Community Fibre Partnership - Timescales Involved

I am in the early stages of setting up a CFP for my area, having written a letter to my neighbours and I'm about to register the CFP wth Openreach.

Would anybody be able to give me the benefit of their experience as to how long it takes for Openreach to come up with their initial quote, then survey, build and go-live? My understanding is that it can potentially take a couple of years but I would really appreciate any views or experience the forum may have.

Cheers.

This was my timeline -

Aug 2018 - registered with the web site
Sep - submitted initial list of participants, and received initial estimate of cost
Oct - one neighbour dropped out, received updated estimate.
Nov - Project was approved by OR; applied for gov vouchers
Dec - Signed contract. Paid. Delivery set in contract as within 12m
Early 2019 - various generic updates on progress

... and then ...

July 2019 - call from OR saying that they were cancelling the CFP as we would be covered by BDUK "in the next 10-12 months"
Aug/Sep - moved through formal complaints process; OR agreed to install asap; CFP payment was refunded
Dec - I got installed
Feb 2020 - last of the neighbours got installed.

Painful process. But worth it in the end.

Thank you very much, this gives me a rough idea of how quickly things may move (I appreciate all projects are different). Much appreciated.

One cost hurdle we have in my area is that we don't qualify for any vouchers, there is a small office building which if they join in presumably would but the houses don't.

In reply to a post by CJ18:

I am in the early stages of setting up a CFP for my area, having written a letter to my neighbours and I'm about to register the CFP wth Openreach.

Would anybody be able to give me the benefit of their experience as to how long it takes for Openreach to come up with their initial quote, then survey, build and go-live? My understanding is that it can potentially take a couple of years but I would really appreciate any views or experience the forum may have.

Here is the timeline for our CFP (35 properties) which is nearing completion.

Dec 18 - Initial enquiry
Jan 19 - Addresses entered in OR portal
Feb - Initial quote received. Too expensive to proceed
Jul - Revised quote received
Aug - Canvassed neighbours for support
Oct - Set up CIC as vehicle to sign contract
Nov - Voucher applications made.
Dec - Signed contract
Feb - May 20 - Few standard emails from OR (like PlanSomB)
June - Street works started, ducting, manholes installed in pavements,
July - CBT's installed and fibre laid in street. Lead-ins started

As of now Lead-ins are about 70% complete. Openreach have estimated a go live in early October. My experience has been very good. The work has been subcontracted to KN Circnet who have been easy to deal with. I have received positive comments about them from my neighbours.

My two top tips for anyone setting up a CFP are:
1) Enter addresses into OR portal before you have spoken to your neighbours. It is easier to approach your neighbours with a headline figure. (It seems you are passed this stage though)
2) Ask for a copy of the draft contarct before the vouchers are applied for so you can review it in advance. Once our vouchers were applied for our contract was immediately issued and things moved quickly so this could save some time.

Good luck!

Thanks for sharing.
We are at the start of the process and would be using rural vouchers. I can see that there is a risk for Openreach because the vouchers only pay out after installation and if the voucher holders sign up for a qualifying service. How did Openreach manage this - do they try to get you to guarantee the value of the vouchers?
I don’t understand the point of the CIC. I can see why Openreach want to contract with a legal entity but a brand new company with no assets is not going to give them any security. What did the contract commit you to?

In short they pass that risk on so the contract commits you to being liable for the value of the contract. It does lists the vouchers so if the voucher total exceeds the cost of the contract then no money needs to change hands. From memory OR normally ask for 50% upfront The CIC is really for your own protection as it restricts liability should anything go wrong. Over the 12 month delivery period circumstances can change so I agreed with the participients that if any vouchers are not claimed, we would equally split the cost. That seemed a fair approach.

In reply to a post by zag164:

Over the 12 month delivery period circumstances can change so I agreed with the participients that if any vouchers are not claimed, we would equally split the cost. That seemed a fair approach.

This is something that you should always account for with CFP and other community partnerships.

Thanks for all the info, it's really useful. As I mentioned before, we don't qualify for vouchers (although we live on the literal edge of a small town/village with we are not considered rural) so we haven't got those to help us but at least it streamlines things a bit, I guess!

I haven't entered any addresses into the OR site, I'm a little reluctant to do that as I haven't spoken to anyone yet. I do appreciate though that a headline cost could be useful to generate interest. I may take that step if interest is very low.

if your not rural and no vouchers you will have to fund it yourself with your community out of your own real money if you have FTTC already it is likely the cost will increase than if you do not

i would suggest you actually ask your community before wasting Openreach resource for costings that you might not even want or your community may not want (the upshot of this wasted resource from Openreach and an increased likleyhood your quote till take longer to get back to you

To get a quote before speaking to a community is 100% likely for it to go nowhere or a lot of unhappy people at the end of it who wished you spoken to them in the first place

Edited by Fastman3 (Sun 09-Aug-20 17:14:56)

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

i would suggest you actually ask your community before wasting Openreach resource for costings that you might not even want or your community may not want (the upshot of this wasted resource from Openreach and an increased likleyhood your quote till take longer to get back to you

To get a quote before speaking to a community is 100% likely for it to go nowhere or a lot of unhappy people at the end of it who wished you spoken to them in the first place

I understand where you coming from but if a CFP is going to fail its going to fail. Communities are always more likely to be interested before they find out how much its going to cost them. I can recall hearing a CFP community moaning about their broadband but once they found out the cost to upgrade (the local infrastructure) a fair few changed their tune about needing upgrading.

