Fibre optic cables coming to a footpath near you?

Fibrecity 'don't need permission to dig up roads and pavements'


www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8334966.fibrecity-dont-need-permission-to-dig-up-roads-and-pavements/

Utility companies?

Subcontractor may also be doing work for BT (or another company) I've certainly come across Kelly doing BT work as well.

If it's Openreach then I suspect they'll own the infrastructure and then lease it to other other ISPs similar to how they operate for Phone/ADSL (You may pay the phone bill to the likes of Sky/ Zen etc. but they'll then be paying part of the cost to BT).

You can splice fibres to join them together (or repair) but you can't add a new connection to an existing fibre circuit in the same way they might for power/gas/electricity. The same would also apply for telephone circuits and ADSL back to the cab/exchange (each connection needs it's own pair of wires back to the active equipment. I think cable internet (Virgin) is different where a number of houses are on a single coax cable that daisy chains between a few properties.

Fibre cables usually contain a large number of fibre cores (or more recently) a set of empty tubes that can then have fibre cores blown through them. Back when the cables were manufactured with glass fibres inside they might run a a few large cables down various streets from the local street cab / exchange / point of presence (pop) to a splice box and then splice smaller cables out from there. With blown fibre they can connect a set of tubes together down the various cable runs and then blow a set of fibre cores from one end (cab/exchange/pop) to the other (street splice box).

(That's mostly based on my old experience doing networking between buildings on a site and between a few nearby sites)

Virgin are doing the same to us but allow you to have an emergency phone if you arent able to use a mobile or have vulnerable person. Supposed to be happening in June (send you bits & instructions) but now theyve booked to do it for us at end of April and then sent us a message telling us not until August.  Usual chaos. Havent seen anything suggesting they have put on hold like BT due to backlash.