FTTC availability apparent shenanigans?

My first post here, so I do hope I don't cause any accidental offence. I apologise for the length of this first post, but thought it helpful if I gave as much background as possible.

Up until now I've been really happy with our ADSL service at our old house (around 8 or 9 Mb DL all the time, as we're 80m from the exchange, which is LLU), but I recently finished building a new house, where ADSL is really slow (less than 3 Mb DL pretty much all the time, with very high latency). This means that even things like watching a low-res video on YouTube is challenging, with a great deal of buffering. I installed all the new underground cable to the nearest pole (Openreach supplied the cable and duct 56) and when the house was connected I ensured that the Openreach guy fitted an NTE5 Mk3 box, so that it was VDSL ready, as I knew the village was getting a fibre cabinet before too long, under the rural broadband initiative thing.

As part of getting ready for FTTC, I bought, unlocked and installed a Hauwei HG612 right next to the NTE 5 Mk3, with a very short (literally 150mm long!) cable. The HG612 is powered over ethernet (only running in ADSL mode at the moment, though), and connected to the main 12 port switch. It's set up as a modem and router, with the firewall active. As it's VDSL/VDSL2 capable I want to retain the HG612, and just switch it to VDSL when we get an FTTC connection.

WiFi is problematic as all the rooms in the house have a foil lining and the triple glazed windows block the signal very effectively, so I flood wired the house with Cat6 when I built it, with a patch panel in my study that allows me to hook up things that need PoE (WAPs, the modem router and the switch) where needed for portable kit and to get a signal out to the garden via an outdoor WAP. The patch panel also allows power injection to selected ports for PoE.

I want to retain this system, as I've spent a lot of time and effort in building a totally battery backed system, with a small low power Linux home server and PoE for peripherals, so that everything keeps running for at least 48 hours if we get a power cut (a fairly common occurrence).

Having had just a basic phone and broadband service for a year, As soon as the cabinet went live I looked around to get a fibre service. My service provider (who buy from BT wholesale - I can tell from the username) said there wasn't any capacity in the FTTC and it was full. As it had literally only just gone live I thought this was odd, so called my local Openreach chap (we became friends during the house build, as I freely relocated a load of their old overhead cables under our land in ducts for them, and removed some old unused poles). He did a check and said there was lots of spare capacity in the cabinet. I called my provider again who insisted there wasn't.

I then called EE (only because we have mobiles from them) and they told the same tale, the cabinet was at capacity and we'd have to wait and see if Openreach added more DSLAMs to it. I left it at that until today, when a neighbour commented that their new fibre broadband was wonderful. They are with BT. So I checked with BT, and low and behold I can, it seems, have BT Infinity, with a predicted DL speed of 27 Mb. The problem is, we've only ever had two bad experiences with phone/ISP companies; one was BT and the other was Virgin, so I'm quite naturally a bit averse to buying a service from BT.

The other snag is that my needs are very simple. I just want a line, FTTC connection and phone connection. I have no need for a new modem or any of the packaged extras, don't want to watch TV via the connection or have any of the other "added value" services. I also have no need for an engineer visit, or to pay for it, as I effectively paid Openreach to install and test a new NTE 5 Mk3 via the new installation and already have a customised VDSL capable modem/router connected and working in ADSL mode. The BT Homehub would be no use and would just go in the bin, as I have no need of it.

So, the question is, are there any providers who can buy a basic fibre to the cabinet service from BT Wholesale, with no installation charge, modem or anything else, other than BT?

From my limited research is seems as if BT Wholesale are only allowing BT customers to access this fibre cabinet, which sounds a bit off to me. I thought the whole idea of splitting off Openreach from BT as a service provider was to stop them behaving like this?

I do appreciate that I'm not a typical customer, and that this creates problems for sales people who are working from scripts, and I genuinely have sympathy for anyone who can listen to our requirements and sell us a service that matches it.

We're not especially sensitive to price, need around 20GB/month of capacity and don't really want a severely throttled evening service, as the chances are we'll use VOIP in the evenings.

Any advice would be most welcome, and I apologise again for the length of this first post!

Jeremy

What does this checker say for your phone number, and what cabinet number does it give above the table. Is it the cabinet you expect?

