How much does it cost to have FTTP installed?

I am on the Whitchurch (THWI) exchange. We were one of the winners of the Race to Infinity. Most of the cabinets in the town have been deployed with FTTC and have been available for 18 months or so. My cabinet was not deployed with FTTC and we understood that we would eventually get FTTP. I live in a cul-de-sac of 20 properties off a road where the phone lines are supplied by telegraph poles and overhead cables. In our newer properties (1977) the phone lines are supplied underground by armoured cable.

Over the past 18 months BT or their contractors have installed new trunking into the pavement on the other side of the road, installed a new pavement cavity and installed the fibre aggregation node in the cavity (although I did not see them do this personally).

In late March the BT BROADBAND AVAILABILITY CHECKER updated to say:

Telephone Number 0125689xxxx on Exchange WHITCHURCH is served by Cabinet 2
Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate(Mbps) Downstream Range(Mbps) Availability Date

WBC FTTP Up to 330 Up to 30 -- Available

WBC ADSL 2+ Up to 14.5 -- 12.5 to 16 Available
WBC ADSL 2+ Annex M Up to 14.5 Up to 1.5 12.5 to 16 Available
ADSL Max Up to 8 -- 7 to 8 Available
WBC Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Other Offerings
Fibre Multicast -- -- -- Available
Copper Multicast -- -- -- Available

So on 29th March I placed an order with my ISP, PlusNet to join their FTTP trial. On 10 Apr 2014 I was told:

I have placed the FTTP order for you and provisionally booked the installation appointment for 28/04/2014 between 8 AM and 1 PM.

On 11 Apr 2014 I was told:

Our suppliers have advised a site survey is the next course of action with your order. Following this, your order will get sent to planners who will forecast an estimated date and hopefully an external appointment booking.

On 15 Apr 2014 I was told:

As per our conversation, I have been in touch with our suppliers this morning, and it seems that the existing infrastructure in the lead up to your property is not adequate enough to provide fibre right up to your premise.

Openreach's surveyors have planned a build, and have requested that they check back up for updates on this on 14/05/2014. I know that this is ages away, so my apologies.

An open reach surveyor did come and we discussed how they would channel across the road from the cavity, across my garden and they would terminate the fibre on the front wall of the house. The next stage would be to install the fibre into the house. I signed a Wayleave agreement for British Telecommunications plc to allow the work to go ahead.

On 14 May 2014 I was told:

Our suppliers have informed me that they need to erect a new pole in order to be able to connect the fibre to your premise. To do this, wayleave is needed.

Wayleave is basically when Openreach apply for permission to carry out work on ground that is owned by somebody else. Usually the ground is owned by the council. But on occasion, they have to request to build on private property (I think under your circumstance it's the former).

Openreach have sent off the forms applying for this, and we will need to wait for it to be accepted before any further work can be carried out. We have been asked to check back as of 22/05/2014.

And then today, on 22 May 2014 I was told:

I have contacted our suppliers regarding your FTTP order and they have advised that unfortunately you would be required to pay excess charges of £3277 if you would like to proceed with the order.

So I live in the middle of a small town covered by the BT Commercial rollout for fibre. BT decided to deploy FTTP to my cabinet so I have no choice of FTTC (which I would have been happy with). Now BT are telling me that they want over £3000 to connect my house to the aggregation node which cannot be further than 25m from my front door. Other than the fact that I do not see why I should be paying towards the BT commercial rollout this price seems far higher than the suggested FTTPoD prices. PlusNet have told me that the only choice I have is to pay up or cancel the order. Does anyone have any suggestions where I should go next?

Should be just the £90 GEA-FTTP install fee since it is native FTTP.

They can raise excess construction, just like they can for a telephone line too. How does your existing telephone line reach the property?

It won't be the aggregation node, but if its just 25m it will be to a fibre manifold that serves other properties. This issue should have been spotted when the original roll-out was planned and survey work undertaken.

I am tempted to say its 50/50 that someone has messed up and is dealing with this order as if it was a fibre on demand order.

If you can email me address details and what info you have so far, then I'll pass this onto BT management for someone to double check. If there are a few other properties that would be in the same situation, i.e. neighbours then sounds even more of a mistake.

Andrew, thanks for the offer to look into the situation. I have e-mailed you with my address and phone number.

