Openreach Damages Netomnia’s Main Fibre Optic Cable Near Bristol
Hundreds of customers on Netomnia’s (Substantial Group) alternative broadband network in the Bristol (South West England) area, which has now covered 2.8 million UK premises RFS (inc. 400,000 customers) with their full fibre (FTTP) lines, are suffering connectivity problems after Openreach “took down one of our main cables” yesterday afternoon.
According to a brief service status update, which was posted to the website of their main ISP, YouFibre: “We are currently experiencing issues in the Filton area. If you are in the area and you are experiencing issues, please rest assured that we are already working hard to resolve the issues. Thank you for your patience.”
Filton is a town about 6 miles north of Bristol on one of Netomnia’s main fibre links into the city. Details of the outage remain unclear, although Netomnia’s CEO, Jeremy Chelot, this morning stated via X that Openreach’s engineers were to blame: “Sorry Bristol, Openreach took down one of our main cables yesterday evening! We have c.500 customers impacted!”
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The latest update a few minutes ago indicates that the number of customers still offline is around 200-300. ISPreview understands that the accident occurred at around 5pm yesterday, while Openreach’s engineers were working to pull a new sub duct, albeit breaking Netomnia’s duct/cable at the same time. Repairs to main fibre links can be complex and time-consuming, although Netomnia hope to have it fixed by tonight.
Sadly, such accidents, while rare, do occasionally occur when network operators need to work in close proximity to each other’s infrastructure (Netomnia runs a lot of their fibre via Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles). Thankfully, this outage only impacts part of Netomnia’s network in the Bristol area. The operator has invested £47.7m to deploy their fibre across 159,000 premises in the area.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I had the same thing happen locally last year. BT in doing their work on the cable had expanded their use in the under pavement area beyond the space available and hammered the cover shut cutting cityfibres cable in the process. They denied they had even been there.
I wouldn’t just assume these incidents are accidental, they seemed to have a cavalier disregard for their competitors equipment, acted maliciously and lied about it.
suspect it happens to Openreach network much more than alnets, but Openreach tend not to gob off about it. pretty unprofessional comment from Netomnia
Nonsense. The damage was almost certainly done by a subcontractor, who would not consider Netomnia a ‘competitor’. They’re just another telecoms company. Someone else they might work for in the future.
Now, “the real Witcher”, it may come as a shock, and you may need to seat down for this.
Your beloved hero, BT has had news stories before about other telecoms companies not updating databases or following their rules, right on this site.
Wants wrong about stating the facts; if the fault was down to them, it’s factual. Typical BT Fan/Employee/BT Shareholder, keep it quiet if BT, but if its someone else then name and shame….
Use your own infrastructure if you don’t want this sort of risk Jeremy. Can you imagine Clive Selley posting on social media about another fibre provider damaging Openreach network such as when Netomnia knocked out some DSLAM’s in Guildford
Agreed. Very unprofessional, its clear their aim is to damage reputation with the customers affected.
What happened in Guildford? Presume a higher fibre count cable was damaged as the individual cabinet fibre is usually in sub-duct.
T – They pay for it, your beloved idol BT, does not give access for free!!!!
Its only pay back
A childish comment. It’s unlikely BT did it deliberately.
Payback for what in your eyes? For being a successful competitor and giving choice?
Tell us all what the payback is….
Imagine Openreach publicly sent a message out with who’s to blame every time an alt net, council or other utility damaged one of their cables.
I’d imagine the CEO will also publicly apologise every time one of their engineers damages another competitors network from now on…..
Wait till the mobile operators “Accidentally” bend an antenna or do similar… Towers cover a larger area especially on 800MHz here in the rural Valleys of South Wales…
I can imagine it “Bryn it’s b’there” “b’where? Oh b’there!” Snap!
Yeah.. we can’t have network operators being transparent about who caused the damage to their networks.. that would be terrible [end sarcasm]. I for one would welcome operators doing that as naming and shaming has a tendency to collectively reduce bad practice.
Lister, then you would be put off most companies
Certainly unprofessional.
Damage can occur at anytime people are working. Ideally networks are installed and only maintenance visits are needed and with fibre that should be seldom.
Engineers will have been careful but with the lack of quality by subcontractors I have personally seen it is a difficult issue and Openreach have a lot of copper to remove going forward and the Altnets using PIA are not making that easy.
I am sure Openreach are experiencing multiple damage issues daily to their fibre and copper.
Let he who has no sins cast the first rope burn.
Very unprofessional behaviour from the CEO.
Apologizing to the customers is a good move
The customer is king
Staying silent is what is unprofessional and not caring at all
All this stuff about “being professional”. I’d much rather companies and CEOs be transparent and reveal the root cause of issues (whether caused by themselves, others, or acts of god), it’s much less frustrating than being kept in the dark for god knows how long. This goes the other way too, if Netomnia were to damage Openreach’s infrastructure I would want them to disclose that as well, their loss if they decide not to.
