Tiny village gets full FTTP?

Hey guys. Just wondering if someone could shed some light on something that's been puzzling me.

A chap I work with who lives in a tiny rural village (approx 30 houses I'd say) had been putting up with standard ADSL for years, and he regularly made contact with Openreach to check if they have a plan for installing fibre. He kept getting the usual "we are exploring solutions" and "we don't have a date yet" responses. Until one day he excitedly told me that an Openreach van turned up in the village, and they told him they were working to install fibre.

A few weeks later we were chatting and I asked him if he'd got his fibre yet. His response was "no, but it shouldn't be too much longer as they've put all new green boxes on all the poles now". A little confused, I had a look at the availability checker, and it turned out they were installing FTTP. Not on demand, but the full ready to connect version without that him and his neighbours can connect to without paying big build charges. (Yes, I'm jealous lol!)

So my question is why would Openreach spend all that money putting in FTTP to a little village with only a few residents, only a fraction of which are going to want a fibre service anyway? When there are built up areas with hundreds of houses per cabinet that can't even get FTTC yet. It doesn't seem to make sense from a business point of view.

Thanks for reading.

All depends on the BDUK project and the aims...

If the built up areas also have access to Virgin Media - then that is an immediate answer

I live in a small, very rural village of 40 properties, and exactly half of it had 300Mb FTTP installed from pole mounted manifolds a few months ago.

Unfortunately, we live in the wrong half and are still stuck with poor ADSL. Things are currently moving on, and for some strange reason they are installing a new cabinet for FTTC for the rest of us soon.

Edited by sparky_paul (Fri 19-Jan-18 18:26:06)

Somebody mentioned on ISPReview the other day that he was told by an Openreach engineer that they did not rearrange copper lines into FTTC if it meant that the lines would end up being longer. I can see the logic in this because despite FTTC being an upgrade, they are probably not allowed to make lines longer and reduce ADSL performance.

Would that logic fit with what they've done in your village and possibly explain why only some got FTTP?

In reply to a post by craski:

Somebody mentioned on ISPReview the other day that he was told by an Openreach engineer that they did not rearrange copper lines into FTTC if it meant that the lines would end up being longer. I can see the logic in this because despite FTTC being an upgrade, they are probably not allowed to make lines longer and reduce ADSL performance.

Would that logic fit with what they've done in your village and possibly explain why only some got FTTP?

It sounds like a reasonable explanation, but I'm not sure it would apply in our case.

The village is virtually linear, with all the houses along a 0.6 mile single stretch of road, all connected to poles. The first half of the village, nearest the exchange, already has 300Mb FTTP. The new FTTC cabinet is being placed at the beginning of the second half, so virtually in the centre of the village.

I can't really figure out why one end is FTTP and the other FTTC. One other odd thing, we had a new pole just before Christmas. The cabling on the new pole has a spare loop in the cables clipped to the pole where the pod is fitted on the FTTP poles, and a new, empty duct was fitted from the pole to the inspection pit. I guessed it was prep work for FTTP, so I wonder if there has been a change of plan?

In reply to a post by derby13:

So my question is why would Openreach spend all that money putting in FTTP to a little village with only a few residents, only a fraction of which are going to want a fibre service anyway? When there are built up areas with hundreds of houses per cabinet that can't even get FTTC yet. It doesn't seem to make sense from a business point of view.

If the village is benefitting from government funding then it makes sense for Openreach and the local authority to take advantage of that funding and they will also likely have contractual targets to meet. Large built up areas dont necessarily benefit from funding if they are seen to be commercially viable so resources are concentrated on the contracts which have target dates that must be met.

Sounds as if theres little difference between fttc and fttp for that part of the village.

For some of wave 2 in hampshire they are doing fttp instead of fttc where there's little difference in time and price.

Unfortunately trying to get more information (ie time scares and who's going to get that) is like pulling teeth.

In reply to a post by Taras:

Unfortunately trying to get more information (ie time scares and who's going to get that) is like pulling teeth.

I agree, 12 months ago when cabinets were popping up in all the villages around us, our local BDUK scheme was telling us that we were not included in any plan, and basically that that the money had run out, and that was it.

