FTTPoD question / Options for rural superfast broadband

Hello everyone,
I'm really sorry to bother you but I was hoping maybe someone could possibly help us?
We're moving house soon and we're very keen on a particular property (a family member who lives near is viewing it tomorrow and if all checks out we should be going up to see it this week).
However a deciding factor as to whether or not we go there is the internet speed. It currently has a maximum speed of 26.3 Mbps (estimated average of 15 Mbps)
The three of us a pretty heavy users. My brother and I do a lot of online gaming and all three of us are usually doing something fairly heavy usage (streaming netflix/yoututube, gaming, downloading etc). My Mum also runs an ebay business from home (she is disabled) and I am hoping to start an ebay business myself after the move.
Where we are here we're on over 100 Mbps so this would be a huge and major change. We do almost everything online, especially my Mum and brother as they are both disabled. Internet that slow just wouldn't be an option for us.

My brother knows more about this than me and has done some research and he was wondering if FTTPoD could be an option for us. However it seems to be almost impossible to get a rough idea of what this would cost. I know that in February there's going to be a change to pricing but there's still no ballpark figure. I don't know if we're talking about £1000 or £10000.
We think that it currently has FTTC (though we're not 100% sure). The exhange is 3.3 miles away.
Is there any way (short of paying £250 for a survey) to get a very rough idea on costs?
This is going to be the deciding factor on whether or not we make an offer on this place, as well as just how much we offer (the more expensive FTTPoD would be the less we'd have to offer, so we need to know if the cost is prohibitive)

Are there any other alternatives? We've heard of something called Sugarnet but no idea how much that would be either or even if they would bring it into the area (it's fairly rural with only a few houses around). I'm also not sure how that technology works and how it would affect things like latency in games etc.

Gigaclear are apparently planning to bring FTTP to the area (not sure if it includes this house but we did obtain that information after putting in the postcode) but that's within the next 3yrs, which could obviously be far too long. The prices seem to be fairly high too.

Thank you so much for any help

It would help others to help you if you were to post the postcode and maybe exchange name.

The exchange is West Coker (https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWWCKR) the start of the postcode is BA22.
Thanks

On your current 100 Mb connection, do you monitor it to see just how heavily your use is?
Some routers provide that functionality within their UI and many provide a protocol called SNMP which can be read using software to monitor and graph throughput. You may be surprised at how little of that 100 Mb you are consuming out with short bursts.

Also you mention a maximum speed of 26 Mb with an estimated average of 15 Mb is available. One potentially simple solution is to get multiple lines installed and load balance or bond them so you can access more bandwidth using the technology available.

In reply to a post by craski:

Also you mention a maximum speed of 26 Mb with an estimated average of 15 Mb is available. One potentially simple solution is to get multiple lines installed and load balance or bond them so you can access more bandwidth using the technology available.

That does sound like a brilliant idea in principle, however I think it would be far too costly. FTTPoD might be an option depending on the set up cost (which we currently have no idea about) as we could deduct the cost from what we offer on the house (if they won't be flexible on price then we couldn't afford to buy it anyway as there is already other work to be done on the house), but that's a one time thing (minus rental of course, which again we have no idea about cost wise). Having two lines in sadly I think would just be too expensive for us on our income.
A shame because it could have been a good solution

Regarding our actual usage I don't know off hand as we're having to use the Virgin router at the moment, but we could connect our old router up and see if we can get an idea from that.
That's a good idea as we don't actually know how much we really do need. As I say, at any given time we could have maybe two of us watching netflix, whilst listing on ebay (that mostly being upload rather than download) and another one of us is downloading (say a large game - trying to look at it at it's worst).
I'll get my brother to connect the old router later today and see if we can get a rough idea of actual usage.

Thanks

Assuming the speeds you talk about are FTTC (which by distance to exchange I'm thinking they must be) they the house is a fair distance from the cabinet (no way of knowing how far from the aggregation node though). Under current FTTPoD pricing you are looking at a fairly hefty install fee (see posts by baby_frogmella to get an idea) - I think £3K plus is likely. Monthly line rental at present is between £150 and £300 depending on provider and is a 3 year contract. It is a business service.

You have seen about changes in Feb. It seems people in the know are saying that whilst monthly costs and contract term could come down the overall cost to the individual over the term is likely to be similar - so presumably install costs will go up.

All in all if you think that bonded FTTC is too expensive then there is no way you are going to see FTTPoD as affordable.

Edited by ian72 (Tue 21-Nov-17 08:16:59)

In reply to a post by Ironhide:

Is there any way (short of paying £250 for a survey) to get a very rough idea on costs?

You can get a free no-obligation quote for FTTPoD from Cerberus or FluidOne (via phone), obviously the quote will be based on the current Openreach pricing but at least you'll have a ball park figure wrt build costs. The price quoted is subject to survey and may go up if ECCs apply.

https://www.cerberusnetworks.co.uk/connectivity-broa...

http://www.fluidone.com/data/plus-business-fttpod/

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Nov-17 08:19:35)

FTTPoD will be very expensive. The aggregation nodes in that area are in Yeovil, so it's going to be a fairly substantial cost for FTTPoD.

As you say your mum runs a business, you could potentially use the new Government connection vouchers when they come and/or you could look to a community partnership if other people want faster speeds also in your neighbourhood.

MASSIVE CAUTION....

Any FoD quotes at this time will only apply for construction under current regime, once February changes kick in some may see build charge jump significantly and some may see it stay the same or drop.

So you might be a 'nice' £3,000 quote today that might turn into £7,000 then.

The rule is always only buy a house based on the speeds you can actually order, not what might be coming. Remember FoD can take 6 months to a year to build.

In the posters case the risk from the quick quote being very different to the actual quote which they won't get until they move in is high.

In reply to a post by Ironhide:

That does sound like a brilliant idea in principle, however I think it would be far too costly. FTTPoD might be an option depending on the set up cost (which we currently have no idea about)

A shame because it could have been a good solution

2 businesses are going to be using the connection as a critical resource, and you can't afford the cost of a second line? I'm not sure that's the best thinking ... as your business ought to consider 2 lines for redundancy reasons *anyway*. If you aren't considering a second line, then you must make sure that you can swap to PAYG 4G mobile if the worst happens: this will be your livelihood, after all.

The indication for FTTPoD costs is that the total cost (after February) will be fairly similar to the total cost today. That implies a massive shift from the "monthly" cost to the "up front" portion.

As you have an estimate of around 15Mbps, then you are likely to be about 1.2km, or slightly more, from the cabinet. You are most likely going to be at least that distance from an aggregation node. The old-system up-front cost for that distance would be around £3k+vat. If you assume that the difference between Openreach's old/new annual rental is going to shift to up-front, then you need to add 3 year's worth of ~£700pa ... or another £2k+vat. Total of £6k.

Given that the house already achieves 26Mbps, the seller is a little unlikely to accept a £6k reduction in the asking price based on "poor broadband"; even more so if Gigaclear are due to install locally. At which point, the £400-500pa for a second FTTC line might suddenly become palatable.