Contractors laying fibre for virgin without conduit

I don't think you realise how thin a fibre is, that is conduit 

Apparently I don't! Thanks for the info.

I was aware the actual strands are thin but presumed they had a protective layer around them that would look like that, in addition to some sort of pipe/conduit.

I'm probably paranoid after 10+ years of begging open reach to fix a faulty copper line. I'm currently relying on mobile internet with a high gain antenna.

We are an RFoG area and the installation is similar here with the empty green blown fibre tubes in the ground under pavements and under roads. The green tubes are as tough as old boots, the short piece shown here is near impossible to bend.  When a customer places an order the tube is extended from the edge of the property to the home and then a new fibre is inserted ( from the street cabinet end to the house ).

The tube shown in the photo has an 8mm outside diameter with a 4mm bore. Tubes of this type run from the street cabinet to the edge of each property.

Currently VM is using 12mm microduct for its XGS-PON installations between cabinets.

Time will tell how durable microducts buried in the ground are, I can see situations where the ducts become damaged and because only one or two houses are affected they are just marked as unserviceable since the only way to fix a microduct is to dig it up. 

We are 150 meters from the VM service cabinet, microduct damage due to utility works would be easy to spot.

Microducts are very simple to repair, after that replacement fibres can be re-blown.

The microducts are designed to be direct buried, and if there is serious damage the affected segment will be removed and after cleaning the ends of the remaining sections a replacement segment is spliced in. Usually this repair work is a lot less time-consuming than for conventional ducts of an HFC network.