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

if your not rural and no vouchers you will have to fund it yourself with your community out of your own real money if you have FTTC already it is likely the cost will increase than if you do not

Not necessarily. In the case of our CFP, Openreach advised that because we already had FTTC (albeit fairly slow) the cost was reduced because the fibre aggregation node was nearby. This would not have been the case if there wasn't already fibre in the area and we still had ADSL.

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

i would suggest you actually ask your community before wasting Openreach resource for costings that you might not even want or your community may not want (the upshot of this wasted resource from Openreach and an increased likleyhood your quote till take longer to get back to you

It was the Openreach CF team that advised entering the addresses up front to be able to take a firm quote to the community so they do not consider it a waste of time. I'm glad they did because the first question people asked was 'How much is it going to cost me?'. Having done some groundwork will gain credibility with your community.

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

To get a quote before speaking to a community is 100% likely for it to go nowhere or a lot of unhappy people at the end of it who wished you spoken to them in the first place

Our CFP is nearly complete so I have to disagree with this statement. I'm not sure if this is based on opinion or experience but it is very different to mine.

I would think that now is a probably a better time than ever before to start a CFP. Due to Covid more people are working than home than ever before and there is the every growing popularity of streaming services/video calls. I have had a lot of comments from neighbours that FTTP could not be coming at a better time so people now have higher bandwidth demands and are generally very aware if they have a poor internet connection.

I guess enterering the addresses into the OR site is no commitment to anything beyond the initial 'desktop' quote. And I agree that some idea of price would be useful and likely to sway people one way or the other.

However, I also take the point that from OR's point of view if you suddenly removed a hefty portion of addresses from the list it might change the project quite a bit. Although presumably the fibre gets laid to the area regardless and to a degree it's a question of how many homes it is then connected to at that time, therefore OR will still have to do quite a bit of the civil work regardless.

actually yes it would have had an impact as well

CJ18 suggest you check with your community before asking for a quote otherwise it a waste of time for all concerned

I am leaning that way, initial letter is set to go out this week.

It is a chicken and egg situation. I suspect that if you asked any community whether they would like faster, more reliable broadband, they would say yes. If you then say that it will cost each of them, the question will be how much and without knowing, they cannot make an informed choice. Presumably that is why Openreach have a 2 stage process; the ballpark figure which can give an indication, and if the interest is there they will invest in surveys and detailed planning.

Openreach expects that community lead understands the vouchers process and had shared that with those residents that they are claiming a vouchers ie they know that the vouchers is and they they what what the obligations are on it and they they have to purchase a servuce double their current speed (that not an issue when you get 5 meg - its a bit more of a challenge if you get 80- megs

there has always been a requirement for a community to have a legal entity . to contract with Openreach to do a community fibre partnership- a CIC is just one of them

Dect

Tthere's a world of difference in a communy that does not make it to the end (there are many reason why some have not got over the line). than there is to a a community that does not even do the fundamentals first,- i.e who wants it, who's willing to contribute, whos got a need for it . (those are fundamentals and you would do that for any other community project you were doing - so 100% you should be doing that with broadband) its what i call , the who , what, where, why and when test

There is no perfect way, I agree with Nick_W789's last post about the chicken and egg

Having registed with OR, I received an email telling me I would receive a link to the portal where I could then start entering addresses. This is supposed to arrive in 24 hours but it's been 3 days and I haven't received anything. I have checked spam filters and can't find any email anywhere.

I've filled in Openreach's general contact form to ask when this link will turn up, does anybody know of another method of contacting them regarding CFPs as I can't find anything on the website other than registering again?

You could try [email protected]

Thanks - I got in touch with @openreachhelp this morning and the end result of that was they gave me the [email protected] email address to contact. I can't find this anywhere on the CFP website so I don't know how far I'll get with it but I've sent a mail and we'll see what happens.

Here is a picture of my portal before we were told FTTP was being deployed via Superfast North Yorkshire.

Don't need it now fortunately.

I recalled that I registered for a portal 2 years ago when I first thought about CFP and didn't get very far. I managed to dig out the email from back then and the link still works - this is presumably why the OR system won't send me a new link.

I'm checking with OR that adding the addresses in this manner should still be OK but if so I'm all set.

Yes mine still works after 3 years and I agree because you already have a "Live" one they will not send another.

Correct me if I'm wrong though.

It makes sense...would be nice if they told you that though. Communication with Openreach is one of the hardest things I've come across. Ironic really.