Totally Wrong Price Comparison Site FTTP Availability Info

I have hunted high and low on both this website and more generally on the internet and I can find no discussion on this point at all, not even by the learned ThinkBroadband itself or its main well known (but I would also say somewhat lesser) rival.

Specifically that virtually all the main price comparison sites appear to have totally and utterly wrong data for BT exchanges that offer FTTP connections for an individual address but don't offer FTTC (the normal situation on any BT exchange that is cabled up for FTTP where the only other broadband option is ADSL2+ that BT Retail itself will no longer now let you order but its competitors all will). So in a nutshell all of these wrong price comparison sites (there only appears to be one price comparison site that is even aware BT FTTP is available at my address and indeed also has been for nearly 5 years) just show the only broadband options as being ADSL2+ except that they all (so I presume all these price comparison sites in fact use the same erroneous third party database) wrongly show that 145Mbps and 300Mbps EE G.Fast services are available at my address. Whereas in fact both BT Fibre 900 and Fibre 500 are available here but not one broadband price comparison site manages to show this and the only price comparison site that even knows FTTP is available here (Uswitch) only shows the old BT 300/30 FTTP service as being the fastest available.

So taking the main broadband price comparison sites the only one that seems to have almost correct data for postcode RH5 5GA is www.uswitch.com who do manage to show BT Fibre 300 and BT Fibre 150 services available here at £49.99 and £39.99 per month but they then tarnish this result by also showing EE by claiming that 300Mbps Fibre Max 1 and 145Mpps Fibre Max 2 services are available at £43,00 and £35.00 per month on an 18 month contract with a £25 setup fee.. But EE Fibre Max 2 and Fibre Max 1 are in fact G.fast services as indicated on their web page at https://ee.co.uk/help/help-new/broadband-and-landlin... and G.Fast is not even available at my address or indeed anywhere else on the Capel, Surrey (THCP) exchange as confirmed by the BT Wholesale checker at www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Which Switch, Compare The Market, Moneysupermarket and Confused (who all appear to use the same wrong database, although EE would possibly seem to be responsible for erroneously giving the impression their G.Fast service are available on every BT exchange in the country) all claim the only broadband option available here is ADSL2+ (plus the in reality non existent EE G.Fast options) and even wrongly claim that is the case for BT.

As BT Retail have managed to correctly show FTTP as being available here for 4 or more years and indeed the majority of my neighbours in other flats are already connected to the FTTP cable through a rather unsightly set of little external junction boxes in the hall (not sure if this is the ONT or not) to the ugly fibre cables tacked high up the wall that was all that BT Retail were prepared to pay for (this was a Race To Infinity exchange winner that BT was then 4 years late delivering as they preferred to take the Superfast Surrey money first from the County Council) there is no doubt that FTTP is available and does work here.

Now I'm presuming that these price comparison sites do manage to get this information correct for most other addresses that either have FTTC and ADSL2+ connection options or only ADSL2+ alone available and they may or mot get the data right for G.Fast capable addresses (the fact that EE is wrongly shown as providing G.Fast services here rather suggests the price comparison sites also mess this up too, although this may perhaps be EE;'s fault).

Now given that in 2020 FTTP is becoming a reasonably commonplace scenario (even if still in a significant minority of cases) I can't see how Ofcom allows all the price comparison sites apart from Uswitch (who simply seem to not have updated their database recently to incorporate the recently added BT Fibre 500 and 900 services) to wrongly not show the availability of FTTP services at all. Ditto it also seems disappointing that totally wrong data is being provided showing EE G.Fast services as available, although that is clearly less bad than omitting the FTTP services entirely as at least the net result is that the customer finds the G.Fast services are not available when they hit the EE website. But if BT FTTP services are not listed at all (given that none of these price comparison sites seem to exhaustively list all available FTTP providers offering products through BT fibre cables like Zen, IDNet or Aquiss even though gas and electricity comparison sites do always have an option to show all available providers at your address) then customers are going to potentially in error order ADSL2+ services thinking that nothing better is actually available.

Come to think of it I can't actually see how BT Retail hasn't become aware of this and why their marketing people aren't also chasing the price comparison sites like hell to list their FTTP services, especially when they are still listing their ADSL2+ products that BT Retail appears to no longer even wish to sell at all for new installs at an FTTP capable address (since their own websit no longer lists them).

