My fibre is no longer connected to several telegraph poles, to be honest it’s never been fixed properly from the get go when it was installed 2 years back. I’ve previous got my own ladders out and made my own fixes to wooden poles but enough is enough, the fibre cable is now detached from a metal pole and wooden pole.
I can’t really afford to be without internet for any period of time hence previously me resecuring the fibre to the wooden poles myself.
So I decided to contact my internet provider Bouygues yesterday about the fibre cable lying in the hedge back/road but because my internet was still working they said it wasn’t their responsibility and I should contact Covage.com who are responsible for the infrastructure.
That seemed a bit unfair to me but if that’s how it is, however I thought what if the fibre cable had been damaged (surely it will very soon) and my internet had failed, would Bouygues send out a technician only to inform me it’s a infrastructure issue and it’s up to me to contact Covage.com ?
Anyway back to the present, the Covage.com website doesn’t have a fault reporting section just a contact us form, that’s it.
Have I been fobbed off by Bouygues or that’s just how it is in France?
I don’t think you’ve been fobbed-off. B are not responsible for the cables (I seem to recall that this was passing from Orange to someone (??)) and you do still have internet.
Why not mention the cables lying down… at the Mairie… ask their advice about who (if anyone) needs telling…
I’ve noticed quite a few cables hanging-low/lying along the hedgerows but they still seem to work
hopefully, there will be a grand tidying-up at some stage
You may actually be better off going direct to the horse’s mouth to get it fixed, rather than via the Bogey-Men - in the UK BT Openreach will not talk to members of the public, you are forced to pass complaints about service or infrastructure via your ISP, and then it becomes a game of Chinese Whispers…
Some years ago we had a phone cable outage in the village that took six weeks to fix - it was a break in an underground cable somewhere.
I was with BT at the time and got quite friendly with the lady at the customer service centre (having been escalated up a couple of levels I actually had a named person with a direct line dealing with it).
She said they too found it really hard to get answers from Openreach on when a problem might be sorted.
I believe Openreach even resorted to bringing in a dowser to try and locate the break!
In the end, I got reconnected by asking for a new phone line and having the old one disconnected - unbelievably there was spare working capacity in the cabling from the exchange so I got back online within two days!!!
If you go into the menu ‘Opérateur de RIP’ and there select your local fibre operator (not Bouygues, the local operator of the infrastructure) then on that page you will find a link to that operator. That is who you should be asking about your fallen cable. The fibre network as I understand it is split into two different sections with responsibility given to two different entities. One manages the infrastructure and the other manages the connections. A problem with the connection can be dealt with by Bouygues, but not a problem with the infrastructure.
Bouygues already told me it was Covage.com who are responsible for the fibre infrastructure for my area. But their website doesn’t lend itself to fault reporting.
Which website am I checking this menu ‘Opérateur de RIP’ ?
I do not recommend anyone tamper/fix the cables themselves to the posts/poles… lays one open to being accused of … whatever nasties … if something subsequently happens/goes-wrong
The bit in yellow is the fibre backbone which you never see. This joins the local fibre installation in blue (the cabling to the poles) and the house connection in green. In your case Bouygues are responsible for the green bit and the RIP are responsible for the blue bit. In many cases, the yellow bit is provided by Orange but in our case it’s a local public company called Emmeraude THD.
Bouygues are only responsible for the connection between the pole and the house and the equipment in the house, so they are correct in what they say. However, they could be a lot more helpful to @Grumpy_OldMan .
Edit: Bouygues are also the first port of call if a fault occurs, and should coordinate any necessary repairs, even in the infrastructure. But, because there is no ‘fault’ then Bouygues won’t do anything.
Ah, OK. The problem you have is that there isn’t an actual fault and in these circumstances it’s very difficult to figure out who is responsible. Of course, if the cable were somehow to get damaged then you could call Bouygues and they should sort it out.
Absolutely 100% my thoughts entirely, not fob me off, yes they may not be responsible for the infrastructure but they have a better chance than I of connecting with the right people etc.
If later today a tractor cuts through the cable lying in the road side, surely Bouygues should take responsibility and manage the repair accordingly?
if your internet goes down due to the line being cut (tractor/whatever)… you contact B and tell ‘em. After that B should contact the company responsible for the cables and advise them of the damage done. After that it will be down to that company responsible to send their own techniciens or arrange substitute workers.
that is how I understand things to work in our area.
OKey dokey, instead of being pro-active (trying to prevent a certain fault), I sit and wait for my internet to go down and then react to the situation by contacting B.
you can do more… if there are communal hedges/ditches involved the chances are that the council workers will be cutting/dredging/whatever. Tell the Mairie if such is the case… they might have some clout and/or be able to tidy a little.
apart from that… yes, it’s a wait and see situation. Might not cause trouble for years, might get cut tomorrow… who knows.
I know from personal experience that the same would happen in the UK.
When I lived in a small village in Yorkshire, my copper telephone line came from a pole about 50 m away across a field. Said field had several large mature tree and the copper cable went through the branches of one of them. About every other winter the wind would shake the trees and break the cable. I lived there for over 20 years and reported the very obvious flaw of stringing a cable through tree branches. I reported it to the engineers who repaired the cable (they agreed it was stupid), to BT and anyone else I could. Nothing happened. The irony was that the connection to the house was at the back and a cable came all the way around the house to the front and through the wall. The irony was doubled by the fact there was another pole 20 m away opposite the front of the house that connected all my neighbours.
Our phone line used to come along a copper cable buried under the communal driveway. Last time it failed and disconnected our neighbours, we had huge trouble getting BT Opentrench to fix it as they had to get special permission to dig up more than (IIRC) 20m of tarmac.
Eventually I persuaded them to put up two telegraph poles and string the wire along those, which apparently did not need special authorisation from those on high!!
So yes our wires do now go near (but not through) the lower branches of a horse chestnut, but at least they are easily accessible if a fault develops!
It is a “feature” of the modern division of service and infrastructure provision.
The problem that you are not Covage’s customer - Bouygues is.
Bouygues contract with you says they give you a working internet connection - which they still are. I would guess the contract between Covage and Bouygues is that Covage provide working fibre connections to Bouygues’ cusomers. Which is also still the case even if it has fallen off the pole onto the floor.
There are probably service level agreements in each pair of contracts and doubtless if there is a general danger to road users from fallen cables the Mairie might have some traction but otherwise, until things do stop working I think you are probably limited to the contact form and a “you might like to know some cables are down at … address”.
