FTTPoD Build Cost came back - Details here

I hope I'm posting this in the right place but I thought sharing this might help others. I did see a spreadsheet of costs people had shared this could be added to.

I paid the £300 (inc VAT) to Cerberus Networks to get an open reach FTTPoD build cost.

The details of which are below:

Field Survey Charge for Cerberus FTTPoD:
£ 250.00

Cerberus FTTP on Demand - 300Mbps Downstream, 30Mbps upstream contract for 1 Year:
£ 1200.00

FTTP on Demand (FTTPoD) Confirmed Build Charge:
£ 7907.00

SubTotal :
£ 9357.00

VAT :
£ 1871.40

Order Total :
£ 11,228.40

Some notes about my installation in particular

The 'desk' survey thing wasn't possible so I just went ahead and paid the money for this build cost quote. An open reach engineer visit was quite swift (possibly just luck in my case) and the communication from Cerberus Networks has been really good.

I live on a street which is already ducted (New(ish) build estate in North Manchester) and the open reach engineer who phoned me to ask some questions said it was the most straightforward he'd seen so far. This got my hopes up it would be primarily labour costs which I believe are roughly coming out at around £3500 - £4,000 mark.

Here is the break down I got on an invoice provided by Cerberus Networks:

Labour
£4,632.00

Contract Labour
£0.00

Civils
£750.00

Stores
£3,330.00

BT Connection Charge
£495.00

Deduction
£-1,050.00

Field Survey charge paid
£-250.00

Total
£7,907.00

Deduction is £50 per premises passed (in my case 7) and £700.00 per FTTPoD order (this included my property being giving a deduction).

My thoughts

I really really want it and a huge part of me wants to take a further advance on my mortgage or some sort of low interest loan to get it but do I really *need* it? Probably not. I can't really justify it so I'm probably not going to go ahead. The other neighbours I don't know and I very much doubt would be willing to split the costs and sign up to a substantially more expensive broadband contract for a year, so to me, that route is a non stater.

My Questions

1. What are 'stores' ?
2. What are 'civils'? I'm assuming 'civils' are some sort of council permits or costs?
3. When do most people think FTTP roll out will be more common place?
4. Is there a place you can check to see when it is scheduled for your street?
5. If you were to fund this, how would you do it? Loan? Interest free card hopping? (I have no debt other than mortgage and car payments).

Final note

Having FTTC already getting 49 Down and 16 Up. I feel a little spoilt because I know so many people are still waiting for even that but I'm a heavy user. Like a lot of people I have a lot of IoC devices, my job is entirely remote and online and I have a house of people wanting to consume social media and youtube 24/7.

Edited by PaulSmith (Sat 19-Sep-20 21:14:07)

You asked the following questions:

1. What are 'stores' ?
I understand this as materials required to complete job

2. What are 'civils'? I'm assuming 'civils' are some sort of council permits or costs?
I understand this as civil construction\works (aka the guys who dig up the streets)

3. When do most people think FTTP roll out will be more common place?
Openreach are rolling out thousands of fttp connections ever day, TTB found 153,767 extra properties added last month

4. Is there a place you can check to see when it is scheduled for your street?
Others can answer this better

5. If you were to fund this, how would you do it? Loan? Interest free card hopping? (I have no debt other than mortgage and car payments).
Personally I wouldn't borrow to fund this unless it had a finance benefit that could be offset against the cost, they say fttp can potentially add a few thousand to the value of some properties but thats a long way from £11.5k if you haven't got it spare

In reply to a post by PaulSmith:

My Questions

1. What are 'stores' ?
2. What are 'civils'? I'm assuming 'civils' are some sort of council permits or costs?
3. When do most people think FTTP roll out will be more common place?
4. Is there a place you can check to see when it is scheduled for your street?
5. If you were to fund this, how would you do it? Loan? Interest free card hopping? (I have no debt other than mortgage and car payments).

1. Stuff - physical things like fibre cables, CBTs, splitters etc.
2. Civil engineering - e.g. digging up roads, replacing pavement chambers.
3. FTTP is growing, but at current build rate the whole UK won't be covered until the 2030's (and the last few % will be slow). However, there is evidence of Openreach prioritising new-builds, for exactly the reason your surveyor said: these are straightforward installs, with ducts installed to modern standards and in good shape. So you might be lucky and find it arrives in a year or two.
4. Not really. There is the Openreach checker but it's often misleading. Basically, it ain't done until it's done. The best you can do is to check the published exchange lists (there are two - one for fibre first cities, one for market towns and villages), which are up to 18 months forward looking.
5. The cheapest loan available, which is probably an extension to your existing mortgage.

It may still be worth inviting your neighbours around for a drink and asking if they are interested. An informal cost-sharing arrangement would mean they don't have to submit a linked order, so don't pay Cerberus business broadband rates but could place a native FTTP order once it's installed. You only need to find one interested neighbour to get a 50% cost reduction.

I went for FTTPoD having moved from a house with 67/17 to one with 30/4. I think if I had had 49/16 in the first place, I would not have been able to justify it. But now I have 300/50 so moving house was an improvement after all

Its interesting I was looking at the XHR response from the Openreach check page for a property I know is getting fttp but the page isn't showing it yet but within the XHR response it actually does show it "fttp":"in scope","gfast":"not in scope","fttc":"available"

Other may already be aware but it was news to me.

Edited by deleted (Sat 19-Sep-20 22:48:52)

I can't remember the last FTTPoD quote that was under £8k.
That seems to be a minimum now, even for simple builds.

There seems to be a minimum of £4k in Labour and 3-£4k in stores on the majority of quotes now.

Edited by j0hn83 (Sun 20-Sep-20 01:53:53)

Would a 100/32 connection suffice? If so look into load balancing, and order a second line, perhaps use AAISP service so you have a true bonded connection and a single IP address, everything would have available double the speed on a true bonded connection.

The build cost would fund a second line and suitable router/service for a very long time, long before that money ran out you'll probably get native FTTP or move house.

Edited by R0NSKI (Sun 20-Sep-20 09:20:30)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

I can't remember the last FTTPoD quote that was under £8k.
That seems to be a minimum now, even for simple builds.

I agree. I've added a filter to the spreadsheet to show quotes since 01/01/2019, and the lowest were:

3800 (Northern Ireland, 14/06/2019)
6625
6838
6875
6924
7702
7907

with the remainder over £8K. Given that those values don't include the £250 survey fee already paid, apart from the one outlier I'd say £7K is the absolute minimum these days, with £8K+ more typical.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

I can't remember the last FTTPoD quote that was under £8k.
That seems to be a minimum now, even for simple builds.

I agree. I've added a filter to the spreadsheet to show quotes since 01/01/2019, and the lowest were:

3800 (Northern Ireland, 14/06/2019)
6625
6838
6875
6924
7702
7907

with the remainder over £8K. Given that those values don't include the £250 survey fee already paid, apart from the one outlier I'd say £7K is the absolute minimum these days, with £8K+ more typical.

Wow! Did I read that correctly, the median price more than doubled from 2018 to 2019!? That’s mad.

These are fairly small samples.

However the lower quartile, median and upper quartile *desktop* quotes are broadly the same between the 2018 group and the 2019-2020 group, whilst the final *post survey* quotes do indeed appear to be much higher in 2019-2020.

Do the FTTPoD providers such as Cerberus Networks mark-up the costs or just pass them on? I don't begrudge them being mark-up but it did cross my mind by how much.