Of course perhaps this is only my FTTP capable address that has this issue with nearly all the main price comparison sites apart from USwitch (who do show BT FTTP products as available but aren't showing the very new Fibre 500 and Fibre 900 iterations) thinking I only have access to ADSL2+ broadband services at my address but some how I doubt it when FTTP has been available for over 4 years and this appears to be a perfectly standard build that supports the very fastest possible FTTP speed (this website even claiming at www.thinkbroadband.com/packages that a 1000/110 service is available from Trunk Networks at a rather unattractive £144 per month + £60 setup)

Of course I realise that those of us who have access to FTTP are still in the vast minority but I would have thought that at least the users of this website would have noticed by now if none of the main broadband price comparison websites apart from Uswitch were listing any FTTP services as being available. Other less well known broadband price comparison sites such as broadbandgenie.co.uk, broadbandchoices.com and simplyswitch.com all also wrongly only showing ADSL2+ service from numerous providers plus the phantom non existent G.Fast services from EE as being available but no FTTP providers at postcode RH5 5GA. If anyone wants my phone number too then message me and I can send it to you by PM.

So as this seems rather a major omission by the price comparison website industry and as Ofcom in particular and also the Competition and Markets Authority would seem to be asleep at the wheel to allow this crazy situation to continue you would have thought something might be done about it.

Also surely BT Retail, Bt Openreach and BT Wholesale's staff must also be asleep at the wheel given the potential huge loss of FTTP business they are likely to suffer as a result of customers not being made aware by the price comparison website that this is available as an option and odering an ADSL2+ product from a BT competitor instead..................

Openreach FTTP was only available to just over half a million homes less than 2 years ago.
It's only in the last couple years this footprint has grown to an amount that would make it worth the price comparison sites to cover.
It's roughly 2.1 million homes covered now.

The main reason they don't compare FTTP is perhaps because there's nothing to compare.

BT is the only "big" ISP selling OpenReach FTTP.

Maybe BT don't pay big commission to price comparison sites for FTTP? They pretty much have a monopoly at the moment.

The FTTC market is competitive and there's more to compare.

When Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc start selling FTTP and as the footprint continues to grow I'm sure it will be added to the price comparison sites.
They get commission from ISP's after all.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 25-May-20 00:07:38)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

The main reason they don't compare FTTP is perhaps because there's nothing to compare.

BT is the only "big" ISP selling OpenReach FTTP.

When Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc start selling FTTP and as the footprint continues to grow I'm sure it will be added.

If you are on an FTTP exchange where no FTTC options are therefore by definition available to you the relevant comparison is still with taking an over priced ADSL2+ service where you are generally likely to be paying £23 a month upwards (even though a current short term deal with NowTv and £100 Quidco cashback could mean you are only paying as little as £9.75 per month for ADSL2+ in year one) for a service as potentially slow as only 2 or 3Mbps.

Whereas at the same address you will be able to get BT Fibre Essential at 36Mbps or BT Fibre 50Mbps at the same current BT Retail price of £27.99 per month (at least on my exchange, although I don't know if BT Retail prices for FTTP go any lower on the cheaper offerings on the largest phone exchanges due to the Market 1, 2 and 3 thing or if that only related to ADSL2+) or of course BT Fibre 500 and Fibre 900 at £49.99 and £59.99 per month in the first year.

I would have thought that a price comparison website leaving out much faster FTTP services at similar price levels to what most customers pay for ADSL2+ was therefore rather a serious matter as it is likely to lead to customers making the wrong choices and the uptake of FTTP not being at the levels that Ofcom itself wants to see.

For you to just dismiss it as a minor omission because it is a new product is somewhat ridiculous when FTTP as a service has now been available in the UK for 8 or 9 years and is now available to over a million UK homes.

This omission I would say represents a shocking lack of care and due diligence by the main price comparison websites or in particular whatever third party data source it is that they all (apart from Uswitch sho seem to be making slightly more effort as one would perhaps expect from the oldest established price comparison website) obtain this data from.

It also amounts to a shocking lack of due diligence by Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority in failing to ensure that the data from these price comparison websites is accurate and can be relied upon......

