FTTPoD quotes, prices and general chat thread Part 7

Starting a Part 7

Got back my Cerberus FTTPoD quote. Sadly, much higher than my budged allows. The location is a terraced house in North London, about 600-800m of walking distance from the cabinet.

Initial estimate was Unknown Subject To Survey.

The confirmed build charge is £11,742.00 + VAT.

Labour £6,002.00
Contract Labour £0.00
Civils £2,949.00
Stores £3,361.00
BT Connection Charge £495.00
Deduction £-815.00
Field Survey charge paid £-250.00

Total £11,742.00 + VAT

Had it been around 8-9k, I might have gone for it. But 12k is a bit too high. Never say never, though, I could always win the lottery

about 600-800m of walking distance from the cabinet.

.......... it is distance from the aggregation node that matters, not the cabinet.

But that’s all by the by now .... unless your numbers come up. 🤞

My cabinet is almost 4Km away.

My Agg Node is less than 2Km away.

Either way building a full fibre network to the premises is a very expensive complex business as I have learned over the last 4 years.

Pleased to say that after initially raising an order with Amvia back in August 2019, our property went live with FTTP on the 27th of October 2020.

Timescale from order being first raised to quote being accepted by carrier was around 11 months (August 2019 to start of July 2020).
Approximate build time was 4 months from quote being paid by us to connection going live (July 2020 - 27th of October 2020).

Total build costs (ex VAT): £10,629.94.
Minus two rural gigabit vouchers: £10,629.94 - £7,000 = £3,629.94(ex VAT).

Download speeds originally 4-5mb/s are now constant at >300mb/s.

A long winded (at some points frustrating) journey, more than happy that it's finally now in place.

Not sure if we are still posting FTTPoD quotes/stories.

Out of pure curiosity I put in a desktop quote with Cerberus recently. According to the TB broadband map, the surrounding area has absolutely zero Openreach FTTP anywhere. The exchange the cabinets around the area are going to is enabled for FTTP but I didn't have high hopes and....

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges

Not a clue where the NGA node is. Maybe closer to Narnia.

My street is a newer build completed 2006 all ducting, there is however a pole serving the first few houses. Fortunately when I moved a few years ago I got Virgin Media to extend their existing infrastructure down to me as it stopped half way down a cul-de-sac for reasons VM don't even know, so that was lucky given they paid the construction costs. Otherwise I'd be stuck on FTTC options only.

I can imagine FTTPoD is going to be very costly but I wasn't really going to go beyond a general desktop quote anyway. Virgin Media will likely have a monopoly on my area for fibre options for many years yet!

Edited by jamesmacwhite (Mon 10-May-21 21:09:07)

In reply to a post by jamesmacwhite:

I can imagine FTTPoD is going to be very costly but I wasn't really going to go beyond a general desktop quote anyway. Virgin Media will likely have a monopoly on my area for fibre options for many years yet!

Desktop quotes are pretty random anyway, but you can be pretty sure that the final quote would be at least £8K+VAT. This is what even the "simple" ones have been coming out as, for the past couple of years anyway.

These days, a CFP may be a better bet - but you may not find many people willing to share the cost if you have VM already.

We requested a desktop quote for FTTPoD just before buying a new house in August last year - it came back at £15k. This was quite a bit higher than we were willing to go, so forgot about it for a while.

Fast forward to September, and we realised the Rural Gigabit Voucher scheme would work very well if we could convince a few neighbours to join us on an order, so prepared a PDF to distribute on the road WhatsApp group. We ended up with 13 other neighbours (out of approximately 30) wanting to do it. The fully linked order was submitted to Cerberus at the end of September 2020, with an initial survey visit something like a week later. It took until December for the survey to complete, which came back as just over £40k (under 3k per household, which is within the value of the vouchers). It took a week or so to get everyone to do the "paperwork" for DCMS applications, and then the order went to Openreach middle of December 2020.