The telephone line comes into the house through an underground armoured cable as I understand it from neighbours who were here when the properties were built. They say that there is no ducting. There are 16 houses built in 1977-8 in the garden of a larger house which is now 4 flats. I am not sure exactly what is installed in the pavement cavity 25m from my front door on the other side of the road. The BT surveyor said that was where the fibre would come from.

There is certainly an aggregation point (based upon your pictures) in a pavement chamber in the road at the end of our cul-de-sac less than 100m from the house.

Edited by deleted (Thu 22-May-14 20:30:59)

Where are you, a post code would do ?

I have sent you the postcode in a pm.

Is a genuine native FTTP order I think looking at the OP's posts on the PN forums.

Seems like the Openreach database showed FTTP as available, an order was placed and now there's an excessive construction charge (which I've never seen for FTTP before).

A photo of the current telephone pylon would be interesting.

There is no current telephone pylon. My current copper phone line comes in underground in an armoured cable.

Can you see where it comes in? Is it in any ducting or conduit?

Internally I have no modern master socket. Behind the old fashioned master it appears that the armoured cable comes straight into the back box. Certainly the earthing appears very robust. A neighbour who was here when the houses were built said that there is no trunking for the copper. The armoured cable is just buried in the ground.

The BT surveyor also suggested that the fibre would come from a new pavement chamber which was installed over the past 18 month as part of the fibre roll out. So the fibre will be totally independent to the copper.

Ok - this is beginning to make sense.

I think the issue is that Openreach don't want to pay for getting the fibre from the street to your home. They either have to put in ducting or an overhead pole to run the fibre - neither of which will be particularly cheap. Here's the Openreach pricing for excessive construction charges - http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricin...

It's poor planning from Openreach in the first place though (particularly if there is no ducting to the houses). If all the houses in your area are in a similar situation, then Openreach should have looked at FTTC.

I do not know how many houses there are served from the cabinet. There are poles and overhead cabling to many of the houses. There are 16 houses in my close in the situation that I am in. There are other similarly aged houses which may be fed from the cabinet where there is no overhead option, but I do no know about trunking there. We did not ask for FTTP. Openreach have already laid trunking and installed a pavement chamber. No one is going to order FTTP to give them some kind of ROI if they are going to charge that kind of money. It is not as if we have asked for FTTP over FTTC. It was their choice with no consultation that I was aware of.

Post deleted by bdo21

Have raised the issue and pointed out that planning should have spotted the issue for these properties.

My guess is someone was willing to underwrite the costs at one time, but they have forgotten about that.

Yes no reason why multiple lines down the one armoured cable, since it would usually carry multiple pairs

Andrew, thank you for escalating this. I, and some of my neighbours, will be interested in the result.

What kind of distance is your house from the pavement area?

The wayleave that I signed with BT stated that they would install a 12m duct across my garden. It is then a similar distance to the pavement chamber on the other side of the road. There is nothing special about my situation. I do not live in a huge house. I do not have a huge garden. I can just about park 2 small cars on my drive (although we have only one). I am probably 800m from the exchange with the cabinet about half of that distance. The exchange is in the middle to our small town.

Edited by deleted (Fri 23-May-14 12:34:32)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Have raised the issue and pointed out that planning should have spotted the issue for these properties.

My guess is someone was willing to underwrite the costs at one time, but they have forgotten about that.

I think it is highly immoral that a potential customer should have to pay a company to compensate them for the strategic mistakes of one of their employees, no matter how long ago those mistakes occurred.

Except there is nothing that requires BT to provide a fibre service. So, rather than giving the option of paying excess costs they could just refuse to deliver at all.

It sounds like they had originally planned to go underground but have hit some sort of issue (perhaps utility pipes that weren't on plans or something like that). Because of that they would have to put in a pole to deliver which has changed the costs to do so. It is bad news and maybe MrS will be able to get to the bottom of it and see if BT really should be charging but in the end there is no requirement for them to do anything here.

In reply to a post by dabotsonline:

I think it is highly immoral that a potential customer should have to pay a company to compensate them for the strategic mistakes of one of their employees, no matter how long ago those mistakes occurred.

I wouldn't call it a 'strategic' mistake. It could be very much as Andrews says, that in the planning stage Openreach were going to fund the cost themselves and now they just need reminding of this.