EDIT:- BT FTTP cables were actually available to connect to in 2 million homes by December 2019 and BT are targeting 4 million homes by March 2021 (even if the COVID-19 hiatus on new installs, about to end any time soon, may slow down hitting this target a little). See www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/12/openreachs-fttp-broadband-build-hits-2-million-uk-premises.html

SECOND EDIT:- Also how do the price comparison websites get away without providing an option to show all available competitors (not just the ones that pay them commission if you click the right buttons as they are legally obliged to do for gas and electricity)?

The price comparison websites have a default order that is related to the commission they are paid but you can select to order by price or speed and the BT ADSL2+ option is there for my address on most of them somewhere, even though BT Retail have now stopped listing it as an order option now that they are giving dates for new FTTP connections again.

Although a couple of weeks ago they were showing ADSL2+ as the only available broadband option at my address as no installation date could then be booked for FTTP.

THIRD EDIT:- The fact that BT Retail no longer even lists an ADSL2+ as an available new order broadband option at a customer home that has FTTP available and treats it as an obsolete product is of course the reason why it is now completely unacceptable for price comparison websites not to list FTTP broadband options for any customer doing a comparison for an FTTP address that by definition will not have access to FTTC and where ADSL2+ is now considered a legacy product that BT Retail does not want customers to order.

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-May-20 00:56:15)

I didn't dismiss anything and don't see any need for the
I gave you possible reasons why they don't compare FTTP.

8 years old or not it has historically had a very low footprint.

The price comparison sites are commercial businesses that are there to make profit.
They haven't seen the business case for adding FTTP until now.
They obviously aren't compelled to do so.

Write to the companies or your MP if it bothers you that much.

The utility comparison sites for gas and electricity have to give (due to regulations requiring it from their regulator OFGEM) accurate price comparison for all companies in the marketplace and not just the ones they can make money from by clicking through to switch to them (they can list the companies you can switch to with them first or you have to click another box to see the other companies but they do still have the data and it does seem to be pretty accurate). So I don't see why things should be any different with broadband but may be you can? The point of regulations is to stop naked commercial greed achieving a bad outcome for consumers. If there were no building regulations and building control then no doubt buildings would still fall down quite regularly.

You say you didn't dismiss anything but I would say you appear to have a very flippant attitude towards the duty of a price comparison website to not only make money but do what it actually says it is doing on the tin fairly and accurately.

As on an FTTP exchange you normally don't have FTTC access and may well not have ADSL2+ either (new housing estates often only have FTTP) then it is in my view quite outrageous for lazy price comparison websites to not give a comparison for services for the one fixed line broadband option you have (FTTP). There is also no excuse for leaving out FTTP products from the largest provider in the marketplace in particular. And there clearly are other providers who cover the UK for BT FTTP builds such as Zen, Idnet and Aquiss (the latter particularly targeting those who only have FTTP and not even an ADSL2+ option with lower cost and less fast FTTP products) who should all be listed on any price comparison site.

Some of the price comparison websites for broadband just don't seem to care with a number of them not only not listing FTTP options but also wrongly listing FTTC options for TalkTalk, Sky and other providers on FTTP exchanges where no such option actually exists. This is clearly because they are just too mean to pay for a proper data source. More disturbingly still some of the worst offenders are official Ofcom accredited price comparison sites listed at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-interne... As this doesn't happen with gas and electricity and even the smallest and newest market entrants are listed on price comparison sites I would say that Ofcom is doing a pretty bad job here just as it is in having let BT secure a monopoly for itself in most of its FTTP build areas by pricing things in such a way at the wholesale level that smaller competitors can't undercut them and larger competitors don't want to enter the market as they can't see a way to undercut BT and lure in significant numbers of customers.

