Keep some of the money back for 'repairs'.
This story on CityFibre gives me a timely opportunity to have a minor moan. I was visiting friends yesterday, who live in a Vermin Media service area and....for some reason, actually take VM's service.
Along their road, the buried VM cables transit the 'inside edge' of the pavement, before turning circa 90 degrees 'inwards' towards the properties using a 'CATV' marked box in the ground. From this, it then runs under a few feet of grass verge before reaching the boundary - in this case a wall.
CityFibre's local contractors (Not sure who is it round here, although I think it's Telec Networks) are in the process of running in infrastructure for real FTTP all over the place, and in this location appear to be using some sort of trenching machine. Now, CF are running their fibre/ducting along the boundary line. In the case of my friends and their immediate neighbor, they managed to shove the trenching machine through the buried VM Cables. My friend's drop cable was taped up and lightly buried suggesting 'no problem here, Guv.', but the neighbors cable had been ripped right out of the ground with such force that the coax had been stretched and pulled out of the buried connector. It's not particularly weedey coax either - something along the lines of RG213/URM67/LMR400 (OK, it's not armored or LDFxxx, but pretty tough normally).
Fairly recently, the VM phone service changed from analog POTS via a 2W pair/Co-Ax 'Hybrid' drop to VOIP only, with the VM Set-top-box providing telephone service inside the house using an internal VoIP-FXS adapter.
Result:Neither Internet OR 'phone service at each property. My friend and I 'bodged' service back into place with some scrap co-ax and tape, mainly as the elderly-ish neighbors were very anxious about the no 'phone service part.. I don't *know* how many other properties along the road were affected, but my guess is quite a few (The contractor's people obviously didn't learn from the 1st mistake!).
Dear CityFibre, please keep some of this 318 Mil back to fix the eff-ups of your contractors, or at least fund the efforts to chase them into fixing the issues caused..
Do I feel sorry for Vermin Media in this instance? Almost.