Only houses in village without FTTP

Our village is relatively small (135 houses) and, whilst internet speeds aren't too bad, working at home has made me hope for something a little speedier.

I checked on the Openreach page and it suggested no plans for FTTP but that I could investigate a 'community fibre partnership'. So, I spoke to our neighbours and it turns everyone else in the village can, in theory, get FTTP already. This is a checker comparison of my house and my neighbours house (he's literally 10m away).

I then got a quote from Cerberus for FTTPoD. It said "Estimated Build Cost: in excess of £39,000.00 ex VAT. Number of premises passed for FTTP: 6. Openreach estimate that the distance to the fibre aggregation node serving your premises is 1000 - 1499m."

Now, my house (part of a terrace of 6) does seem to use its own pole, which could explain why it can't get FTTP. Otherwise, I can't think of why our neighbour can order FTTP but we can't (he doesn't have it though).

I was just wondering whether I should forge ahead with the £250 survey from openreach for an accurate estimate? Certainly anywhere near £39000 (ex VAT) would make it prohibitively expensive.

It may just be one of those things, but I wondered if anyone had any advice. It feels like fast internet is so close ... yet so far.

Do neighbours who have the WBC FTTP have overhead feed lines? i.e. can you see the FTTP kit ready for when they order.

It may be that your pole was that fraction closer that the BDUK project criteria that saw neighbours get something mean you got nothing.

Email me on Tuesday with full address and will ask Openreach, it may be a mistake, or some not visible reason for no including you.

Thanks - I will email.the details.

I had a wander around the village earlier. Some of the poles clearly have FTTP kit on them (I spotted the fibre manifold and, I think, distribution point').

A couple of photos of poles here. Not sure what the neighbours made of my photograpy!

What's interesting is that most houses have links back to one of these FTTP poles so could probably be connected by routing a wire between poles. For our house, the pole appears out of the ground, and so would either need something routing underground or, I guess, routing from a different pole.

Pics 2 and 3 show FTTP kit, others do not.

The underground especially if directly buried cables is probably the problem, should hopefully be able to find out more once have your details, rather than guessing from our own maps.

Looks like two lots of dropwire 8 coming off your pole and that stuff kills BB.

Looks like two lots of dropwire 8 coming off your pole and that stuff kills BB.

Luckily the run of wire to our house is relatively short. I'm sure it affects the speed, but we're not far off the theoretical maximum for our distance from the cabinet.

Our big issue is that the connection drops when it rains. Perhaps once every hour or so we get a 'blip' which causes the connection to drop. In fine weather like today, however, there are no problems at all.

I guess it's water getting into the cable somewhere. An optical cable rather than an electrical one would solve all our problems!

In reply to a post by marble:

Looks like two lots of dropwire 8 coming off your pole and that stuff kills BB.

Luckily the run of wire to our house is relatively short. I'm sure it affects the speed, but we're not far off the theoretical maximum for our distance from the cabinet.

The old figure of 8 drop wire kills broadband speeds.
OpenReach will replace this for free.
I've always seen (in my opinion) considerable gains from having them replaced.

What theoretical maximum are you basing that on? The speed/distance guide on this site is on the very cautious side if you're using that.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 24-Jun-20 20:09:31)

OpenReach will replace this for free.
I've always seen (in my opinion) considerable gains from having them replaced.

Interesting. We sync at 23-26 Mbps downstream. Our cabinet is 1050m away according to Google maps, and assuming it follows the main road (which I know is a big assumption! ... the road is relatively straight though).

That seemed to fit with guides and their estimate of speeds.

Given that I have a fault with the line during wet weather, openreach replacing the drop wire would be welcomed from both hopefully resolving that, and a speed improvment. How would I go about doing that ... raise some kind of ticket with my ISP?

You definitely don't sync at the highest theoretical speed then.

My line is 1024m long and I sync at 44Mb (at 3dB SNRM).
I sync at the high end and that won't be possible on all (or even most) lines that are that long.

I would recommend getting it fixed. Raise it with the ISP. Explain that you have a non standard drop wire.
It will be easier with some ISP's compared to others.

Any engineer who attends should replace it.

edit: what attenuation does the modem report for your line? That's a good indicator of the rough length.

Edited by j0hn83 (Thu 25-Jun-20 16:41:48)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

It will be easier with some ISP's compared to others.

edit: what attenuation does the modem report for your line? That's a good indicator of the rough length.

The two attenuation values I have are (for a SNR of 3dB):
NE Current Attenuation : 27 dB
Far Current Attenuation : 34 dB

Both values suggest I am further away from my cabinet than I thought .. or would the dropwire be affecting that value?

My ISP is Zen so hopefully they may be more willing to help than other ISPs.

(Full modem stats here. I rebooted it earlier this evening as I was surprised the 'actual' rate was higher than the 'attainable' rate!).