Making FoD a reality with community help?

What are the options for trying to get FTTP on Demand (FoD) to be extended in my area? Is there any sites similar to kickstarter were local people in this area could pledge a certain amount of money to bring it to this place? I'm sure the costs of digging up the roads would be cheaper if more people pledged to it. I guess it would be similar to the local projects that some areas have done in the past, only this one BT would actually be participating in as well.

I was looking at one story on ispreview about FoD and it said it would cost around £38 a month, and an outlay of £2 per metre. From the figures of distance I am from the cabinet I'd be willing to pay that price. The only question mark would be is how much the Excess Construction Charge (ECC) would be.

I'm sure the people like us who take a greater interest in our connections than the average person could team up in some way to give BT or whoever the company was, more confidence in trialing, investing and promoting certain highspeed services in different areas.

Though the Internet as become more popular in the last 10 and 20 years, I still think the technical side is still seen as a bit geeky. Unlike in other countries were the Internet is a normal part of life, even in the US I was suprised at how non-technical/computer people used the Internet as a normal part of their day. Maybe its just part of our history in how our society looks upon things technical.

Fibre on Demand requires you to have FTTC available from your cabinet and the prices have changed a lot since the old £38 figure
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6267-openreach-in...

On the use of the Internet 80% of UK households have an Internet connection, so we use it a lot, and the amount we spend on online per capita is very high compared to other countries.

Back to fibre on demand, what is or is not actually available on your cabinet?

Wow, yes, I read your link.. hmm.. its a shame that new technologies are so high priced. I think if it could get over a certain percent of availabilty it might come down in price similarly to how FTTC as down with all these recent offers on tv.

I get FTTC from my cabinet, which is good.. But I was just wondering if more local people managed to organise with a pledge for the next level of fibre would that be viable.

I'm not sure if FTTC worked on pledges or support but I remember marking my interest in my area. I'm not sure if that had any bearing on who got the FTTC cabinet.

My town of Shaw is a sub town of Oldham. Oldham has both FTTC and FoD available. Ideally the Shaw exchange would be perfect for trials as the town isnt that big geographically than most other small'ish towns.

I guess the pace of progress seems slow in this country, especially when talking to european friends, scandinavians in particular who seem to have very high speed connections. One thing I've noticed that a lot of those countries invested in cable networks.

I guess we are ahead of the US in terms of speed these days. A friend in Wisconsin only as one provider available to her, CenturyLink which only gives her just over 2mb's.

Anyways, I was just seeing if there were such a thing as community groups on this issue. I do still think that if BT / Openreach could see groups of people joined together it would make deciding which areas to trial things in much easier.

There are other ways to get fast Internet http://www.aa.net.uk/ethernet-prices.html

Do you need the extra speed though and will it benefit you?

The majority of people on FTTP take 40/10 or 80/20.

Hmm an update on the Wisconsin friend I mentioned. Apparently CenturyLink are 'Coming Soon' to her town in 2015 and offering FTTH at 1gb speed.

@AndyHCZ - Everyone wants as best speeds out there lol .. I am happy with my current situation. I was just seeing if there are better ways that the community could encourage faster broadband coverage.

The install prices are 'ok', if seeing broadband as a house investment, which its increasingly being seen. But wow, the monthly fee's.. why so much? I thought when the work is done then what else is being charged for? If its to recoup money then why not say that the customer is locked in to an X year contract.

I just don't really see the value of FoD for residential users at the current pricing, particularly if you have FTTC and live close to the cabinet.

As the need for faster speeds develops, there will be new and improved technologies. Copper still has a useful life and won't be retired any time soon.

On Ethernet because you are usually getting uncontended bandwidth, i.e. dedicated capacity at the speed you buy between the property and the ISP.

FTTC and pledges - well if a pledge actually means a check for £20,000+ then yes an area might get a cabinet even if BT, or the BDUK process is not going to provide one.

If wanting to convert an area from FTTC to FTTP, then if everyone on a single distribution point where Fibre on Demand is available were willing to order at the same time then you might get a bit of a discount, but the monthly fee for a 330 Mbps service would still apply for the three year term.

Openreach does provider native FTTP to around 170,000 premises in the UK which is available at the same price as FTTC, and other firms will install FTTP, e.g. Gigaclear in rural villages and Hyperoptic for flats/apartments in cities.

Very little need for technical trials, trials to see what the take-up are maybe, but the evidence is that even if you make 1 Gbps available, if you offer a slightly cheaper 20 Mbps service an awful lot of people opt for that.

Talking to Openreach about custom small projects is something that will not interest them much currently, because of the volume of work to meet the BDUK deadlines, and Fibre on Demand is currently on hold for new orders too.