FTTP - Post or Premises?

So, SuperfastCymru have informed me that my part of Carmarthenshire (SA200YW) will get FTTP sometime next spring. I am on Cab 2 but about 2 miles away so I guess that makes sense.

Probably getting ahead of myself, but chatting to one of my patients who is an Openreach engineer, he tells me that the fibre might only be along the poles at the main road and the final connection across the few fields to our house might still be the existing copper line.

Pictures of FTTP installs have lead me to believe that a new fibre, not copper, cable is routed into the premises.

So is it fibre all the way or only up to the last post? Does the presence of copper mean that speeds will be limited to those of FTTC?

I think it is not at all that simple.
FTTP is to the premises, BUT, how big is your postcode area? how many properties are there in the postcode?
You or your ISP may be responsible for the cost of running the fibre from the DP (distribution point) to the property; the DP could be on the main road.

Two types of FTTP and ian may have been talking about the one that no-one can order FibreOnDemand with an install cost in the £1000's and is for areas where FTTC is the main option.

Native FTTP carries a wholesale install price of £99+VAT (or sometimes free with an 18 month contract) and in these scenarios they have installed a fibre manifold onto the final DP that serves all the properties. This manifold usually serves 8 to 12 premises and they will as part of the £99 install the final few metres of fibre to your premises.

The exception is if there is no existing ducting between the DP or the overhead run in a long and costly, at which point excess construction charges may apply.

So if its 20 to 30m of overhead copper now that gets replaced by a small tube to carry the fibre and the copper, but if you are a farm with say a 200m long lane to the buildings then excess construction will apply.

Looking specifically at the area served by cabinet 2, it is a dispersed area with a core Llandovery itself and while they usually do eventually cover all a cab area with native FTTP (which is what is planned for the area) it will take time and the first areas on the cab may go live before outlying postcodes like SA20 0ST

If you are the only property across these fields then as I mentioned elsewhere excess construction costs may apply, or if you own the fields you may be able to reduce those by installing duct BT supply.

Given distance from the cabinet FTTC would have been no use to you anyway.

I have FTTP on order, the run from the pole with the "bottle" on to my house is about 250 metres running over three further existing poles and also requires tree surgery (branch removal) on four or five trees but there is no extra charge over the standard charge.
Another person further down the lane has a big problem in that the last three poles of six carry his electricity supply as well as his phone line so cannot be used to carry the fibre. The nature of the lane is such that he has been told that new ducting will probably have to be put in including crossing the lane, about 500 metres altogether, which will carry a considerable extra charge. He is waiting for a survey to be done by the engineers to find out how much and is talking to his new neighbours who have just moved in to see if they will share costs which are likely to be in the thousands.

£25000+ i would say.

Grief, I had to count the zero's twice!
And there was him getting all excited about FTTP finally being available! I have no idea of his financial position but if it was me that would be the end of the dream of fibre. Poor guy, he gets about 2 now on a flaky line which prevents his partner working from home so she has to travel to London a lot.
Shows what a lottery it can be with this FTTP business.

Many exchanges in Wales have had a mix of FTTC & FTTP installed. FTTP has been installed where premises are fawr away from cabs and FTTC would not have made much of an improvement.

Have you seen anything like this on any poles nearby?
http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/fibre-cornwall/pages/im...

It can take quite a while for the installation process to be completed though, one of those Pole Mounted Fibre Splitters appeared on a pole a near my sister's house late December last year but no further progress has been made since then.

It looks like about £25 per metre for moleploughing (if that's possible), but not the only cost likely to be incurred.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/prici...

Do the fields belong to you?

In reply to a post by mrijones:

It can take quite a while for the installation process to be completed though, one of those Pole Mounted Fibre Splitters appeared on a pole a near my sister's house late December last year but no further progress has been made since then.

Similar thing here - new poles went in back in January, fibre run to the village was done not long after but nothing has happened since.

I would have thought that it would be fibre all the way. Laying fibre across a field is not that expensive. You just need a dugger to dig a trench.

Thanks for the link to the price list, interesting.
I think mole-ploughing is likely to be possible but the the road will have to be crossed at some point, his hedge got through and his garden crossed so no doubt as you say other charges will apply. I will eventually find out what he has been quoted. I paced out the distance this afternoon out of curiosity and my estimate was well out, somewhere between 150-200 metres.
No doubt if he does go ahead with the order it will take ages to come to completion.

Afternoon all!

Thanks for the replies.

No fibre manifolds yet but there do seem to be loops of black cable with a yellow stripe tied to the tops of every 2 or 3 existing poles. From the ground it looks to be about the diameter of a household electrical flex cable. Not sure if it is at all relevant, but they appeared earlier this year after an Openreach van was at the side of the road with engineers pulling blue rope and black/yellow ducting between manholes. Is it normal having poles and ducting side-by-side?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.0165043,-3.7653355...

