Fibre On Demand

Has there been any further news on Fibre On Demand for FTTC enabled areas?

Last I heard was Spring 2013 so not a million miles away maybe...

Not that I am aware of.

No guarantee to get it, as it is only FTTC enabled areas. Not every cabinet will be fibre-enabled, and those with lines directly from the exchange are probably not included in the upcoming fibre-on-demand either.

Love to think otherwise, but surely this will be serously expensive (at least by the standards of home connections).

I've seen £500-£1500 mentioned.

Although i should be paid more than BT's sales guys...

What they should do, is offer new 5 year FTTP contracts. @ £50 per month.

lets say the install cost of FTTP is £1500, at the top end of the scale you mention. £25 a month over 5 years pays for that cost. the other £25 is the data.

Win for the customer, £50 a month is not so bad.

Win for the ISP, they have a customer tied to them for 5 years.

I would sign on the dotted line tomorrow..

I don't think many residential users would sign a 5 year contract!

Why not? Plenty of people are signing 20 year contracts for the subsidised installation of solar panels.

You can make a profit with solar panels

You could make a profit reselling fibre to your neighbours too

In reply to a post by billford:

You can make a profit with solar panels

But you will never recover the cost.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

You could make a profit reselling fibre to your neighbours too

I haven't checked my ISP's T&C's, but I suspect there's something in there to stop me doing that!

Sure, your average consumer ISP would normally prevent it, but FTTPoD is being aimed at businesses (at least to begin with) and most business broadband contracts are a lot less restrictive in those regards.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But you will never recover the cost.

That ought to be true, and I'm not sure what the current feed-in tariff is, but with the ridiculous ones in operation last year- yes, you will.

The only thing that stopped me fitting them was that I don't have a south-facing roof- it was getting more marginal with east- and west-facing.

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But you will never recover the cost.

That ought to be true, and I'm not sure what the current feed-in tariff is, but with the ridiculous ones in operation last year- yes, you will.

That depends how long you are sure you will be in the house, (negotiating a premium price on the basis of them feels dodgy), and what your reasonable life expectancy is .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

That depends how long you are sure you will be in the house, [ ... ] and what your reasonable life expectancy is .

Thus proving my point if those periods are long enough

I think the estimated payback time last year was in the region of ten to twenty years... a not unreasonable commitment period for many people, and backed up (in fact they were an over-estimate) by some figures I've seen for an actual installation.

I think we'd best leave it at that, we're way off-topic!

Edited by billford (Sun 24-Jun-12 01:07:18)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by billford:

You can make a profit with solar panels

But you will never recover the cost.

Oh yes you will! I make £1600 per annum on my array of PV solar panels at 43p per KWH. My investment was £10000. Paid off in 6 to 7 years with another 18 years pure profit.

Admittedly with the new FiT of 21p KWH it would take 14 years to pay off. However that is still an investment return of >6%. Tell me of any better way of investing £10000.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Not that I am aware of.

No guarantee to get it, as it is only FTTC enabled areas. Not every cabinet will be fibre-enabled, and those with lines directly from the exchange are probably not included in the upcoming fibre-on-demand either.

Surely FTTP isn't dependent on cabinets being FTTC enabled? If that were the case, I can't see there would be that many takers, as most who would want it would have gone for FTTC already, and the difference between 80Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP are going to be pretty marginal for most people, especially considering the price.

I thought the idea was the FTTP would soak up the awkard/less-profitable/forgotten customers who don't have any other options. i.e. exchange-only and other non FTTC enabled lines, provided the exchange itself has been covered by FTTC.

Can someone more knowledgeable say for sure what the general policy is?

General Policy

10 to 15% of UK on FTTP and no choice of FTTC - not rolled out much yet, as harder to do.
FTTP on Demand in areas where FTTC available, new fibre ran from the cabinet to the property that orders it, i.e. not dedicated fibre all the way to the exchange.

Exchange only lines
------------------------
1. May put a new street cabinet in some areas to serve the lines
2. May use FTTP in some areas (with no street cabinet), the passive hardware in pavement or on a pole.
3. Which will be done where, varies according the costs, and also what funding is available via local broadband projects

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

10 to 15% of UK on FTTP and no choice of FTTC - not rolled out much yet, as harder to do.
FTTP on Demand in areas where FTTC available, new fibre ran from the cabinet to the property that orders it, i.e. not dedicated fibre all the way to the exchange.

Thanks, but I'm still not completely clear on what that means in practice.

I'm on an exchange which has FTTC, but with no plans to upgrade my cabinet. Am I likely to be able to get FTTP when it rolls out next year?

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Jun-12 13:33:29)

On my current understanding - no.

Depends on why they aren't upgrading your cabinet, and whether it will get done as part of a BDUK project. In short there a lot of variables that are unknown still.

plenty of better investments than solar panels. I would rather have 4% pa and the money still available, than 6% pa and something parked on my roof.

That's the key difference - the capital is lost on solar panels unlike most investments.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

On my current understanding - no.

Depends on why they aren't upgrading your cabinet, and whether it will get done as part of a BDUK project. In short there a lot of variables that are unknown still.

That's disappointing.

I can't see any technical/physical reason for not upgrading the cabinet, and the business reasons to ignore us are (to me, at least) pretty tenuous. Personally I'm of the opinion that BT are simply dragging their heels so they get more of the BDUK/Council money, rather than investing in it themselves.

BDUK funding has been allocated to our area, but obviously I have no idea what is going to be done, nor when. Our local authority seems to be more concerned with hooking up rural areas, and expermenting with satelite tech. I don't know if they've even realised that a decent number of people living in large towns can't get near 2Mbps. There's probably enough of us to skew their statistics, so I guess I'll get in touch and point it out... seems like a no brainer to just upgrade the cabinet, but who knows.

Surely FTTP isn't dependent on cabinets being FTTC enabled? If that were the case, I can't see there would be that many takers, as most who would want it would have gone for FTTC already, and the difference between 80Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP are going to be pretty marginal for most people, especially considering the price.

Adding to MrSaffron's reply, there is also the major point that FTTC speed is "up to 80Mbps", dependent on distance from the cabinet. FTTP is 100Mbps, fixed.

And very soon 300+

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Surely FTTP isn't dependent on cabinets being FTTC enabled? If that were the case, I can't see there would be that many takers, as most who would want it would have gone for FTTC already, and the difference between 80Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP are going to be pretty marginal for most people, especially considering the price.

Adding to MrSaffron's reply, there is also the major point that FTTC speed is "up to 80Mbps", dependent on distance from the cabinet. FTTP is 100Mbps, fixed.

Sure, but I'd guess that for most people the speed available on FTTC is going to be fast enough, that FTTP would be a needless extravagance.

Especially as those getting poor speeds from FTTC are presumably some distance from the cabinet, where FTTP is also likely to be proportionally more expensive to install.

Surely there would be signifanctly more take-up and more benefit, from offering such services to people who don't already have *several* choices for superfast broadband.

I also believe that a house with fibre, is more desireable than one without.

Certainly i believe the £1500 paid, is value added to that desire, by more than £1500.

to me, i would just treat it as something that adds value to the house.

I also suspect that many people, to get FTTP, would sign a 5 year contract.

BDUK funding is for the rural 'white' areas's where the market will not invest without public funding, urban areas are not part of the project but i would not be suprised to see some cabinets enabled- particuarly those on the edge of the urban area's.