Can broadband providers install their infrastructure in apartments without a wayleave agreement?

Rob5342

When CiyFibre installed my connection they said they needed a wayleave agreement to unblock the duct in the neighbours garden, so I find it hard to believe that they could just rock up and install cabling for multiple flats.

Given my experience of managing agents I wouldn't expect them to have any clue about anything! It wouldn't surprise me if CityFibre just had a blanket arrangment with the freeholder that let them install fibre in all of their buildings.

Merryb

FWIW Openreach installed full fibre boxes to my neighbours house without his knowledge or consent so it does happen. I asked the engineers if it was FF as I wondered if it was available in our road as I had seen it being installed but BT had already told me it wasn't  available. The neighbour was with Sky and was bemused to say the least - not sure if they had got the wrong address or what went wrong there.

Tyjen

A couple of days ago there were men working outside my block of council flats, I asked them who they were and what they were doing as I've had no notification of any planned works, they said they were City Fibre and were fitting fttp for someone in the block and whilst they are here they are doing the whole block of 4 flats. As I was unsure of what was going on I rang my provider talktalk and there was nothing at all on their records regarding fttp installation at my flat. I wondered who was paying the cost of the installation so googled and it came up "The cost to install fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband is usually covered by the service provider". How can it be if the provider didn't even know about the installation?? 
Then yesterday I got a phone call from someone who said they were from talktalk, they said they had noticed I had been on the website trying to sign up for fttp and I was having problems in doing so. I was on the website but I was not looking into signing up, (I was actually on Chat regarding the issue with City Fibre)Then the man on the phone asked me wether I was a talktalk customer, that's when alarm bell started ringing as if he was from talktalk he would have known wether I was or wasn't. So I bluntly said Im not interested and ended the call. I then did 1471 to get the callers number, it was a local number, talktalk are not local to me, so I blocked the number.
I then contacted my son and he reckons that a scam company acquired a list of properties that recently had fttp installed and matched it with a list of phone numbers at those addresses.
It looks to me that City Fibre are being underhand in installing fttp without permission and then passing details of those address!

 

MattMattMattUK

Tyjen said:

A couple of days ago there were men working outside my block of council flats, I asked them who they were and what they were doing as I've had no notification of any planned works, they said they were City Fibre and were fitting fttp for someone in the block and whilst they are here they are doing the whole block of 4 flats. As I was unsure of what was going on I rang my provider talktalk and there was nothing at all on their records regarding fttp installation at my flat. I wondered who was paying the cost of the installation so googled and it came up "The cost to install fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband is usually covered by the service provider". How can it be if the provider didn't even know about the installation??

TalkTalk use OpenReach as a network, City Fibre use their own network, City Fibre paid for the cost of installing their FTTP network, not TalkTalk.

Tyjen said:

Then yesterday I got a phone call from someone who said they were from talktalk, they said they had noticed I had been on the website trying to sign up for fttp and I was having problems in doing so. I was on the website but I was not looking into signing up, (I was actually on Chat regarding the issue with City Fibre)Then the man on the phone asked me wether I was a talktalk customer, that's when alarm bell started ringing as if he was from talktalk he would have known wether I was or wasn't. So I bluntly said Im not interested and ended the call. I then did 1471 to get the callers number, it was a local number, talktalk are not local to me, so I blocked the number.
I then contacted my son and he reckons that a scam company acquired a list of properties that recently had fttp installed and matched it with a list of phone numbers at those addresses.

It could be a scam, it could be legitimate, it could be a marketing agency on commission.

Tyjen said:

It looks to me that City Fibre are being underhand in installing fttp without permission and then passing details of those address!

That is almost certainly not what has happened, you will likely find one resident ordered City Fibre so they installed to all four flats, that is it, nothing underhand, no conspiracy involved. 

iniltous

As you say it’s a council block , the tenants have no involvement in the decision, if City Fibre have an agreement with whatever local authority or organisation that effectively owns the block of flats , then it doesn’t matter if the individual tenants wants FTTP or not , or it could  be a tenant made representations to CF , who , knowing they had at least one potential customer , contacted the council and requested permission to ‘wire’ the flats , either way , it’s not really your concern the work won’t be inside your flat , just in the common areas in the building, they may leave an access point on your outside wall , but that’s the councils wall , not yours .

I’m not sure why after seeing this work taking place , you would call Talk Talk , it’s got nothing at all to do with them , Talk Talk are available on City Fibre ( not just Openreach ) but they don’t know what CF are doing  until City Fibre have made the addresses ready for service , plus AFAIK, TT are not in every area where City Fibre is installed, so even when this City Fibre work is completed , TT may still not be able to offer service over it , TT are just a user of other companies external networks , they don’t own or operate any of their own 

As far as TT contacting you , it was the case ( and probably still is ) if you go on their site and leave a way for them to contact you ( although they may not say it directly ) , if you do enter any info like an email , phone number or whatever , they see that enquiry as a way to contact you ,  if I ever look at sites like that , I never enter my details as I know a follow up call will be made by them , it’s probably not a scam , it’s marketing, and just them trying to sell you something, as you are already a customer , then obviously it’s something of a waste of their own time …but it’s not a scam , it probably says in the small print ‘we reserve the right to use the information you have provided’ for marketing purposes, they won’t cross reference if you are already a customer, it’s not worth the effort, most looking at the ‘can I get TT ‘  won’t be currently TT customers but customers of other ISP , looking at what TT can offer .

If you suspect City Fibre are doing this work without permission, contact your landlord , but there is a reasonable chance that they won’t know , these decisions are made much further up the food chain 

FYI , City Fibre is a network provider not an ISP , you can’t order ‘City Fibre’ , you order from an ISP that uses CF network, some ISPs use multiple networks, Talk Talk is one such ISP , others like BT , EE , Sky don’t use City Fibre , if you go onto CF website to order , it shows the ISP ps you can order with , you don’t pay City Fibre , you pay the ISP , the ISP pays City Fibre , in the same way Openreach and BT/EE operate .

flaneurs_lobster

MattMattMattUK said:

That is almost certainly not what has happened, you will likely find one resident ordered City Fibre so they installed to all four flats, that is it, nothing underhand, no conspiracy involved. 

To be clear, what City Fibre have installed is the cabling into the block of flats (presumably with the permission of the freeholder, a Housing Association?) that will allow individual flat dwellers to connect to their fibre network at some point in the future if/when they want to. Makes perfect sense if they were installing for one flat to put the necessary in place for all the others. 

Tyjen

Thank you for all your comments, at my age it's difficult to get my head around whats going on around me! 

Kairi1844

Hi Paul, did you ever get anywhere with this? It has just happened to me and my block of six private owned flats, i am the owner of mine and we are also the management company. City fibre didn't ask permission and just came and installed because a new Tennant in 5 wanted sky. No permission from anyone and now we all have fibre leads running above our doors. Thinking of talking to a solicitor. Massive headache as we run the management of the building ourselves I now have to chase them for paperwork for insurance purposes otherwise in the event of a fire our insurance would not pay out with work here now we have no documentation for.