How do you tell from your username that your supplier buys from BT Wholesale?

How much do you pay for your line rental? This is a cash cow for all the big ISPs and is a total ripoff.

I suggest you see if this product is available to you, and pair it either with their VOIP-only £10 rental or as I do have your line rental with Pulse8broadband. (That link goes to the Business page, so click the Home tab).

Edit - you might find this comparison interesting.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 23-Oct-16 19:01:01)

Thanks very much indeed for the quick reply,it's much appreciated.

That checker shows that FTTC is available, from cabinet 2 in the village High Street, around 500m away from our address (line length, rather than direct distance).

Our current username include "BT wholesale" in the very long username, which I've assumed to mean that the service was supplied by BT wholesale (could be wrong I guess).

Line rental at the moment isn't separately broken out on the bill, it just shows as £24.58 per month (plus VAT) for the current very slow "Landline", that includes 20 Gb capacity ADSL service and line rental. Phone calls are on top of that.

Thanks very much indeed for that link, and also for the surprising comparison link - that's a bit of a shocker!

The whole line rental ting seems a really confusing mess, with many suppliers ignoring it in their pricing, or assuming that it's a "free gift". It would be really useful for consumers if this whole minefield of pricing and services was made far more transparent, IMHO. It's hard work trying to find a good service when you know pretty much exactly what you want.

There are other good ISPs, see this comparison.

Not with enough users voting to get in there, take a look at uno and Aquiss as well. Pulse8broadband are worth looking at for their broadband as well as the phone.

The problem with pricing is that many providers still don't insist that you have your line with them as well as broadband. So they need to show it separately. Sky/BT/TT want you to take their line rental, though it is possible to have BT with line rental elsewhere. I've never really found it a problem dealing with two figures instead of one. As now, where I get the best ISP (has been for years) and almost the cheapest phone line.

Don't just look at line rental. Look at call costs and call setup charges as well. Pulse8 cost peanuts and have a good reputation for CS.

Thanks very much, the idea of splitting out the line rental from the ISP seems a good one.

It does seem to be a bit of a minefield trying to find a good, basic ISP. The big players all seem to want to sell bundled packages, which may well be good value for those that want all the extras, but are very poor value if all you need is a line and a decent service.

I'm not at all averse to paying for the line separately. IIRC we used to do that years ago when ADSL first came out, paying BT for the line and someone else as the ISP. I had heard somewhere that the law was changing soon and that all ISPs were going to have to include line rental charges in their advertised pricing, and I see that Vodafone have jumped to do this before being forced to by law - A neat marketing gimmick!

It looks like I'll have to split out our phone and line rental requirements from the internet service requirement and then shop around. We rarely use the land line phone, it's really only used to receive calls and make maybe a handful of calls a month, if that, so a cheap line rental package with high call costs wouldn't be a problem at all.

It's then a matter of finding an ISP that can access the capacity in the cabinet and selecting the best value from those that can, ignoring the line rental part.

Thanks again for all the good advice.

They only have to include line rental in advertising if you have to take their line rental to get the broadband service. If the broadband can be supplied separately then they don't have to include it in the advertising.

I consider that Vodafone were very misleading in their advertising and purposefully so.

A quick note regarding availability: I had a similar problem when the cab in our village first went live. There was a delay of a few weeks between being able to order FTTC via BT and being able to order it via Sky. It takes a while for database updates to sync across to the various ISPs. So the messages you were getting that the cab is full were likely being misinterpreted and their systems simply didn't have it marked as available yet.

Or sky had no GEA connectivity at the headend and had to order that.

We too have just had FTTC in our village and I know that BT customers have been given priority. Our neighbour with SSE has been told that super fast broadband is is not yet available. The answer is to go for BT and opt for Infinity 2 as this has no connection fee and you can use your own router although the BT Hub6 is excellent. I do know that Sky is also now available, but at a lower speed.

NO.

BT customers are NOT given priority. All ISPs are given the same information at the same time, however how they act on that is probably different. BT Consumer/Residential and Business obviously put their processes in place to allow customers to order as soon as the cabinet is live and "accepting orders".

Do not blame BT, blame the other ISPs who are not on the ball.

