BT Wholesale Suspend New Orders for 330Mbps FTTP on Demand

BTWholesale has confirmed that new orders for the controversial Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) based Fibre on Demand (FoD) product, which offered the potential for anybody within reach of an FTTC capable line to order a full 330Mbps fibre optic broadband connection, have been suspended.

bear in mind not all FTTC areas have FTTPoD, my area doesnt.

From what I've seen most areas don't - they only ever released it for a relatively small number of areas (although those areas may well have covered a reasonably high percentage of population).

I can only assume area's that have it have the capacity for the high speeds where others might not.

My area has it, we are on a Huawei 288 which I believe has capacity for 6 data card slots, though I'm assuming these data cards wouldn't be used in conjunction with FTTPoD and only for the FTTC connections.

Data card slots in the cabinet are irrelevant, since FTTP on Demand connects to a GPON fibre architecture that is terminated in the aggregation node that feeds the fibre cabinet(s). The cabinet uses Point to Point fibre to the exchange.

Essentially a FTTP network is being built across the UK but only to the agg node, this is what will make FTTrN possible in the future or FTTP if commercially they decide to do it, or gap funding pays.

The official reason given for why limited areas was to do with different areas have the planning staff and trained staff to install it. The increased amount of native FTTP and general workload from the BDUK projects likely means staff are too busy to handle the custom builds of FoD.

In reply to a post by ian72:

From what I've seen most areas don't - they only ever released it for a relatively small number of areas (although those areas may well have covered a reasonably high percentage of population).

Not too sure that's the case. Numerous places I have checked across Cambridgeshire covered by the BDUK rollout, both cabinets in town centres, further out of towns, and villages/rural, are showing the 330 FTTPoD available on the line checker. It seems it is being included as part of the BDUK rollout here, where as previously enabled (commercial rollout) ones didn't and still don't show the option.

All of these have been new cabinets within the past 6 to 12 months and certainly not high population (compared with the places you may expect higher speed options to go up against rival providers)



Whilst I don't think it's likely, it'd be really nice to see that this "on demand" higher speed offering comes back in a few months with completely reworked pricing, far cheaper than currently. I suppose that's always a possibility (so as to prepare for that in coming months), even if it's workload/training that is being suggested as the current reason for the pause?

In reply to a post by fenlandbroadband:

Whilst I don't think it's likely, it'd be really nice to see that this "on demand" higher speed offering comes back in a few months with completely reworked pricing, far cheaper than currently.

The cost has only recently massively increased. It still shows as available to me on the BT Wholesale checker, but it would cost me £1,750 plus VAT plus connection charge to get it.

There were announcements some time back from BT as they drip fed it out. I know nowhere near me was in the announcements. I don't know if our local BDUK provisions can get it as not sure where it has been rolled out to yet.

Considering BDUK only covers around 24% of properties (assuming that commercial was 66% and BDUK is moving that to around 90%) and that BT didn't announce a blanket coverage for their commercial rollout then I would imagine there must be quite a few areas that are not currently covered. But, I don't believe BT makes generally available the list of places that have FTTPoD option.

In reply to a post by ian72:

There were announcements some time back from BT as they drip fed it out.

Indeed - and there was some noise that the last batch of exchanges tied in well with the connected-city voucher schemes.

Those announcements were also always at an exchange level, which wouldn't fit well with the way that, on some exchanges, many cabinets were a commercial deployment, and the last few were left to BDUK infill.

I personally don't see FTTPoD being oriented towards BDUK particularly.

Considering BDUK only covers around 24% of properties (assuming that commercial was 66% and BDUK is moving that to around 90%)

Probably nearer 14-15%.

Following the same assumption that BT reached 66-67%, you also need to add around 9% that is covered by Virgin but not BT. BDUK-phase-1 then only covers the gap from 75% to 90%.

See page 3 here:
http://modgov.southnorthants.gov.uk/documents/s9921/...

And the coverage varies massively from county to county both for openreach commercial and VM cable.

UK wide my current best figure is 85% fibre based, 81% superfast, cable 50%, GEA-FTTP 0.6%.