Registering a site with Openreach

[Bancroft]

Thought my experience with Openreach recently might be of use to others who are signing up for a new account and fibre to their new build.  Bit of a long post but could be useful.

 

Registering your site.

 

There is no menu system for “individual building own home”.  You have to pretend you’re a full-blown developer.  Live with it.  But, when filling out the details take particular care over the following:

 

•    They will require quite a few specific plans of your intended build and site.  Keep these as simple as possible.  They couldn’t get their heads around the fact that our planning permission only covered part of our overall land.  Instead of calling to ask for clarification they just rejected the registration.

 

•    Don’t try to use the new name for your property as it probably won’t come up in their database.  Use the existing address details if at all possible.

 

•    When filling out your name and signature, make sure you use exactly the same details. One of my failed registration attempts was because I put my full first name in the Developer’s Name box but then just put my initial in the signature box.  The registration was rejected because they were different…

 

•    When you’re asked who you’re ‘signing on behalf of…’ use the same name that you put at the top of the form.  Another registration failure I had was because the Openreach form somehow incorrectly picked up the wrong data field and created a developer called ‘On behalf of Developer’. (I’d inputted ‘on behalf of developer’ at the direct request of the Openreach assistant who was filling out the form with me, line by line over the phone, but it was still rejected).

 

•    When putting your address in, check and double check.  My fourth attempt at registering our site was rejected because I apparently kept putting my own address in incorrectly.  The Openreach assistant eventually told me that I had put in our village name rather than the large main town under which our postcode lies so their system rejected the application.

 

•    Be aware that they probably won’t tell you your application has been rejected.  It will simply say ‘delayed’ on their website, with no amplifying reasons.  Use the online contact system to ask why it has been delayed.

 

•    When talking with Openreach assistants during this phase be aware that they are simply human forms of ‘computer says no’.  They have no autonomy or ability to think for themselves.

 

Once registered

 

When you do finally get registered, they will send you an email telling you how much it’s going to cost you.  On ours it said:

 

Just a heads up—according to your Building Regulations, you only need to go for Full Fibre if we can
hook you up with an offer under the £2000 cap. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that this time around,
but we can still get you Full Fibre for £ 11,278 + VAT.

 

No other explanation of the cost was given – no breakdown of costs, no indication of what work was/was not included.  Nothing.

 

The only way to get any more information is to sign the contract. 

 

Further down the email they do explain that after signing the contract they will allocate a Field Based Co-ordinator.  You will then be able to talk directly to them and have a sensible conversation.

 

You then have 30 days to pay the bill.  If you don’t pay, then they will just void the contract.

 

This is a stupid way to go about business but we’re talking Openreach here, so…

 

Talking to a human on site

 

Having gone through that process (nearly 2 weeks in total) and signed the contract I finally got to talk to our FBC today.  Absolutely brilliant.  He agreed their systems are stupid, took a very pragmatic view about what we were doing and how we’re doing it, and even gave some great advice for how we can make our installation even better.  He’s now gone away to find the real cost of what we will have to pay.

 

Wider considerations

 

If you do all this early enough, Openreach will provide you with any ducting you need.  The ducting needs to be grey, rigid polypipe, 96mm for the main run, dropping to 54mm for the final connection.  Openreach have guidance on their system about this and how to lay it if doing your own.

 

We bought our own simply because I hadn’t registered with them early enough (despite my best efforts) and we want to put the ducting in a trench that’s being filled in tomorrow. 

Hopefully, things will get easier now that I have a local FBC to talk to.  I will update you if anything useful is learnt.

 

Overall thoughts

 

I’ve had similar experiences with Openreach/BT in the past – you need to go through hell on the phone/online but, when an engineer turns up they’re really helpful.  Just hang in there while you go through your apprenticeship phase.

[joth]

Beggars belief that gigabit broadband is in the building regs yet you have to go through such a pointless game to get it installed, even when doing all the hard work ones self. 

I'm in a similar situation, put in my own ducting 5 years ago as part of a major renovation, still can't get them to pull fibre through it as Computer Says No ducting present, even though their engineers very happily pulled a replacement copper line in through that very duct. 

Looks like WhyFibre may finally be launching in our area so lets see how they compare. They've already got the fibre blow tubes down our street

[Oz07]

I just emailed some local office, god knows where I got their email and they dropped me loads of bits off. It was all very informal as I remember it around 2018. Last place in 2020 I didn't even bother with a fixed line connection. It wasn't in the regs then. Is there any way to opt out if it nowadays? I still use 5 and 4g for Internet now