Was that just SSE that it was unavailable to or any other provider, in which case how many and which were tried?
I doubt very much bt were given priority. There are likely to be genuine technical reasons why it was unavailable to SSE. Likely that they use a separate network( their own or another CPs) and they had no GEA connectivity at the headend.

Edited by deleted (Mon 24-Oct-16 15:41:17)

As per what MHC says, plus it is actually BT Wholesale that is on the ball and BT Consumer and Business keep up to date with what they supply.

As do a 100+ other ISPs who use the BT Wholesale service. That's nearly every ISP there is except Sky/TalkTalk and Vodafone. Though there are some ISPs that use TalkTalk Business Wholesale so depend on TalkTalk. Though some of those also use BT Wholesale but it is more expensive.

In reply to a post by onejagjohn:

The answer is to go for BT and opt for Infinity 2 as this has no connection fee and you can use your own router although the BT Hub6 is excellent. I do know that Sky is also now available, but at a lower speed.

Rubbish re the lower speed.

Sky don't really push their higher speed product do they? It's possible they are only seeing the 40/10 because Sky aren't doing much to advertise the pro package?

True, but it's not hard to find. I don't see any speed specification on this page, until I click the down-arrow against Broadband down at the bottom under Legal. I was surprised to see they are offering Sky Connect as well - perhaps they need to but a lot of the goodies they are selling might rather under-perform!

I suppose it's possibly they do at least now budget for adequate BT Wholesale throughput capacity when sport etc. is showing.

If you don't like BT, then Plusnet are a safe choice. These days they are slow to answer support calls, but they are likely to have adequate backhaul so the service itself should be OK. You can use your own equipment, but it makes sense to have an ISP supplied router as a spare, and in case you need to make a support call. They do know if they have not supplied a router.

Vodafone are very competitively priced. To use your own equipment you have to get your password from them. That is likely to require persistence. See the Vodafone section on this forum for a link to a long thread on a Vodafone forum. It is just possible that if you order on the phone saying 'I will place an order now if you waive the connection charge' would work,

There are many ISPs with introductory offers. See this web site and the regular price comparison websites.

Actually just had a look at their site and it is much more obvious now that it was a little while back so not sure why it wasn't visible.

Where? I had a bit more of a look around but didn't see it. Just a mass of "wonderful entertainment products".

Years ago it was almost impossible to find, then became quite easy. Now?

Thanks again for all the advice/tips.

I've spent a lot of time today trying to get to the bottom of things and comparing suppliers. What I've found out is that our cabinet went live in August 2015, after we'd signed up for a 12 month phone and ADSL package. We're now out of contract, so can go with anyone.

I've re-verified that there is capacity in the cabinet, so we can get FTTC OK. I then rang our supplier to ask why they can't give us fibre, as they offer a fibre package and our username log in includes the words "btbroadbandcomplete.com", which implies that they are reselling services from BT Wholesale. What I got from our current ISP was an odd answer. Apparently, they can only offer fibre if the local exchange is unbundled. I've not heard of this before, but can't see a logical reason why the exchange being LLU'd should make any difference to a FTTC connection.

My very friendly Openreach chap has confirmed that they are not going to unbundle the exchange now (its a very small rural exchange) as they've put in a fibre cabinet, which negates the need to LLU the exchange in their view.

With thanks to those here that have posted useful info, I'm now trying to put together a spreadsheet to compare line rental costs, call costs and ISP FTTC costs from various suppliers, to try and see where the best balance of speed, customer service and overall cost, lies. One thing that sticks out is that some ISPs charge a fairly hefty up-front installation cost, even when you tell them you already have an FTTC capable NTE5 Mk3 box and modem/router, so have no need for an engineer visit or any hardware from them.

I suspect this is going to take me a fair few hours to wade through, as it seems that ISPs just don't want consumers to be able to make direct comparisons.

Following the above debate about BT getting priority, I can confirm that four suppliers have told me that they cannot offer us FTTC as the cabinet is full. Even when I point out that Openreach and BT Wholesale are adamant that there is spare capacity, they have all told me that the reality is that cabinet is full. I've double checked with the Openreach guy, and he told me this morning that when he last looked around a week ago the cabinet was only about half full, plus he said there is an extension rack already in the cabinet so if need be they can plug in extra DSLAMs to get more capacity than there are residents in the village!