You also have to look at it from Openreach's view point with regards to their excessive construction charges generally. Say they designate an area to be FTTP and believe the ducting runs to all properties in the area. Joe Bloggs orders FTTP and the Openreach engineers doing the external work find that a builder has poured concrete down the ducting, completely blocking the whole thing. Should Openreach be responsible for the cost of rectifying the ducting (which could easily run into the thousands if it's a large blockage and patios/paving etc need to be removed)?

This is one of the reasons why a widespread FTTP deployment is unlikely any time in the next decade. If every duct was clear (not blocked) and ran to every property, things would be so much simpler. Unfortunately, the FTTP trial areas have shown that blockage are extremely common and they are both time consuming and costly to fix.

I think the fact that BT installed new ducting to a new pavement chamber which links to nothing other than the previous chamber and which I now understand probably contains the manifold suggests that they were well aware that somehow they would need to get the fibre from that chamber to the houses. They also knew that it would not be down the non-existent ducting because that ducting certainly did not go to the new chamber.

On the day that I moved into my first house in Croydon about 25 years ago the local cable television company were digging up the street outside the house so that their cable passed every house. On the day that I moved out again 10 years later they were doing the whole thing again to replace the cable. So if that was possible all those years ago I do not understand why it is beyond BT to do the same thing for 20 houses in a close off a road where they have the fibre installed on the current telegraph poles.

A neighbour has ordered BT Infinity Extra from BT Retail. They have been given an installation date of 29th May. So in less than a week we will see if BT Retail are able to install without charging their customer the Excess Construction Charges which PlusNet feel that they have to pass to me.

At the end of the day, I am sure Openreach will pay for putting in the ducting. It's probably just the case that the right people within Openreach need to talk to one another.

I would hope your neighbour does not receive any preferential treatment because he's using BT Retail. That would raise very serious question marks if his installation goes ahead and Openreach put in ducting for him at no cost.

Is that neighbour fed off an existing pole?

From previous posts the OP describes his property as having a 'direct in ground' feed, quite common for houses of the late sixties to early seventies, like mine in fact.

A two pair armoured cable is laid under the property at the time of construction, coming up in a wall and ending in the recess behind the NTE/LJU. Outside, the cable would run to an (often) buried frontage tee joint.

It does sound like work of some description has already been done, maybe a new duct to the premises, or just a new duct to provide a manifold.

There are no poles at present in the close. So my neighbour's situation is very similar to mine. He actually has more concrete drive to get through to his nearer chamber than I have to mine.

The existing work that has been done during the past 18 months is to install new ducting in the pavement on the other side of the road between an existing chamber and a brand new pavement chamber. The surveyor told me that the fibre equipment had been installed in the new chamber but did not say what exactly. The new chamber only has ducting to the old chamber. No work to extend that ducting to any properties has been done.

With regards to the duct work, they would either put in 25mm (fibre only) or 50mm (fibre + copper) ducts. It should be 350mm-450mm below ground level (which doesn't include any paving/concrete you might have down). Then are then various rules on the bends and the distance the ducting should be from electrical cables, but I don't think the latter applies to fibre only ducting.

Most people would probably jump at the chance of having superfast broadband and agree to work being done to their properties. Some people won't care and wouldn't want their driveways/gardens being dug up.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I would hope your neighbour does not receive any preferential treatment because he's using BT Retail. That would raise very serious question marks if his installation goes ahead and Openreach put in ducting for him at no cost.

I am certain Openreach will charge the same to any ISP. However, the ISP has discretion as to whether they pass that charge on to the customer.

Plus, the other person may for whatever reason have lower costs and therefore may not incur additional charges from Openreach at all.

OK. Here is an update on my situation and some of the things that I have learned.

The original order from PlusNet was cancelled by them after discussions with me and they reordered to see if there result would be the same. It was. Openreach still wanted £3277 for excess construction charges. So for the moment at least having native FTTP through PlusNet is a non-starter.

I have now placed an order for Infinity 2 with BT Retail to see if I get a different result with them. So far they have informed me that a survey will be required (despite one having been carried out for PlusNet). I will wait to see what the result of the survey for them will yield.

So what have I learned?

Openreach will provide infrastructure to the manifold, the last point in our network prior to the customer lead in. My manifold is in a pavement chamber within 20m of my front door on the opposite side of the street.