Then Ofcom would gun for Openreach damaging Altnets reputation. Any other professional company doesnt highlight the failures in such a manner. Although it would be nice for it to be a level playing field and for Openreach to highlight the damages caused by Netomnia to their dslams recently.
Ofcom wouldnt have a go at Netomnia for purposely aiming to damage reputation. But if Openreach did this then it would be WW3 and all the AltNets would kick off, thats why they dont.
AltNets was an insane vision that should never have occured. The UK would be better off with a single government owned, privately run, telecoms infrastructure provider. Having sometime 3 or 4 different fibre optic companies piggy backing off of 1 companies infrastructure is madness. All utility companies damage altnets cables because they are poorly installed and hard to locate predig. On the other hand I know for a fact that the altnets have damaged a lot of utilities in the cavalier way they installed their infrastructure.
The government created a wild west of telecommunications infrastructure and we are simply reap what’s been sown.
Nexfibre are owned by the same parent company as Virgin Media and in effect building new network for VM. They are in no real sense an altnet.
Yeah, coz Post Office Telecomms/BT/Openreach never damaged their own outside plant. Never stole a pair to provide service.
Oh, no.
Never, ever.
I agree, we should have a network either government owned, but that does have its own issues, or a non-profit-making company tightly regulated. All extra money goes back into the network, not people’s pockets.
But what we have is what we have and if this is the way it is, then I am glad we have Alternative networks, just a shame it did not happen years ago in some places. I tried a wireless ISP years ago, it did not turn out as I expected, but you sometimes have to try these things.
Accidents happen, sometimes it is clumsiness, not looking where they are digging, sometimes it is because infrastructure is not where it should be.
Annoying yes and with more and more people relying on fibre for medical stuff and alarms instead of copper cables, then certainly not good.
But what can you do?
As for damage to fibre, it is going to happen, it happened in my first few days when I changed to this network, someone dug into a main trunk fibre.
‘Having sometime 3 or 4 different fibre optic companies piggy backing off of 1 companies infrastructure is madness.’
No-one forced Openreach to use PON. If they’d gone with dark fibre hardly anyone would’ve used their own. As it is have to use own to provide anything GPON can’t.
Government owned. They’d never be any money for investment. It would be sp***** up the wall on giving money away somewhere on a vanity or influence project. It would be a case of this is what you get, take it or leave it and we would be stuck in the dark ages.
Despite BT fans/employees/shareholders – the ALTNETS were the only way to force BT into action into investing in FTTP, post the Thatcher restricted era. BT would never have dreamed of symmetric services and faster than 1gbps. They still don’t offer it now, although ALTNET pressure is changing that…..
The regulation around build and overbuild is a separate thing, and this leaves open discussion…
Yup, giving a single company a monopoly has always resulted in improved services.
BT or Openreach are effectively a monopoly in rural areas, and frankly, for all their positives, they lagged behind other networks (Virgin and altnet FTTP) until the other competitors forced their hand to FTTP.
When the competition can install 1000+ MB and BT “planned” to install FTTC up to 300MB, it is what it is.
Note: I have a BT 1000 meg fibre and it has been thankfully great. So I don’t wish to sound biased on them
Alvin – Openreach has always been the largest FTTP operator in the UK, and for a long period that came from their rollout in rural parts of Cornwall, NI and Wales. It is completely false to say they “lagged behind” or that it had an urban focus.
While the altnets might have pushed things along a bit (though I think the relatively underwhelming performance of G.fast would have done that), it’s not like Openreach had never heard of the term “FTTP” until the altnet boom of the last few years.
Virgin are in an even worse state. When you don’t count Nexfibre (though really people should given that it is just VM in different clothing) so much of their “full fibre” network was actually RFoG which has all of the same issues that their traditional cable network has (which they called “fibre” years before Openreach deployed FTTC/FTTP). It can be easily upgraded to PON, but it’s been rather slow going.
Just saying, you upset the fibre masters, who put you all on the C table you pay the price of time, always pay your man, especially if he knows your network.
Not sure you meant it that way but you sound like a mafioso shaking fibre networks down for protection money
Having worked in the network for the last 29 years I can tell you categorically that the alt nets will do ANYTHING to get their cables into already overcrowded underground conduits, even if it means taking existing working cables out!! Openreach will arrive at a fault caused by these alt nets and instead of ripping out the recently installed cables to put their own cables back in, they have to work another way out at their expense!!
Too true brother – seen it a hundred times, if not thousands…. Turn up to a fault – oh – brand new pink fibre optic cables installed in our network – no room for these existing black cables that have been here for years serving existing customers…. let’s just rip em out, cut them back, get ours in and get the hell out of here before someone realises what we’ve done – because we get paid for the job – not the consequences…. that’s someone else’s problem….
I call bull on that, can you imagine the stink if they did that, Openreach would cry to Ofcom, and it would be looked into.
You may get the odd person who may, but not the way you describe it.
People do anything to knock down altnets and big up Openreach, I suppose you have to protect your shares somehow.
That is the problem with this site, full of Openbreach and Bloated toad fanboys. Say anything bad about BT and OR and the fanboys cry.