Suddenly, several months ago, vans turned up and 20 out of the 40 properties were fitted up with FTTP - it was a complete surprise.

Gainshare money being reinvested to further expand the footprint

the clawback clauses have helped. The saddest part of bduk has been bt/or have not put extra money to re-jig its network - cab wise. so cab upgrades have been poor in terms of money spent..

Hopefully those incidents are in the 1 to 2%

On the rejig network issue, I presume you are excluding the numerous infill cabinets that are being deployed, and a smaller number of full network rearrangement cabinets and the addition of cabinets for EO (and some EO going straight to FTTP)

Phase 2 and gain share extensions have seen the amount of changes increase, hence the higher number of posts about checker estimates being wrong

I'm not sure what it means, or if it's relevant, but CodeLook lists the earlier cabinet installs as

Phase BDUK Nottinghamshire 13a

whereas the later ones, including ours, which the local BDUK were always telling us was not planned to happen, are

Phase SEP Nottinghamshire 17b
Phase SEP Nottinghamshire 18b

BDUK is first phase

SEP Superfast Extension Plan/Project is the Phase 2 and Phase 3 and gainshare

So all hinges on when the chat was with the local BDUK team

Yes Andrew, I think my first contact with the BDUK scheme at Notts County Council was about 12 months ago - after the inital flurry of cabinets sprouting in the surrounding villages, but before there was any sign of our part of the world being scheduled.

When I contacted them again at the end of last year, I got the feeling that the 'Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire' BDUK department at the Council was basically in limbo. The dedicated facebook page had gone, the website postcode search didn't work any more, and it took prodding the main Council facebook page to get a response to the two emails I had sent them. To be fair, they did respond and went on to find out what was happening, from their contacts at Openreach presumably.

The BBfN website where & when bit has been stuck saying...

We will share information about where better broadband is available in Nottinghamshire as soon as we're able to. The postcode checker is being updated and will be available soon.

...for quite some time now. It did work a year ago, but did tell me my postcode was already enabled for superfast broadband.

Edited by sparky_paul (Sat 20-Jan-18 13:07:00)

Excluding the EO lines, the infill cabs do seem to be on a council to council basis.. And my cab may still get infill (been told two different things). And to far on myself, i don't have a full information on the network rejig from copper to fibre-copper to fibre.

Yes even though its the same Openreach doing the work, there are wide variations from county to county, and nation to nation.

The technologies largely remain the same, but in some counties we are seeing infill cabinets going in for VDSL2 passed but not superfast ahead of villages where nothing has happened at all yet.

2018 is going to see the pace slow down, the push to 2 million Openreach FTTP i.e. another 1.5 million under commercial roll-outs will mean that projects won't the same priority, hence why looking at having gone from 90% to 95% in 18 months, and now 95 to ~98% in two years.

Our village - hamlet, really - is also a strip of fairly well separated dwellings along about a mile of lane. We used to be on well under 1Mb/s on a good day, the street cabinet being about 2 miles away (farther for many). A while back BT installed full fat FTTP as the only way they could provide any sort of decent speed. Most internet users here have upped to FTTP - it costs nothing extra. I think you're wrong to suggest only a few will want it - it's that or carrier pigeon speeds!
The actual installation took ages - months after boxes appeared some cable appeared, then there were more long waits until anything was actually available to order - keep checking with BT, they won't just tell you when it's available. Every installation seemed to require at least 1 extra telegraph pole!
Of course, this is Cornwall so there were EU funds available to do the work.

Derby

As others have said it would be part of a contract to upgrade as many as possible that cannot get superfast.

FTTP is actually the cheapest way to hit lots of small clusters in different localities as the splitters nicely provide up to 32 users. A cabinet is more expensive due to the difficulties getting power to it and the inherent cost of a box that will serve 128-384 only serving below 30..

Take up in the areas is usually higher than built up places as these often already have better speed because they are closer to the exchange or have Virgin available. In some places this exceeds 50% now!

Most areas with hundreds of houses per cabinet have either Virgin or are close enough to the exchange to get over 8-10Mb. Many people who can get over 10Mb will not upgrade to Fibre due to the cost difference Thus take up rates are far lower, 10-25%, .

