Small update on my build (paid for on the 5/6). Cablers (openreach van with 3 employees) have made it to outside my house - one blockage only on route about 50m down the road by the sounds of it. They are sending out a crew to try and clear the blockage but the chap I spoke to suspected it will have to be dug up to repair (in the middle of someones drive apparantly - oops!) which will result in a delay. Overall quite pleased with progress to date, glad they have actually started.

Edited by Disca (Wed 24-Jul-19 12:27:45)

Hi All

We are currently on FTTC with BT and are at the far end of the cable run so we get 30/4 speeds.

The BT checker has FTTP not available and there are no plans to enable it, however FTTPoD is available at 330/30.

I had an openreach engineer out to find a fault on the line a few weeks ago, he checked and the fibre node was about 300 yards away, we are on an estate so its fully ducted from the node right to my property, so I'm hoping the costs will be not too insane! (has anyone had similar quoted?)

BT fobbed me off to Openreach who directed me to a list of FTTPoD providers. I've put in a request with Cerberus Networks and Amvia, I assume this is the best way of going about this?

Thanks

In reply to a post by ninocass:

We are currently on FTTC with BT and are at the far end of the cable run so we get 30/4 speeds.
<snip>
the fibre node was about 300 yards away

If you're only getting 30/4 on FTTC, that suggests your line length is at least 1000m to the FTTC cabinet. A fibre aggregation node is usually not too far away from the FTTC cab(s) it serves, therefore expect a similar distance to your nearest agg node as a rough guide. Take what the Openreach bod told you with a huge pinch of salt (he could have been referring to a splitter node or DP) and wait for the desktop survey quote from Cerberus. But don't be surprised if it comes out at a 5 figure sum.

Edited by baby_frogmella (Fri 26-Jul-19 19:12:13)

Yep your spot on we are around 1000m from the cab.

We run a business from home so I’m hoping we may qualify for the business voucher scheme that is being ran.

If you can provide evidence, thats all you need for the voucher, but your provider has to apply for it.

I am self employed working from home, not vat registered and not a limited company and i sent copies of a supplier invoice and recent tax statement and was successful.

GBVS will then send you an email confirming you haver requested it, and for you to fill out and submit copies of your info.

They will then notify your provider directly of the result, who then should pass the info on to you.

GBVS will not notify you either way after application.

I was talking to the Openreach surveyor on Saturday. The Aggregation node is right next to my FTTC cab which is 1.5Km from my house. 600m of the current copper line is buried in the verge beside the road, no ducting, right in the soil. He couldn't understand why but said the install will be expensive because of this. They will either install phone line poles at £600 per pole or plough a trench along the same path as the existing line. I'm still hoping it will be cheaper than my desktop survey £21800 but I'm more prepared that it will be close to this.

There are many miles of direct buried cables in the network.

In reply to a post by darren_mccoy:

600m of the current copper line is buried in the verge

600m of directly buried cable will certainly add to the price sadly

In reply to a post by darren_mccoy:

They will either install phone line poles at £600 per pole or plough a trench along the same path as the existing line.

Someone here may know the exact distance allowed between telephone poles carrying fibre but I think I recall 70 metre so if I'm correct would mean around 9 poles which would add about 5k to your quote (based on the price per pole you stated), alternatively 600m of duct laying I would expect to be even more costly.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

I hope that when OR are rolling out their FTTP programme that they have recorded were people asked for a FTTPoD installation, then they know they have at least one person who will buy FTTP.

I ordered a survey after getting a £9700+vat desktop quote - detailing the need for a 1000m - 1500m connection to the nearest agnode. That was about three weeks ago. I got a reply from the company saying that there were delays in getting the survey as FTTPoD was unexpectedly in high demand.

This morning a really pleasant chap from OpenReach unexpectedly knocked at my door with a plan to connect me to an agnode just a few houses up - One which hasn't even been installed yet - and they are installing another one across the road! I hope they don't expect me to pay for all that! He did say he was surveying the whole road and had instructions to specifically visit me whilst he was about it.

The fibre line is to comes from my existing telephone pole, with quite a short looking run, from there to the new node.

So are they bringing native fibre to the village I wonder ? I can't find anything anywhere about it at all anywhere. It's in Wickersley Rotherham. He did mumble something about BDUK but on their site they mention only Sunnyside which is a village not so far away.

Ours is a long road, and we are quite a way from our FTTC cab about 800 meters, which means less than 30 mbits down and 6 mbits up. I'm synced at 29995 mbits/sec

Anyway - it cheered me up a bit. I will have to see how much they actually want. But there isn't much point in paying for FTTPoD if they are going to give us native connections. If they aren't why would they be installing new agnodes so nearby ?

For ages and ages our FTTC cab (cabinet 2) has been over subscribed. Occasionally it becomes available but never for very long. Always on a waiting list. I was lucky to get connected to it. It already has an extension cab next to it. Perhaps that's a reason why they are doing this instead of trying to upgrade the full cabinet even more.

Interesting times we live in!

Shaun.

Edited by shaunhw (Thu 01-Aug-19 13:48:08)

Aggregation nodes are usually located to serve something like 1,400 premises, so while smaller areas will be served if the location suggested would only cover a handful, then more likely there are talking the splitter - each aggregation node feeds a number of splitters.

If there are others beyond your 800m distance you may be seeing some BDUK roll-out, which does tend to happen with little fanfare.