I am also astounded that you apparently seem to think proper price comparisons and proper competition in FTTP don't actually matter just because it is a newer form of broadband when most people in FTTP areas are denied any real competition or choice in broadband products and often also have no decent 4G alternative either in some of the more out of the way FTTP exchange areas (such as my own where 4G data speeds average 7Mbps compared to 16Mbps on even ADSL2+)

May be you don't seem to get it (your attitude seemed to be that I was making a mountain out of a Molehill, which might have been true in 2010 re FTTP but not in 2020) because you don't live an FTTP area so don't realise how annoying it is for the only fast modern broadband service from a major company to be with BT who the regulator also allows to behave blatantly anti competitively towards any smaller rivals who try to enter the FTTP marketplace. I expect you wrongly imagine that we also have access to FTTC in these areas so think we shouldn't be getting too upset about not having access to top end FTTP speeds at low prices.

But the reality is that BT has its FTTP customers over a barrel and a corrupt and useless regulator lets a company with still massive power to dominate the fixed line phone and broadband marketplace get away with a wide range of blatantly abusive and anti-competitive practices that a decent regulator ought to come down on like a ton of bricks. But no such chanc with Ofcom's cosy Good Old Boys Club style of regulation.........

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-May-20 03:15:56)

I'm not sure I understand what your issue is. At present there's just 2 major/well known ISPs selling Openreach FTTP: BT and Zen. It takes no more than 5-10 mins to do a price comparison yourself if you're willing to put the effort in. BT will in 99% of cases be cheaper for FTTP since you can get very good discounts over the phone by haggling. You can get a BT 40/10 FTTP connection for anywhere between £20-£30/m depending on your haggling skills - that's bargain basement level pricing.

Once approx. 700 ISPs start selling Openreach FTTP - like the number currently selling xDSL services - then I'm 100% sure the price comparison websites will be updated accordingly.

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-May-20 09:19:58)

In reply to a post by Highland76:

I'm not sure I understand what your issue is. At present there's just 2 major/well known ISPs selling Openreach FTTP: BT and Zen. It takes no more than 5-10 mins to do a price comparison yourself if you're willing to put the effort in. BT will in 99% of cases be cheaper for FTTP since you can get very good discounts over the phone by haggling. You can get a BT 40/10 FTTP connection for anywhere between £20-£30/m depending on your haggling skills - that's bargain basement level pricing.

The issue that you for whatever mysterious reasons don't seem to get is that most members of the public lead busy lives and unlike people inhabiting this forum are not technophile geeks expert on every last intricacy of available broadband connections for their home. Instead most of them do exactly what they would do for buying car insurance or changing utility supplier and that is to look at a price comparison website and pick the cheapest vaguely respectable looking option there.

So if they do that on all price comparison websites other than Uswitch they are going to be misled that their only available options are either an ADSL2+ connection of up to 24Mbps speed (if I get 16Mbps 0.7 miles from the exchange some people must get well over 20Mbps) or a much faster up to 300Mpbs connection with naughty TalkTalk, who seem to have provided a false database showing their Gfast service either available on every BT landline in the UK or wrongly as available on all BT FTTP enabled exchanges

Those customers may visit the TalkTalk website itself but then find that they are only offering ADSL2+ just like all the other providers they are shown by their price comparison website. So they would then make a choice of supplier from the many listed ADSL2+ suppliers and then get locked in to an up to 2 year contract (or more typically 18 months with most non BT suppliers) with massive punitive penalties for terminating early on (that now includes also paying back the subsidised lower price in the contract period they have consumed and not just all of the remaining value of the contract to the supplier) that they can't change from affordably.

So if they then later discover faster FTTP services are available they would have to try to sue their price comparison website for misleading them about choice of supplier and try to get them to pay the massive cancellation charges if cancelling early on. Charges which Ofcom of course says shouldn't exist as suppliers ought to only charge their real costs of terminating early and those ought to only be any money they have spent on an Openreach engineer visit and on admin time and not the putative future value of the contract over the rest of the up to 2 years.

The useless and incompetent regulator Ofcom sits there and states that unfair cancellation charges should not be levied for terminating early but the most dominant player, BT Retail now has 24 month minimum terms on all their actively marketed broadband connections including even ADSL2+ and FTTC or FTTP in situations where the new master socket faceplate or laying of new cable in to a customer home is not needed because it has already happened for a previous customer (so there is therefore no engineer visit to pay for). This is despite the wrong info on BT's help page at www.bt.com/help/broadband/manage-service/thinking-of-leaving-bt- falsely claiming that "If you’re still in contract with us, bear in mind you’ll have to pay the remaining charges of contract to cancel early. Most of our contracts are 12 months, but we do have some that are 18 and 24 months".

