How long a wait for GEA link, once a cab goes live?

Learnt today from a BT engineering working on my caninet that the service would be ready to order in 4-6 weeks. He said the new cabinet had its fiber already and it was all up and running.

How long do sky take to order the GEA link, to enable me to order?

I heard a few months ago that Sky could take a very long time, or not bother to order such a link at all?

If this is still the case, I will just swap to BT as I don't want the cabinet to be at full capacity by the time Sky order the link!

Many Thanks.

In short, it could be weeks or it could be months. Either way, Sky will never tell you as it is "business sensitive information".

Some have been able to order fibre almost immediately after their exchange goes live. Me, I had to wait 10 MONTHS for the GEA link to be installed.

In reply to a post by Nighty1973:

In short, it could be weeks or it could be months. Either way, Sky will never tell you as it is "business sensitive information".

Some have been able to order fibre almost immediately after their exchange goes live. Me, I had to wait 10 MONTHS for the GEA link to be installed.

10months!

I guess I should start preparing to swap to BT then, I don't want to wait any longer for FTTC!

Are BT able to do the migration process these days without me loosing internet? Currently fully LLU for voice/data.

Wait until you can place an order on the BT infinity web site for your post code. Then wait 1-2 weeks checking the SKY ordering service. I only had to wait 1 week for SKY to offer FTTC once BT wholesale said the service was available. (BT Infinity ordering went live the same time the BT wholesale said FTTC was available).

Then after 2 weeks you can make your decision on moving to Infinity or not. I would suggest the move from SKY to Infinity would work without problems. We do not see screaming people on this board complaining of mistakes.

It's difficult to see how the Other Licensed Operators (aka Sky and TalkTalk) will ever make a profit from FTTC. The Ofcom complaints from TalkTalk seem valid (and long overdue).
A GEA Cablelink, which is a solitary 1Gbps fibre tie-cable linking BT's MDF to the OLO's HDF, is charged at a whopping �0�52000 by BT Wholesale.
Ignoring statistical multiplexing, it will take just twelve LLU customers maxed out on 80/20 profiles to saturate the bandwidth of that single link. And then the OLO will have to buy another tie-cable.
For the OLOs, it's going to take a long time to claw back even that single capital expenditure from their revenues.
The economic situation is further aggravated by a wholly-owned BT Group company selling FTTC as a loss-leader (with prices starting from �0�57.99 a month)
Yet BT Wholesale is charging Communications Providers �0�519.20 a month just to rent a VDSL2 port at the street DSLAM. On top of that, the OLO has to pay for all its backhaul costs.
We could soon be witnessing the winding--down of LLU operators. Sky and TalkTalk might continue to profit from the (dwindling) ADSL market but BT's dominant position in FTTC means that for an OLO, there's little point in even entering that market.

cheers, a

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Jun-13 19:59:17)

In reply to a post by iand:

Wait until you can place an order on the BT infinity web site for your post code. Then wait 1-2 weeks checking the SKY ordering service. I only had to wait 1 week for SKY to offer FTTC once BT wholesale said the service was available. (BT Infinity ordering went live the same time the BT wholesale said FTTC was available).

Then after 2 weeks you can make your decision on moving to Infinity or not. I would suggest the move from SKY to Infinity would work without problems. We do not see screaming people on this board complaining of mistakes.

Sounds reasonable, but as I understand it, there is no way to know for sure that they will order the GEA link quickly, so could take 10 months like the other poster mentioned?

Plus, I'm assuming that upgrading to Sky Fiber would renew a 12month contract with sky, not alllowing me to swap to infinity etc

In reply to a post by asbokid:

(with prices starting from �0�57.99 a month).....Yet BT Wholesale is charging Communications Providers �0�519.20 a month just to rent a VDSL2 port at the street DSLAM.

Huh? Some'at seems wrong there. BT Retail sells FTTC for a lot less than £57.99 a month and I can't believe that BTw charge £519.20 a month for a VDSL2 port either. Something's not right with those figures, surely?

