I’m hoping that @vero will wander in here and put us right (and maybe explain what the words I gave really meant, if suitable for a family website). 
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Regard de visite… is the best I can do, but locally it’s just “regard”
https://www.pointp.fr/c/regards-de-visite/x4snv4_dig_2003231
Sewer mouth, bouche d’égout ie access to mains sewers for a person. Also called a regard de chaussée. Disgust is dégout without an apostrophe.
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Thanks Vero.
It is fascinating how on Internet forums a simple request for help can be diverted into a scholarly discussion on the etymology and usage of the word for manhole… (as for “personhole” I always thought the word manhole missed the point anyway, as its prime function is to provide access for monitoring and maintenance --therefore régard is a much better word as it is does not specify the size or nature of the orifice).
Meanwhile we have signed up for ADSL in the interim which it seems we can switch to fibre in short order once we have found a means of supplying it. For this purpose the advice we have received from Orange’s English helpline is to contact an electrician in the first instance. If it proves that there is no intermediate régard but instead a blockage in the duct we are supposedly to contact an entreprise des voiries et réseaux divers who will have permission to dig up the road.
My apologies for the hijack 
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OH and I have just returned from our daily walk round the village.
Today, I made a point of peering at the pavements (not just to avoid the frost) and noticed 5 of the large, rectangular “regards” clearly marked Telecom… set into the pavement. They were in different roads but, presumably each one serves the several houses near/around it.
A simple cable comes out of the tarmac/pavement beside each house. The cable goes up the housewall into very small white box, where the cable makes the detour indoors through the stonework.
This is France Telecom work, done in 2012.
I’m hoping that “if” fibre ever comes here, they can simply pull the fibre through the existing “whatever” used by France Telecom.
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No é, it is a regard :-). and not necessarily a better word since a regard just lets you have a look inside, it doesn’t generally give you bodily access.
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It depends who is responsible for the fibre installation in your village. There are separate Réseau d’Initiative Publique (RIP) organisations in some departments who are financing, installing, operating and maintaining fibre in more rural villages on behalf of the department e.g. Losange Fibre in the Grand Est. FT, Free, SFR, Bouygues, and other internet providers then will pay Losange to use the fibre to provide services.
There is not yet fibre to the house in my village. However in the next village it was implemented last year. The installation had to include separate poles where telephone wiring was not on shared electricity poles (and I think they laid some new underground cables as well). Presumably France Telecom don’t want to be responsible for ongoing pole maintenance once they have no interest in them after the copper wire is removed.
Hi,
Yes, we had a fairly similar experience. It seems FT either kept sloppy records of their assets or just through the various convolutions of FT’s life, there is no one left who either knows or gives enough of a crap to help.
I actually have no idea what really happened that got us connected. Just one of those miracles of the system D and being the squeaky wheel. We kept badgering them and got placed on a priority list. Little to our knowledge, our next door neighbour was having a similar problem and had been badgering them for the last year. Somehow, they managed to escalate the job to a high enough level at Orange. Eventually, the correct team of technicians was sent to their house to connect them (they originally sent a common domestic connection guy), and while they were there, the same team realised that there was also an open job on our house, so they connected us as the same time. We only had to wait 1 month.
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My telephone line comes in from a pole in the field across the road to my eaves and then runs down the wall into the cellar. House was re-rendered since the line was installed. I was told I had to provide a new access point into the cellar before fibre could be installed. Technician did use the existing phone cable to pull the fibre up from the cellar and behind the plasterboard but only when I asked nicely. He had wanted to drill through the floorboards.