So due to misleading information from price comparison website normal customers (I'm not talking about geeks hanging out here who of course would never make this mistake) are making the wrong choice of broadband supplier while wholly unaware a better FTTP option even exists and then can't change their mind and go elsewhere for up to 2 years after making that mistake.

I don't see what part of the fact that customers in FTTP areas are being seriously and negligently misled about the right choice of broadband supplier for their home by these price comparison websites and making the wrong choice as a result and with the harm being greatly compounded by the massive penalties for terminating an up to 2 year long contract that the corrupt regulator allows that it is that you don't seem to get exactly?

By contrast in gas and electricity supply there is a huge choice of variable and also some fixed tariffs with no penalties at all for leaving just weeks or even days after you join them and even where penalties do exist on long fixed deals with the Big Six they are a mere fraction of well over £1,000 in cancellation charges levied by BT Retail for cancelling an FTTP contract early and where you are not moving your BT service elsewhere because you are either merging UK household or moving abroad.

So what part of the fact that customers will make wrong and bad choices due to wrong information from the price comparison websites and either be locked in for ages or incur huge costs to move elsewhere due to this wrong information is it that you do not seem to get?

Also I suspect you don't seem to realise that nearly all customers in an FTTP area don't have a choice of taking a much larger range of cheaper FTTC services (as they are almost never available in a BT Openreach FTTP area) and may also well not have a choice of ADSL2+ services either if they are in a new build housing estate where only FTTP cabling has been installed and no copper wiring exists. If they are also in an area with no decent 4G data speeds or may be only 2G signal or no mobile signal available (plenty of these still in NotSpots in England and all over remote rural parts of Wales and Scotland) then they are well and truly stuffed.

I don't know why exactly you seem to seek so hard to defend lazy and incompetent price comparison websites actively misleading people with wrong information and causing them substantial harm as a result but perhaps you or one of your relatives works for one of these lazy and incompetent broadband price comparison websites (that is all of them apart from Uswitch and even Uswitch are getting things wrong by not having updated to the latest situation and pricing levels on FTTP services following the launch of BT Fibre 500 and Fibre 900 to the majority of homes passed by their FTTP cabling.)?

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-May-20 10:19:03)

You appear to be under the impression that price comparison sites are there to help you. They are not. They are for the most part commercial operations there to make a profit and for this reason choose to exclude many ISP's offerings, especially from the smaller niche ISPs that are not prepared to pay commission to such sites.

So your issue is with price comparison websites. Why don't you complain to them rather than posting long rants here?

In reply to a post by MCM:

You appear to be under the impression that price comparison sites are there to help you. They are not. They are for the most part commercial operations there to make a profit and for this reason choose to exclude many ISP's offerings, especially from the smaller niche ISPs that are not prepared to pay commission to such sites.

This only happens with broadband price comparison websites and not with gas and electricity supply comparison websites, which is exactly what I am complaining about and which the useless and corrupt telecoms regulator (Ofcom) must fix. OFGEM have not exactly covered themselves in glory as a regulator but that they have got this area largely right.

Namely that gas and electricity comparison websites must show data for all players in the marketplace if you click an extra button or two to ask for this, even though by default (if you do not click the buttons asking to see all suppliers) they are allowed to show you a shorter list of only those suppliers they can earn commission from by switching you to.

I fail to see why a number of you geeks here seem to tolerate this totally unacceptable situation with broadband comparison websites both not having accurate data, omitting certain kinds of broadband completely and omitting large numbers of smaller suppliers from their listings.

Perhaps it is because as technophile geeks you like the feeling that you are the only expert masters of your universe who will make the right choices and regard with contempt ordinary mortals amongst the general public who are being actively misled by wrong information.

For the life of my I cannot see why you seek to defend the totally indefensible rather than demanding that the harm is put right and that the public is given accurate and complete information to make the correct and properly informed choice of most appropriate broadband supplier for their needs.

Your position seems to be almost like defending people getting electrocuted by dodgy wiring installations or badly made appliances as though you think it is some form of natural selection that you as a clever techno geek can take a smug satisfaction in avoiding in your own case?...........