USO Group of Houses

Looking at this for a friend. They have VDSL that is running on a good day at about 3Mbps, the immediate neighbours are much teh same and a few others close by are hitting a heady 4-6Mbps. They have cabinet to premises length of over 3km. Basic ADSL runs down at sub 1Mbps.

Having checked the USO website - they all fall in the sub 10Mbps category and 4G offers no improvement, in fact from experience it can be worse.

When BT say "up to £3400 of construction charges will be covered" is it possible for say 10 properties to work together and have a total spend of £34000? Although even then it might not be enough.

For a group of 10 properties, even if only one orders, it will be assumed that 7 will take up the service when it becomes available, and so 7 x £3,400 is available.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019...

Checking whether premises fall within the cost threshold of £3,400

5.77 The Order requires Ofcom to ensure that, when assessing the cost of providing a
connection, the Universal Service Providers take due account of the extent to which costs
may be shared by multiple locations. Where network infrastructure can be shared, build
costs should be shared between premises to determine whether the cost of provision to an
individual location would fall below £3,400. This is referred to in the Order as �demand
aggregation�

5.85 In summary, we have decided to adopt a forecast approach to demand aggregation, and to
use a 70% take-up forecast. We have set out our reasoning in more detail below.

The thing to remember here is you get no choice on what delivery method they will use.
You don't get to decide which properties will be grouped together for funding purposes.

You can't just start getting quotes for tens of thousands and assume this can be used to cover these properties even if said quote was massively under the USO threshold.

4G is the likely solution for most.

They may use a much wider area in determining which properties will be covered by a USO claim.
A 4G mast can cover a very large area.

They woul dnot be too fussed with any option!

4G is very slow - and often connecting for voice is a little hit and miss! They are in a real "blackspot" 1/2 mile as te crow flies from teh exchange and aggregation point, but a 200' hilll in teh way. ADSL is over 9km and VDSL about 3km ...

Putting a 4g mast in would be fine - the cost would not be cheap as it would need a decent feed too.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

You can't just start getting quotes for tens of thousands and assume this can be used to cover these properties even if said quote was massively under the USO threshold.

The process for USO doesn't involve you getting construction quotes and taking them to BT.

The process starts with you approaching BT asking for USO service. It's entirely up to BT what happens next. If *BT* decide the best approach is to construct a fixed network, they may plan and cost it themselves. BT decide whether there's a group of related properties that could be served by the same connection. If there's not enough money in the USO pot for the group of properties, BT will ask you to pay the ECCs.