CFP Questions

After endless agro with faults on a rather long FTTC line (currently now being dug up to replace cable) and discovering the group of houses I live in were to be missed off any kind of future funding for improving the broadband by South Glos I joined forces with the local Parish Council to start a CFP scheme. We had almost 100% uptake from 25 premises and so i'm currently waiting for the quote to come back.

Since that was sent off I discovered OpenReach outside installing new poles. After talking to the workmen it transpires they were installing new poles further down from the nearest fibre node and were then planning on hooking on to the existing poles outside our premises and running a brand new fibre line up to HMP finest local establishment.

I have had some brief talks with OpenReach regarding the new line where they have stated that they would always look to utilise existing infrastructure. Given that the new line being installed is obviously a totally separate installation, how likely is it that they will install splitters or anything along the stretch near our houses? Are they more likely to simply do a straight line install all the way without any kind of joins or junctions?

If splitters were put in, then how expensive is a CFP likely to be if it only involves running fibre from that splitter to 25 odd houses? The houses are all within 500-600 meters of each other. There's pole near to all houses all though I believe a few currently have existing copper lines underground to a pole.

Worst case I think it would require a new cable which appears to be roughly 400 meters to the nearest fibre node to the closest house.

I'm assuming it's like asking how long is a piece of string, but just wondered if anyone could shed any light on 'common' scenarios?

I would hazard a guess that they be Installing a leased line with a direct fibre ,no splitters involved and will go to a different node ( not an NGA aggregation node ). The only part they could use are the poles which is potentially good news

Hmm ok. It's quite a small village and it's the same spot that they ran the local primary school from several years ago when there was the goverment push for all schools to be on fibre.

A few houses were built nearby also and a new cabinet (on it's own) was also installed whereby those residents are now on 70-80 FTTC.

So again leased line, i.e. direct and dedicated fibre without the GPON splitters

New build may have had developer part pay for VDSL2.

So does that mean that for our CFP we would be unable to connect to that node and it may infact be much further away?

The Aggregation node without looking at area and existing cabinets is at a guess some distance away, so the CFP costing will be based on access to that, if the cabinet for VDSL2 is say just 100 homes then unlikely to be in the ground near that cabinet

Aggregation nodes are located based on the idea of eventually serving 1,400 premises with FTTP.

If I were to send you the postcode would you be able to tell me what is actually there in the road? I'd be very grateful?

Very very unlikely to be GPON from the NGA agg node for HMP.

Almost certainly a leased line.

Not surprising if they come from the same direction if it's rural. They'll be using whatever existing ducting/poles are in place along the route.

edit: to add. some very rural FTTC cabinets don't have an Aggregation Node at all.

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 29-Jun-18 15:36:56)

Cannot confirm anything, as don't have access to the maps of what is in the ground, but can gauge likelihood of the ag node rough location.

Many thanks I've actually sent an email as I added an attachment.

So we've had our CFP quote back and I've discussed it with Openreach.

It looks like you guys were correct and i'm told by Openreach the 'node' the HMP line has come from is probably an ethernet leased line and wouldn't have the capacity to support our premises.

They would go from a node on the opposite end of the road 2km away. Unfortunately the quote is £52k for 25 premises which I think is highly unlikely that our community will be able to pay for.

I assume if I were to order FTTPoD it would still come from the same place as the CFP scheme and not the nearby node 400m away? I would have to order a leased line which again for a single premise would be very expensive.

That node doesn't benefit you for anything - it is not usable for FTTPoD or similar and leased lines don't get discounts because there is a "node" nearby. It isn't to do with capacity - it is a different technology.

FTTPoD to an aggregation node 2km away is going to be very expensive - might even be more expensive than the quote you've been given for the community installation.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 06-Jul-18 15:42:38)

FTTPoD if available yes would be same location and at 2km people would be warning of high end costs i.e. £39k upwards

A leased line will in the short term be cheaper than FoD, but after a few years the two cross over, i.e. leased line has a lower setup cost but higher ongoing costs in comparison to FTTPoD. The higher ongoing costs is linked to the committed nature of the speeds you will get i.e. shared with less people in the core network area.

Rather than saying everyone needs to contribute £2k, why don't see how much each person is willing to contribute, some may well be able to afford more and willing to pay more to get better broadband.

If you wanted to keep the amounts anonymous you could always start a crowd fund.

Yes absolutely, we said all along we would see if we could raise the amount rather than demand each resident paid x amount.

The costs have worked out quite a bit higher than we anticipated however.