As far as I can tell, the less well-known suppliers do seem to offer more flexible deals, and, from the very useful comparison on here, seem to offer good customer service.

Thanks again,

Jeremy

Edited by deleted (Mon 24-Oct-16 16:55:00)

If you tell us your current ISP it might help. Is it Rainbow?

Also if you post the exchange and cabinet number there is at least one poster on here who will probably know its usage status. It all sound like a load of baloney to me, saying it is full.

You seem to be being secretive for some reason, which rather limits the help advice you can be given.

Also - the ISPs offering free connection on FTTC are almost certainly charging through the nose for something you will pay for, and tying you in for a long time as well.

I think you mentioned call costs earlier. The low line rental price companies also charge the lowest call costs. Example of big boy rip-offs! Pulse8 are 1ppm (yes - one pence per minute with per-second billing) in peak and 0.8ppm in offpeak, with no setup charge. Outside of their call packages BT charge 19p call setup and 11ppm. (Eleven, not a double key-press).

That's simply incredible!

Sky are one of those providers that has various routes to finding its products

So we use http://www.thinkbroadband.com/jump.html?type=5&url=h... which shows the full range of FTTC options

The username for the login don't confirm anything about the actual product, since they can be anything essentially.

On the exchange unbundling that is for the unbundler to decide and NOT Openreach. There is an additional capacity layer and that is the LLU providers may limit sales if their own backhaul for fibre links between their network and Openreach are full or contending i.e. to ensure a reasonable quality of service.

Sure, happy to do that, I just wasn't too sure of the forum rules on things like this, rather than being deliberately secretive. Perhaps someone could kindly moderate this if I've accidentally overstepped the mark in this post.

Our current supplier is the PhoneCoop. Lots of reasons for going with them, the main one being that we've been a customer of theirs for many years at our old house and their customer service has always been excellent, in fact better than excellent at times. From the log-in username, I've assumed they are buying from BT wholesale, only because the username includes the words "btbroadbandcomplete.com".

The suppliers who have told me the cabinet is full are EE, SSE, and a couple of others (can't recall who) that I checked online with. The Phonecoop said they can't offer fibre to the cabinet because our local exchange hasn't been unbundled yet, not because of cabinet capacity.

It's very interesting, and helpful, that you mention that the low line rental companies also offer the lowest call costs. That sounds counter intuitive, but as you rightly say, does indicate how much of an extra margin some companies are adding. I should put the PhoneCoop in that high call cost bracket, too, as they are current charging us 12.5 per call set up plus 7.6p per minute during weekdays/evenings, with free calls at weekends. It's never worried me too much as we very rarely make non-Skype calls (although Skype doesn't work well with out present very poor ADSL performance at the new house - one reason for wanting fibre).

Thanks again for the advice.

Jeremy

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The username for the login don't confirm anything about the actual product, since they can be anything essentially.

So does that mean that a username that includes "btbroadbandcomplete.com" may have nothing at all to do with BT as a wholesaler, and could be a different reseller altogether?

Maybe my assumption that the PhoneCoop were buying from BT Wholesale is wrong, if that's the case.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

On the exchange unbundling that is for the unbundler to decide and NOT Openreach. There is an additional capacity layer and that is the LLU providers may limit sales if their own backhaul for fibre links between their network and Openreach are full or contending i.e. to ensure a reasonable quality of service.

I'm still confused as to why exchange unbundling has anything to do with an FTTC service, though. It's very likely I've misunderstood how the system works, but I thought (and am very happy to be corrected) that FTTC worked by relaying the main backbone from the exchange incoming line to one or more fibre cabinets, and that instead of the multiplexing being done at the exchange, it is done by the DSLAM in the cabinet.

If that is the case, then I can't see why, logically, services from a specific cabinet (in our case Cabinet 2 in Fovant, Wiltshire) can't be re-sold by BT wholesale to any reseller.

I apologise for any misunderstandings I may have made, my grasp of the inner workings of the telecoms system isn't that great, I'm afraid!

Here's a curious tale. Half an hour or so after the last post I had a call from EE.