I also think you'll find that the chances of 12 people all running their connection flat out at the same time are fairly low. But overall I do agree. I said as much several years ago when FTTC was just being announced especially in conjunction with WBMC - there just doesn't seem many areas left where LLUOs can undercut BTw based products or provide a better service

Edited by Andrue (Tue 18-Jun-13 22:16:24)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Huh? Some'at seems wrong there. BT Retail sells FTTC for a lot less than �0�557.99 a month and I can't believe that BTw charge �0�5519.20 a month for a VDSL2 port either. Something's not right with those figures, surely?

I said as much several years ago when FTTC was just being announced especially in conjunction with WBMC - there just doesn't seem many areas left where LLUOs can undercut BTw based products or provide a better service

Oops the pound signs weren't properly rendering, coupled with the folly of copying BT prices from the comments section of a website. Better stick with GBP and the official price lists!

The current BT Openreach price list shows a wholesale rental charge for an 80/20 VDSL2 DSLAM port of GBP 119.40 per annum. That's GBP 9.95 per month. And then there's a hefty connection fee of GBP 92.00 (masked by lengthy minimum term retail contracts). Prices are ex. VAT [1]

In May 2013, a "confidential" WIK-Consult report commissioned by TalkTalk plc was "leaked". The authors of that report claim that the base case cost to Openreach of providing a VDSL2 port (almost regardless of its provisioned speed) is just GBP 4.39 a month. [2]

In other words, BT Openreach is making a comfortable profit from FTTC.

Back in May 2012, Andrew Ferguson of ThinkBroadband laid out the economics, as they were understood back then, of GEA Wholesale costs. [3] That was at the time that TalkTalk was first raising its objections to what it claims is a margin squeeze by BT. We can add to Andrew's figures, the astronomical GBP 2000 cost to LLU operators for the "GEA Cablelink" (an MDF to HDF 1 Gbps fibre optic tie-cable).

It is that poxy cable, worth just a couple of quid, which in part is holding up LLU rollout of fibre products across Britain. TalkTalk apparently has just 5,000 FTTC subscribers compared to over 400,000 for BT Retail and Plus Net. And yet that GBP 2000 bill for a tie-cable while huge is just the tip of the iceberg. The LLU operator still has his opex and possible capex costs for the fibre backhaul to price in, including new layer 2 switching in all the hand-over exchanges.

Okay, so BT officially operates under (somewhat fanciful) conditions of EOA - applying "equivalence" in access costs to its own subsidiary companies and competitors alike. Nevertheless, at BT Group level this condition is irrelevant. The Group can afford to run BT Retail and Plus Net on an artificially low profit margin, or even at a loss, recouping those losses through bumper revenues at Openreach. That seems to be what's happening.

Though it's not all sour grapes over BT. Britain sorely needed this investment, and BT was the only company with the wherewithal to find the GBP2.5bn the fibre rollout has apparently cost. And in a sense it feels like TalkTalk and Sky are behaving like parasites, since they invested nothing of their own in the cabinet rollout itself. However, if we are left with no competition in the faster broadband market place, BT is in a predatory position. Better off under state ownership, then. Where its "profits" could rightly be used to pay for other important investments like Aunty Maud's long-overdue haemorrhoids operation

cheers, a

[1] http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricin...

[2] http://br0kent3l3ph0n3.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/bts-...

[3] http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5217-talktalk-rai...

Edited by deleted (Wed 19-Jun-13 02:21:52)

BT retail are operating in the black. of course dont know how much of that is due to eg. call revenues or line rental rather than broadband.

As I understand (understood) the BT retail prices are set higher then BTw. So there is a margin there, the quesion is if its big enough.

I think all the major isps are quite possibly (but dont know really) loss leading, as they all gunning for triple play subs.

Isp's that dont do triple play charge way more than all of talktalk, bt and sky.

When the cab went live at my last place I could order Sky fibre the day after I could order BT Infinity. Admittedly the exchange was AO 6 weeks earlier so I'm not sure when Sky fibre was actually available.