Sky Fibre Upgrade Taking Months

[Littlekirst91]

Hi all,

Just wondering if it was common for people to be waiting several months for a FTTP upgrade?

I've been waiting over 4 months for mine due to Openreach being the slowest operators on the face of the earth. I've been harassing Sky regularly but obviously they don't really know what's going on because Openreach don't believe in communication.

I escalated my delay to an official complaint, which I was told would allow Sky to request more accurate info from Openreach. Since then Sky have been texting weekly with updates, but honestly every text is the same. "Openreach need to lay casing to protect the cables, then run said cables".

Someone came and spray painted the route from the front of my house about 3 months ago but that's now washed away and the work still hasn't been done. I've been given "estimated" dates of this work to be done and those have come and gone numerous times. I feel like it's never going to end!

I've done the availability check: https://imgur.com/d9tvdHT

[Chrisee]

@Littlekirst91 while the percentage of fibre installs that get held up is low we see a steady number of.reports in the forum. What you say is pretty accurate but the reason why communications between Sky and Openreach are poor is largely down to the way Ofcom regulate Openreach.  To ensure no ISP has an unfair advantage, as Openreach are a BT company, all communication ihas to be through a regulated channel so Sky cant just pick up the phone and ask the local team what is happening. If it helps a group of forum superusers met the order recovery team up in Scotland last year who will be invloved in your case and they are just as frustrated as the customers

In practice where civil engineering work is required things slow down firstly because if the work involves digging up a road they need permission from the Local Authority which takes weeks,, next the work will require a civil crew with the right kit and after the digging is complete a fibre engineering team are required to run the fibre through the new ducting. All of this takes time in my case it took 2 months but Openreach still had authority to dig up the road from the intial work permit to run the ducting.

[TimmyBGood]

@Littlekirst91 

Strangely the 'OH' in the Wholesale Checker result is for 'overhead'

[Littlekirst91]

The existing copper is an overhead setup. A really ugly one. There is a box a few houses down the road and half a dozen cables coming out of it like a spider to nearby houses.

I presumed as they're now running new cables and ducting that they're getting rid of that setup.

[TimmyBGood]

---

@Littlekirst91 wrote:

I've been waiting over 4 months for mine due to Openreach being the slowest operators on the face of the earth. 

---

That's not entirely fair: Openreach is currently carrying out close to 80,000 FTTP activations a week (and needs to do even more to hit the end-of-2026 target for 80% national coverage)

The forced timescale may unfortunately mean that some more complex installations do get pushed down the list though: I'm not convinced work is progressing on a strictly first come first served basis.

Our own installation (through BT) took over three months, largely waiting for paperwork from the local authority and power company because a metre of pavement duct went past a lamp post.