Anyway, the fields belong to our neighbour, and from his recollection, a trench was dug by BT when they moved in so as to supply a telephone line and our line was also fed through this when they were converting the barn into our house a few years later. Does this mean that the necessary ducting is already there and it would just be a question of feeding the fibre through it for a 100m or so?

Take a peek at looped fibre tubing in Cornwall probably you've got something like the pictures there and this is the tubing that contains smaller tubes down which the fibre is blown

If you have pre-existing ducting then this greatly improves your chances of being a standard install fee.

In reply to a post by Jax2:

I have FTTP on order, the run from the pole with the "bottle" on to my house is about 250 metres running over three further existing poles and also requires tree surgery (branch removal) on four or five trees but there is no extra charge over the standard charge.

I am surprised this comes within the normal install charge although BT do work in mysterious ways.

Well I am not going to argue with them on that score, just happy they are not going to charge any extra!

Sounds very like what what was done down my road, there were long gaps of several months between each stage though. The black tubing with yellow stripe sat in a coil on the poles for about eight months before they were properly attached and the fibre blown down the street. When they finally get round to connecting me up they will blow fibre from the nearest underground manifold to the black bottle on the top of my pole and then, using a thinner tube, to the CSP which will be attached to the outside of my house.
To my limited knowledge it sounds like the ducting you need is already in situ being used for your phone line. Just be prepared for a possible long frustrating wait. Even when everything was ready according to the engineer blowing and installing the fibre down the street it was a further two months before the system was tested and allowed to go live.

We've seen a few cases of ISPs coming back to customers quoting a few thousand excess construction fees, but when the person has then tried BT Consumer they swallow the charges.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

We've seen a few cases of ISPs coming back to customers quoting a few thousand excess construction fees, but when the person has then tried BT Consumer they swallow the charges.

Hmm.

That's even more odd. BT Consumer don't make much out of residential connections at all. Would take decades to make any money on a customer after eating a few k of install charges.

In reply to a post by Jax2:

Well I am not going to argue with them on that score, just happy they are not going to charge any extra!

Indeed! Being able to order FTTP at all is a rare enough position to be in right now let alone having an apparently subsidised install!

Not entirely sure where subsidy starts to apply. In my case all I need is some branches cut on my next door neighbours trees and a single 200-250 metre run of cable over three fairly close together poles up their drive and across my garden so an overhead feed to the CSP. The engineers had it down as a mornings work after coming up from London then had a second job booked for the afternoon before finishing for the day at 4.30 then back to London. The neighbours have ordered too so it is a shared cost for Openreach.

The real extra expense is all the wasted visits from engineers (four engineers so far each in their own van up from London) and the tree surgeons who have also come many miles and hours of travel over two trips then only cut two branches leaving several more trees to do. Basically nothing accomplished yet.
The next door neighbours have also had aborted engineer visits including the second internal install engineer being sent out before anything else has been done.
The guy up the road will incur extra charges if he goes ahead but as I indicated in previous posts there is a lot of work to do in his case.
Apparantly the reason we are getting FTTP is that for the large and very diverse area supplied by my cabinet FTTP is the cheapest option. I had resigned myself that with the distance to the cabinet I would never get fibre at all so am delighted with the fact that I can order FTTP but just a bit frustrated with the progress of the order.

It looks thinner than that - really no more than household electrical flex:

[EDIT]

will host elsewhere

Edited by deleted (Mon 31-Aug-15 18:31:30)

What is that site you are using? I have tried your first two links. First, with the first one my IS Suite gave me a warning, then I ended up swamped with adverts, and the second gave me a pseudo-sexy pouting girl twiddling her hair .

uploaded.net

legit file hosting site

I'll delete the links and host elsewhere

sorry

http://www.hegedus.co.uk/pics/IMG_3236.jpg

http://www.hegedus.co.uk/pics/IMG_3246.jpg

http://www.hegedus.co.uk/pics/IMG_3251.jpg

That is fibre tubing, just less mini tubes inside it, so just tubing no actual fibre in it yet

Thanks.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

That is fibre tubing, just less mini tubes inside it, so just tubing no actual fibre in it yet

That looks like the thickness of the fibre that they use to daisy chain between Fibre DP's

Paul

I was wondering if the smaller tube was rubberised and expanded to accommodate the mini-tubes.

In reply to a post by fiddler:

I was wondering if the smaller tube was rubberised and expanded to accommodate the mini-tubes.

Na, I don't think so, we have had our fibre tubing up our pole since 2011 I think only has 1 fibre cable in it at the moment and ours is larger in diameter and our can support I think 12 fibre strands, so yours may only be 7 to 9 stands maybe, unless they are smaller now.

Funny enough the thinner fibre cable that is used to daisy chain between Fibre DP's can have ~40 to ~90 or so strands in.

Paul