Now, about three weeks ago, when I was hunting around for a new ISP I did put our number into EE's checker to see if we could get FTTC, and it said we could. At that time they phoned me up within an hour or so, checking to see if I was interested in their offer. I said I was, and that's when I got the answer that they were sorry, but that our fibre cabinet was full. In fact the chap on the phone from EE said at that time that all the slots in that cabinet had been pre-booked by people who'd expressed an interest in fibre broadband, and that this was a common problem in areas where local authorities were sponsoring rural broadband provision.

When I answered the call from EE just now, I told the chap straight off that they had already told me, about three weeks ago, that they couldn't offer me fibre because the cabinet was full. The chap I spoke to this evening said he'd double check, and was happy to tell me that there was now spare capacity in the cabinet so would I like to sign up with them. I was honest with him, told him I was currently comparing offers and would now include EE's offer in my comparison.

Now, what I find slightly strange is that I've had no contact with EE for the past three weeks, and haven't even bothered to look at their web site, as they had told me that they couldn't offer fibre to our new address. The call I just had came within half an hour of me posting on here that EE had told me that there was no capacity in my local cabinet.

Just coincidence, perhaps?

I shall get back to my comparison spreadsheet, with thanks again to all here who have given such useful advice. I will say that I can understand how rumours start about BT retail having priority over other resellers, though, as there seems to be plenty of confusion about as to what might or might not be available!

Jeremy

PhoneCoop may well use that sort of username to denote their ADSL services, but it does not guarantee that it is a BT Wholesale based service.

On the LLU, its more about the cost of the backhaul, i.e. providers make a choice as to who they use, and it seems PhoneCoop prefer the cheaper backhaul options that LLU providers offer. This can limit availability of FTTC sometimes.

The multiplexing is done in the cabinet, that is the M of the DSLAM. The issue is where does the fibre from the cabinet goto, and does provider have an option for capacity from that exchange.

Not delved into PhoneCoop but at a guess they buy most of their services from TalkTalk Wholesale.

Sky Fibre Pro doesn't exist anymore and has been replaced with Sky Fibre Max which can be ordered online.

We too have just had FTTC in our village and I know that BT customers have been given priority

Utter tosh.

In reply to a post by JSHarris:

In fact the chap on the phone from EE said at that time that all the slots in that cabinet had been pre-booked by people who'd expressed an interest in fibre broadband, and that this was a common problem in areas where local authorities were sponsoring rural broadband provision.

More verbal vomit ... They are only "reserved" once an actual order is placed not just interest. If that was teh case then anyone calling several ISPs with an interest would have seeral slots pre-booked which would be farcical.

Having the voice and broadband from separate suppliers may cost more. It just depends.

I think the main problem is where there is what is essentially a voice line fault that manifests itself as a poor broadband connection. Who do you report the problem to?

Openreach would not tell BT retail phones about any perhaps additional work they might do for Plusnet broadband to correct a particular problem.

Having a single supplier for both services avoids that problem.

That's a very good point about taking responsibility for a line fault.

It strikes close to home with us as we had a 6 week service outage years ago (when we were with Virgin - never again) where there was clearly a system fault (a few dozen local houses had the same fault - all had working phone lines but but no broadband) yet we were repeatedly given the run around, with multiple engineer call-outs, all reporting the lines were fine. This was only resolved by emailing the MD at home, when mysteriously the system was fixed before dawn the next day.

Thanks for the info about the probable way that the PhoneCoop buy services, it explains a lot, but seems a hellish complex way of doing things. I can't help but feel that there is a very deliberate amount of obfuscation in the market that is deliberately intended to make it challenging to compare one provider with another. So far I've spent around three hours collating information from different providers to try and do a reasonable breakdown of the elements that are important to use and select a provider that is a reasonably good match. It certainly isn't easy, as the better providers all seem to include a lot of things we have no use for, which seems wasteful to me.

Tomorrow I'm going to to start looking at small home/business providers as they may offer a better solution for us.

Edited by deleted (Mon 24-Oct-16 21:40:40)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Where? I had a bit more of a look around but didn't see it. Just a mass of "wonderful entertainment products".

Years ago it was almost impossible to find, then became quite easy. Now?

Sky Fibre Max seems to be a 80/20 product. From the Sky homepage going into Shop and Broadband and Talk lists 4 packages for me - the top one being Sky Fibre Max.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Having the voice and broadband from separate suppliers may cost more. It just depends.

