Last week I mentioned our FTTP case was now handled by OpenReach’s Uber Complex Chief Engineer – I can now report back that it’s about as much bullshit as it sounds. On Tuesday I received the following text from OpenReach:

Hi, this is Openreach. We recently attended your property and discussed that further work is required. Before we can complete the work that is needed, we require you to sign a Permission to Work, which was sent to you via email on 31/03/25. If you can please return this, we can take the next steps in getting you set up to enjoy your FTTP service.

Only, there are two problems with this: (a) if someone was indeed here, they didn’t get as far as to ring the bell; certainly nothing has been discussed with us, and (b) no forms were emailed to us (yes, I checked the spam folder). But, of course, the number they use to text me doesn’t accept replies, so it’s back to our ISP to chase this up on our behalf.

Our ISP has been very helpful so far, but I must admit that after 6 weeks I am getting tired of this, and beginning to suspect OpenReach are deliberately obtuse (it mirrors my experience with BT, which is the reason why BT stopped being our ISP years ago). In fact, I am contemplating making a complaint to OFCOM, but of course, they don’t have an offline path for complaining about OpenReach, so that will take a letter; I’ll give it another 24h on account of the sunshine.