Virgin fibre chaos

[HarryM1BYT]

Virgin recently began installing fibre in the village and they are causing absolute chaos for everyone in the process....

The sheer number of men, machinery and vehicles they use is just way over the top for what's needed. They have been doing (causing us chaos) our 300yds long street for the past three weeks. They began by digging holes in the footpath at every pair of semi's. Lots of those plastic barriers blocking the footpaths, lot of their vans and trucks and it was like this for days - people struggling to find anywhere to walk and get their cars in and out.

Then plastic temporary panel laid over the holes. Mud every where. Then they go along with a remote control machine to cut a slot along the entire length of the footpath joining the holes together. Whilst doing this, they install a full 300yard long barrier along the footpath /roadside, until the machine has done the entire slot. Every one on that side of the road is trapped in their homes, until the barriers are removed or someone might be available to let them through.

Then the barriers go back in place as they lay the fibre in the trench and make it all good again. They must have around 2 dozen or more men on the job, most stood around leaning on shovels or sat in their vehicles.

Today is bin day - bound to be some serious problems for those guys getting past a 300yard long barrier with bins, plus all the parked up trucks and vans.

Surely a barrier that long, trapping people in their homes, causes more of an H&S risk as people struggle in and out of their homes through barriers, than no barriers at all?

Why could they not manage with a smaller crew, doing and completing a small section at a time, then moving on to the next section?

Will we be subscribing to Virgin Fibre once it is done - no chance at all! We are close to the exchange, we have a fast copper Broadband which serves our needs, why pay more? On copper Broadband, we can easily swap and change suppliers, depending which company offers the best deal for the next 12 months. You cannot move so easily on fibre.

[LotusLC]

It always amazes me why doing these kind of jobs takes so long, the technical know how and the modern machinery we have at our disposal, we should breeze it.
They are doing water works down our street and they have being here for 6 weeks. a lot of the time if you see someone on the job they are in a van having a cuppa

[Nick Greg]

Couldn't agree more. Public works take forever in this country. Elland road bridge got washed away in floods on Boxing Day 2015. It has just reopened costing £5 million. Ridiculous. The new road surface is rubbish full of lumps and bumps and the reopening was delayed several times. Contacted the local council leader who gave the usual "not my fault wishy washy" response. No sense of urgency in any of it and as for the road user - forget it as you definitely come bottom of the pile. The excuse was they had difficulty co-ordinating the installation of utilities across the bridge (phone cables etc). My response was they had 12 months to plan that. No joined up thinking at all

[klarzy]

you have to map your services, dig your trench, bury your ducting, pull your cabling, place your node boxes, test the runs, bury your conduit, make good the surface and then clean up.

it took them 3 days to move past my house.... I did not think that was too bad considering the number of houses connected to the node box...

Stop winging you bunch of moany old codgers.... you will be happy enough with the cheaper and faster than sky phone, broadband and telly and guess what, you would have none of it unless you let these hard working navvy's do their flaiming job without you lot grumbling into your Ovaltine...


get on with life...

[reworht]

Next door neighbour decided to change from Virgin to TalkTalk - who obviously use BT/Openreach cabling. It only took Openreach 6 weeks to get a working cable into her house - the 45 year old cabling that was already there didn't appear to be connected to anything
In talking to the multitude of engineers who kept digging the end of my drive up - the organisational 'chain' is:

1. A sub-contractor comes out to dig trenches (judging by the quality of their workmanship - they won the contract purely on price !)
2. Openreach underground engineers sort out cabling along pavement and up to house wall
3. Openreach house engineers sort out the hole in the house wall, the cabling into the house, and the socket therein.
4. TalkTalk deliver their modem/router, connect up and make sure it all works. If it doesnt work, then it would seem they start the whole process all over again

The final joke was the sub-contractor who dug a 25 yard trench in the pavement on a Thursday afternoon - and returned at 07.30 the following morning to fill it in, complete with a couple of shovelfulls of tarmac, tamped down with the back of a spade.
An hour later, an Openreach engineer (the underground variety) arrived - and spent ages looking for the trench into which he was going to fit some new cable. Needless to say, he disappeared and it was another 3 days before the trenching guys returned and re-dug the trench they'd filled in



Maybe their lines of communication (sorry - pun intended!) have broken down

[HarryM1BYT]

Originally Posted by klarzy

you have to map your services, dig your trench, bury your ducting, pull your cabling, place your node boxes, test the runs, bury your conduit, make good the surface and then clean up.

None of that, they mapped the existing services weeks ago and caused no disruption with their coloured paint sprays. The disruption came with them putting 'safety gates' the full 300m length of the street, blocking everyone into their homes, whilst a machine crawled at 4 miles per week along the footpath. Why no just put safety gates on the small section they are working on? Put it up in front, take it away from behind? Why so very many vehicles, they had so many people just driving around, they were stopping side to side to pass the time, causing chaos to the rest of the traffic trying to get through. Why so many of their vehicles just parked in the street adding to the problems?

They didn't use duct, just the bare cables laid in a shallow trench, a layer of sand, Aircrete(SP?) on top, then tarmac to finish off. Its only two years ago that we had the gas board laying new pipes, but they at least didn't block up the entire street, they made provisions so as not to block anyone in their homes and for cars to get in and out of their drives - much more extensive works including up the drives with the pipes.

The bin lorry was very late, no doubt due to being caught up in the rest of the Virgin work in the village, then they had a right job getting the lorry down the street due to the narrowness and barriers. All made worse by the guys having to recover bins from behind the barriers and meeting others coming the opposite way. What a fiasco!

[podge]

Thread drifting so sorry for that,I use the M3 quite a lot.We have been suffering road works i.e. convert the hard shoulder to another lane for THREE years now.So far £174,000,000 yes 174 million for 13 miles..................

[KWIL]

Come on, tell the whole story.

Not only making the hardshoulder fit for running, but all the new gantries, cable ducts, changes to enbankmemts, new central barrier and all whilst everyone still uses the M3.

My trips to Heathrow have not been that badly affected, taking very little more time than usual.

They could have done it quicker, but only by closing the whole road