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The technologies largely remain the same, but in some counties we are seeing infill cabinets going in for VDSL2 passed but not superfast ahead of villages where nothing has happened at all yet.

I think that wherever possible, something should be done for those languishing on sub-2Mb ADSL. You get to a point, given the total lack of any information, that you start to wonder if it will ever happen... especially when you see everyone locally being upgraded by a council BDUK scheme, but they can't even tell you if fibre will ever come, never mind when.

It doesn't seem fair when we all pay the same council tax, and invariably pay more for a market-A line with poor ADSL than those on FTTC in the local town. If there was a plan, I think people would be a lot happier if they thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how remote.

It must also have a detrimental effect on house sales, I guess not many would be prepared to go back to 1-2Mb ADSL once they are used to fibre.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

FTTP is actually the cheapest way to hit lots of small clusters in different localities as the splitters nicely provide up to 32 users. A cabinet is more expensive due to the difficulties getting power to it and the inherent cost of a box that will serve 128-384 only serving below 30..

In our case, we are getting a new cabinet to serve 20 properties, after the other 20 properties in the village got FTTP.

It doesn't seem fair when we all pay the same council tax, and invariably pay more for a market-A line with poor ADSL than those on FTTC in the local town.

One does need to consider the cost of providing that service. I suspect the cost of maintaining a poor ADSL connection to a remote location is significantly more than providing an FTTC connection to an urban user situated near to their cabinet that is also serving 300 or more of their neighbours.

Communication providers be they BT, VM, Gigaclear or any other are businesses rather than charities and need to be able to justify any investment. Nevertheless installing an AIO cab for just 30 rather than FTTP is perhaps surprising. Of course, urban dwellers might then ask why rural areas are able to get far faster broadband than they are for roughly the same cost.

Has the poster checked whether their council has a USC voucher scheme running?

Also fixed wireless services cover plenty of areas, so are another avenue to explore, as is things like 4G with a router.

The USC was declared covered generally by virtue of satellite coverage.

Some projects are dealing with USC type postcodes with FTTP or if a cluster FTTP, but its slow process and many USC premises are on the fringes of areas and in very low population density areas.

Without any visibility of what the costings were

If FTTP area has businesses in it that can sway the equation towards FTTP if a project has some EU money particularly.

If the cost of power was very high for one area it may be cheaper to deploy FTTP, but if cabinet location in another area had access to lower cost power than FTTC may be the best value for money option, i.e. what UKPN (or other power company) charges for getting mains to the cabinet is a variable.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If FTTP area has businesses in it that can sway the equation towards FTTP if a project has some EU money particularly.

If the cost of power was very high for one area it may be cheaper to deploy FTTP, but if cabinet location in another area had access to lower cost power than FTTC may be the best value for money option, i.e. what UKPN (or other power company) charges for getting mains to the cabinet is a variable.

Oddly enough, where they put FTTP, there is ready access to a supply - every property is on T-T overhead electricity supplies from poles, and the poles are out on the road. Where the FTTC cabinet is going, the electricity poles are behind the houses on the opposite side of the road, and some distance away. That said, they are digging in the verge for a supply, I never knew there was any underground supply there.

As for business influence, there is a 2GW power station on the edge of the area served by FTTP, so I guess that is possible - although I had always assumed they would have their own arrangements for fast internet connection via the grid. It's hard to imagine they would be relying on poor ADSL for a place that size, and even their phone numbers have the nearest city's dialling code.

some of the cabs that were planned in the new forest was scrapped because of power supply costs were just too high

Our village has just had FTTP installed on the poles, activated on the 17th Dec, ordered on 27th, and connected to BT 52Mb on 12th Jan. Problem they would have had here for FTTC is that the spurs from the cabs were all aluminium and corroded.

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Jan-18 09:48:37)

In reply to a post by MCM:

I suspect the cost of maintaining a poor ADSL connection to a remote location is significantly more than providing an FTTC connection to an urban user situated near to their cabinet that is also serving 300 or more of their neighbours.

It's not exactly what I would call remote, 6-7 miles as the crow flies from a couple of towns, and 11 miles form the centre of a city. We just happen to have a line length of around 4 miles from the exchange, all the lines from which are exchange-only.