Could the recent estates, be more of a known quality in terms of ducting etc, thus easier to quantify on the costs side ?

In terms knowing more about them in terms of record keeping, less likely to have blocks from old tree roots etc maybe

The reasoning is always difficult to discern

My guess and it is a guess is that someone lower down in the Openreach hierarchy has been tasked with actually working out how they are going to pass the number of premises with FTTP that have been promised by the bosses.

Human nature being what it is you are going to look for all the low hanging fruit. That is all the places where it is going to be "easy" to install FTTP. So once you start looking into it, picking all those old-new estates that didn't get FTTP but will have relatively new ducting that is consequently less likely to be blocked and for which records are likely to be relatively accurate would be my go to starting place, even if the developer paid for a FTTC cabinet for the estate, and some idiot decided that a G.fast pod would make sense, I would imagine that it would be a target for a FTTP upgrade.

Lets face it they need to enable around an additional 2.5 million premises in the next 18 months, and if they are going to meet the target of 4 million by March 2021. You are going to have to pick the easy stuff if you have a hope in hell of meeting it. I would say any new estate built in the last 10 years that does not have FTTP would be a prime target.

I think missed off, that its likely also that x standards exist for recent ducting. where as 20 or 40 years ago, its harder to know and blowing fibre wasn't really a thing.

Overhead is easier in some ways and harder with tree clearance etc, and probable longer build times due that clearage. Then of course if its in a protected area or not.

Thanks Andrew. I see the estate is now on the TBB map.

Can confirm that fibre is definitely available as Openreach turned up yesterday and ran the fibre to the door and we have a coil of cable waiting for them to come out next week and do the internals.

Happy days !