de sacs. 

Seems very unfair that some houses in the same street can be upgraded while others can't. 

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi roland_5

1 Only Openreach can finish the work, technically FTTP isn't available yet and wont be until the work is carried out, there is nothing we can do to force Openreach to carry out upgrades to their network.

2 We would only have access to an engineer report if we logged a service fault, the internal Openreach reports are not accessible to us.  We actually don't get a schedule of the ongoing work they carry out, we only get a notification of FTTP enabled areas when completed, then we (and most providers) have to then apply for capacity.

 it's unusual circumstances I agree, but there is nothing that we can do. 

Sorry.

[roland_5]

Thanks for the reply. There are two parts to my question:

(a) Assuming I have described the situation correctly (which I have), then who is responsible for the next move? Is this firmly Openreach's problem given they could not conclude their work? Are they obliged by contract to apply to the council, or perhaps seek a court order, to move the cars in order to complete their work? Or are Openreach correct in saying that having tried it's now an end-customer's problem to handle via their telco?

(b) Do TalkTalk have access to Openreach engineer reports regarding build-outs? I can provide the relevant address confidentially if you wish. I imagine that report would indicate what, if anything, Openreach intend to do at this stage.

Even if we residents could identify the owners of the cars (which is unlikely, but we can try) we don't know to whom we should be passing this information, or indeed how to engage Openreach to return to conclude their work.

I would be happy to agree a new contract with TalkTalk once an FTTP service along my street is confirmed!

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi roland_5

Sorry that you are having problems. 

There really isn't anything we can do to move cars that potentially are abandoned, could the local council step in ?