At the point of customer order, an assessment will be made as to how to serve the customer, in line with Copper provision policy, the first £1000 is covered by Openreach, with the additional cost being charged to the communications provider who may choose to pass this on to the customer. So the total excess construction charge is £4,276.57 with PlusNet being charged all but £1000 of this which they have passed on to me.

In many cases the first person to order in a location is expected to pay much of the cost to complete the infrastructure for the location. So although I am only 20m from the manifold PlusNet were being asked to pay for:

1 Survey £255.58
27m Duct in footpath £1,095.12
12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84
3 Small Joint Boxes £2,114.67
£4,276.57

Much of which would not be used to supply the FTTP to me. Only the ducting in the road and the ducting soft surface (across my garden) and possibly 1 small joint box is required for my install.

The biggest problem is that when our houses were built in the late 70s the copper phone cabling was provisioned with armoured cable straight in the ground without any ducting. Therefore there is nothing in place to blow the copper down and the network has to be overlaid with ducting to provision the fibre. Hence the brand new duct to bring the fibre to the brand new chamber where the manifold is installed. This currently goes nowhere and the infrastructure to get the fibre from there to the houses is what I am being asked to pay for. Why Openreach think that residential customers would be willing to pay £3300 to install a product that would then cost between £25 and £40 per month is beyond me.

So currently the decision by BT to cable the houses up with armoured cable 40 or so years ago plus a more recent decision by Openreach to deploy FTTP to the phone lines on our cabinet has currently left me fighting to get the only Superfast broadband available to me at a sensible price.

So would I be right in thinking that most of that is already in place, and all that is needed is the following two items?

12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84

Those two would be a more palatable cost.

Shame you can't get a mole and send it under the road from your garden and put your own duct in.

My house is also on an armoured cable which is just buried, also built around 40 years ago, but at least I have FTTC so I'm guess I'm lucky we didn't end up with FTTP.

In reply to a post by brightd:

In many cases the first person to order in a location is expected to pay much of the cost to complete the infrastructure for the location.

I'll never understand this - It's completely unfair as everyone else who wants FTTP in the future are subsidised by the first customer.

In reply to a post by brightd:

1 Survey £255.58
27m Duct in footpath £1,095.12
12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84
3 Small Joint Boxes £2,114.67
£4,276.57

What's with the 3 small Joint boxes? They shouldn't be needed.

Surely it should be:


27m Duct in footpath £1,095.12
12m Ducting Soft Surface £243.36
7m Ducting in the road £567.84?

They probably allow one small joint box per duct in case of a tricky ducting run.I personally think they are over cooking that one.

Dumping the full costs of stuff onto the first purchaser is how much of the world of business works.
Particularly in the low volume high capital cost sector where the possibility of further use of the "investment" is rather uncertain.

Even where the cost is absorbed by the company, I have in the past had many endless discussions as to whether a new tool costing some £50K for the project is to be charged to overheads or onto the cost of the project thereby reducing the profit.
Then we start into the taxation and accounting aspects of such decisions.......

Because of the position of the chamber relative to my house the 27m Duct in footpath £1,095.12 is not required to complete my install unless they decide to come round the pavement at the end of the close in which case they will not need to come across the road.

Have not given up pestering from my end on this one.

I guess this is one way to increase the amount of homes 'passed' by Openreach FTTP without spending the footie rights money.

Absurd.

Did your neighbour ever get service?

I have 2 neighbours who are next to each other who both ordered from BT Retail. They have each had a survey. They are fed from a different manifold in a separate pavement chamber to mine. They have not yet had the install completed but the second surveyor who came was told that the costs had been agreed, which means that my neighbours will not have to pay.

The second surveyor also suggested to me that I could be fed from the same manifold that they will be installed from with the ducting being added for them extended to my property. However, as a manifold covers either 7 or 12 properties and there are 20 properties in total both manifolds will have to be used at some point assuming that all of the properties take FTTP at some point in the future.

In reply to a post by brightd:

The second surveyor also suggested to me that I could be fed from the same manifold that they will be installed from with the ducting being added for them extended to my property.

That sounds like a good idea.

How did you get on with this then - did you have to pay?

No. I ordered from BT Retail and the installation was completed with no installation charge at all as per their standard process.