I think the main problem is where there is what is essentially a voice line fault that manifests itself as a poor broadband connection. Who do you report the problem to?

Openreach would not tell BT retail phones about any perhaps additional work they might do for Plusnet broadband to correct a particular problem.

Having a single supplier for both services avoids that problem.

Apart from the fact if a service provider runs a KBD or GEA test, it will flag up a PSTN (phone) issue, so report to phone provider, if no issue, you continue down as a broadband fault.

Don't seem complex to me.

In reply to a post by JSHarris:

Thanks for the info about the probable way that the PhoneCoop buy services, it explains a lot, but seems a hellish complex way of doing things.

Both old and new ways are complex, but in different ways.

Think of it this way...

Back in ADSL days, Openreach provided the copper line only, while the LLU/unbundler provided a DSLAM in the exchange plus cross-country backhaul to get your data to the internet. BT Wholesale did the same job - a DSLAM and backhaul - though they also provided old-style voice exchange equipment too.

In modern FTTC days, Openreach provides the hybrid copper/fibre line and the DSLAM. The LLU/unbundler no longer provides a DSLAM, but still has to provide cross-country backhaul ... with a caveat. The backhaul needs to be provided from the parent "fibre head end" exchange; most rural exchanges will be a "child" exchange without the head-end equipment.

When an ISP wants to provide an FTTC connection to you, they have to use the Openreach DSLAM and copper/fibre path. However, they can choose to use backhaul from any company that services the parent head-end exchange ... BT Wholesale is one such supplier, TalkTalkBusiness is another; others exist too.

There are around 5,500 exchanges in the UK, but only 1,200 of them act as a parent head-end.

That's for data. The voice service, however, stays on the original exchange.

Is there a way to determine what head-end exchange a particular cabinet is connected to? For a particular cabinet I am interested in, I can draw conclusions from the availability of Talk Talk FTTC, but is there a better way?

It was in the leaked Openreach spreadsheets a while ago. I imagine those present in the spreadsheets probably haven't changed, but those scheduled since would need someone with current access to reply.

Thanks, I supposed what really matters is whether I can use a particular ISP or not, which I can find out just by asking them.

I've not seen anything since then.

BT's topology for 21CN had around 1,100 "tier 1 MSANs" and around 100 Metro PoPs. I imagine these will be the locations of the parent head-ends.

These cover around 70% of the UK premises. The other 4,300 lower-tier exchanges deals with the rest...

Michael its routed the way its routed

though you were in Gigaclear land or was not that as its seemed at first -- or the reality was differtent to the "Sell"

I do indeed have a Gigaclear service, but at another location.

Just to close this off, after a couple of days of looking at offers on websites and then ringing around to get better information, I've selected a supplier, Plusnet, and booked the changeover to FTTC. I've been given a date of 14th November, which sounds reasonable, and now have all the kit set up and ready to go, with a PoE powered ADSL/VDSL modem (an unlocked Huawei HG612) right next to the already fitted NTE5 Mk3 connection.

Lessons I've learned from this process have been:

Getting the truth out of sales people is like pulling teeth. Some are better than others, but generally you get fed some pretty wild tales when they are trying to sell you a package.

Pinning down the cost of individual elements of the package is exceedingly hard, and some suppliers simply won't do it, they have an "all or nothing" approach. For someone that knows what they want in terms of a broadband service and phone service this can be extremely frustrating.

Some suppliers seem to be so confused as to what they can or cannot offer that they got binned as possibilities early on. Sorry EE, but you fall into that category.

Finally, I've read up about some of the issues people have had with many suppliers, and on balance chose Plusnet really because they were technically far more on the ball than any others when I spoke to them, their package offerings allowed us to pick and mix exactly what we needed and their prices were reasonable - not the cheapest, but not the dearest, either. For our needs they seemed to be the best choice, with TalkTalk coming a close second (in fact the only real reason not to go with TalkTalk was concern over their data security after they were hacked a while ago).

The help from here has been invaluable in improving my understanding as to how FTTC, and the systems behind it, work, and that in turn helped when I was talking to possible suppliers, so I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread.

Jeremy