Before anyone says it, no I am not an Altnet fanboy, they do what I need, and they get me away from Openreach, also give more choice.
‘That is the problem with this site, full of Openbreach and Bloated toad fanboys. Say anything bad about BT and OR and the fanboys cry.’
Luckily no-one forces you to use it, though I’m sure everyone would really miss your hilarious nicknames, fascinating anecdotes and erudite opinions.
I couldn’t agree more and the way I have seen alt net contractors work is shocking and in every case I have observed them in breach of H&S regulations.
As for you Ad47uk you are entitled to your view but you are extremely misguided. Take it from someone who spent 35 years in the industry.
It’s ok for over service providers to cut , rope burn and stamp all over openreach network . Not a thing is said . But when openreach does it it’s all over the Google news .
Garbage from another BT fan.
BT been on this very web site before in news articles moaning about ALTNETS not updating databases and following rules.
About time we have clarity from Netomnia on issues, the amount of times I see issues and nothing gets said about it
If you are a Netomnia customer, and in an affected area, they usually email you (read not always), and a status update is available in your my account portal.
Jobs never go well that start at 5pm on a friday!
Where’s the resiliency? And before anyone says anything, CotyFovre ensure resiliency at every FEX…
How do you build access network resiliency without at least doubling the price to end customers?
This is my specialist subject, so keen to understand your answer to a decades old problem. You’ll become famous!
Cityfibre already do build resilience in the access network, on the PON side, so it can be done.
Aware the metro rings are resilient however PON can’t work that way. Would have to either have it connected to two OLT ports per PON or resplice each PON to spare fibre in case of outage, repatching as necessary in FEX.
Still means a truck roll and splicing, in the case of an incident like this it’d save them pulling in a new cable but the rest is much the same.
Unless there’s some other technology I don’t know about but PON is, well, passive, so all the smarts have to be either end.
Previous fibre breaks on the PON needed splicing anyway. If they’ve a newer technology, awesome, but I’ve not heard mention of it and the marketing material is quite careful not to suggest redundancy past the ‘main routes’. Education welcome.
Even if you doubled all the fibres and had, in effect, two parallel PONs the same problem exists in that whatever breaks path A will almost certainly break path B, unless you route your parallel network down different ducts and enter buildings via different ingress points.
My heuristic for access network resilience is that it’s a 2.5 cost multiplier for four nines resilience, 4x for five nines or better separacy and diversity.
It almost never costs in and residential customers will overwhelmingly prefer cheap and occasionally breaks vs really expensive but almost never breaks.
Strange, when I was in Ipswich, CF was off for over a day once due to a single fibre break.
CityFibre ensures resiliency to each of their FEXs, including one leg, using PIA in many cases. So what happened here?
The break was on the access side not the core. Netomnia do not use cabinets their OLTs are in Openreach exchanges, high fibre count cables required to get customers to the exchanges whether CityFibre FEX or Openreach.
@pp
Cityfibre build resilience in the access network, on the PON side, between the OLT and the primary nodes.
Thanks.
Aware there is spare fibre between the primary nodes and the FEX. The customers are still going offline until the secondary path has been spliced and patched though.
Unless you’re saying there are two OLT ports, etc, for each PON or an automated failover system that blocks the backup path which would be very cool but doesn’t seem likely given how long fibre breaks at the PN to FEX level have taken to fix in the past and that splicing to spare fibres has been mentioned in wholesale service status reports.
Some utility company cut through a gas main thirty odd years ago, I’m not naming names…. He he, there was quite a few homes without heating for a while, fortunately we were just outside of the zone that had the gas turned off.
It was reported at the time it was on the underground maps and was exactly where it should have been.
Caused quite a stink for a while,( Methyl mercaptan)
Cheap AltNet skimping at network build. If it was service critical, build in resilliance routing (backup) net and reroute traffic. But no go to a cheap nasty altnet and you get what u pay for! The number of altnets that knock off OR cables is colossal. Never gets publicity as they are professional. We’ve seen it before, big telecom boom then most will go bust or be bought out and crushed. Watch this space.
Professional Openreach don’t have resilience for PON either just FYI. Lose the high fibre count cable between exchange and aggregation node it stays broken until it’s repaired.
You seem to be judging Netomnia based on customers going offline. That would happen to anyone. There isn’t an entire second network running alongside the primary one. Most anyone has is spare fibres, same as copper services may have had spare pairs but there wasn’t an entire parallel pair count E-side sitting there just in case.
Not sure why you’re expecting higher standards of resilience on FTTP than were there on copper whether it’s Openreach or anyone else’s network.
Funny that this happens 10 fold to BT cables but it’s not a big deal, and some of it is blatant malicious damage by alt net contractors, we get regular repair jobs with damaged caused by alnets, and some are cables cut at the base of nodes and just left, cables cut and used to pull their own cable in because they couldn’t be bothered rodding, taking out hundreds of customers/businesses. BT/Openreach are just the big boy everyone loves to hate but alt nets seem to pay any absolute donkey to do their cabling.