We started seeing Openreach contractors out inspecting the state of the ducts around mid-January 2021, followed in mid-March by two days digging 300 meters of surface ducting from an underground chamber, where I understand the planner decided to locate a fibre splitter, to a point about half way along the road (the remaining half was already served with useable ducting, presumably due to the presence of a cell tower). They left ropes protruding from the bases of the eight poles from which the 14 houses are served.

A fleet of Openreach vans descended in early April with a hoist, mounting CBTs, pulling fibre, and then jointing. They told me that fibre had been blown from 5 km away, where the local aggregation node lives. One of the poles was deemed unsafe though; it gained a 'D' notice, and is awaiting replacement.

Since the 'D' pole serves two of the houses on the order, I don't know whether Openreach will commission the rest of the network first, or wait till after the replacement happens. With any luck we'll be getting connected soon, though.

I've been quite impressed with the speed at which this has progressed, and how happy the engineers been to explain the process.

That's very cool - that's the largest linked FTTPoD order I've heard of, and great that you could get vouchers to cover it all. I have a few questions if you don't mind:

Did you get hit with a Cerberus commissioning charge for each property?

Are all 13 users paying the higher FTTPoD monthly rental for the first year? (Generally £35+VAT per month above Cerberus' standard business FTTP rates)

Did you give any consideration to going the CFP route instead of FTTPoD?

Thanks - it's certainly been an interesting experience, and also brought us together with our new neighbours very quickly. Poor connectivity was a common complaint, only exacerbated by the need to fully work from home now.

Cerberus basically told us this is at the very top end of what FTTPoD can scale to - is that effectively because the fibre from the aggregation node can only be split up to 32 ways, or due to the logistics of coordinating between so many parties for the voucher application process?

EDIT: I was told they had opted to feed fibre from either end of the road to serve each half, so perhaps there's actually more than one fibre coming to us from the aggregation node? We're pretty much in the very middle, and they made a comment about the plan having been to feed us from one end, but they did it differently on the day, as there was a discrepancy with the plan to feed our pole from an underground chamber, which turned out not to exist. The pulled fibre from the pole on the other side of the road instead, where there is a chamber, but still located our CBT on the closer pole. Apparently this will simplify matters when it comes to the "cut and draw" operation to replace our drop wire with a hybrid cable.

Yes, there's a line item for their commissioning charge, on top of the Openreach connection charge, however there's also a significant deduction for each house on the order, and a smaller one for each additional house that's passed. Since the vouchers completely cover these costs, it didn't seem an issue.

I did look at CFP, but the impression I got was that we didn't meet the required scale on that, and that it's effectively just a registration of interest, as opposed to an actual order for services.

We've all opted for the lowest tier package (FoD Plus?), as it'll be a dramatic change from the 20-25Mb/s currently achievable via FTTC (our street cab is almost a kilometre away). I did notice Cerberus introduced an even lower tier at some point after our order went in, but that carries a two year contract, and I don't think it meets the requirements of the Gigabit Voucher scheme, because it's not a "step change" from the currently available speeds.

Edited by adoran47 (Wed 12-May-21 10:18:46)

I don't think linked FoD orders are limited to a single splitter. The cable pulled to the aggregation node will have multiple fibres (maybe 48 or 96) to future-proof it.

I suspect the scaling limit is, like you say, the coordination between parties, and the joint liability. With a CFP, the order is contracted with a single entity, such as a community interest corporation. With linked FoD, if any one person decides to cancel their order, the whole thing collapses.

My road is currently applying for a small CFP to piggy-back on top of the FoD that I had installed in 2019. It's a similar scale to yours - about a dozen people interested - and I know there's already a splitter at the end of the road, because I talked to the guy while he was splicing it.

The CFP request was submitted at beginning of February, but the survey still hasn't taken place. I suppose small orders will tend to go to the bottom of the pile. We're in an area 2, so although I got a gigabit voucher for my FoD, they are no longer available.

What was the approx. cost per premises for your neighbours CFP? Do you think your previous FoD made a material cost difference?

Clearly from a “new” construction perspective it would be a whole lot easier for OR to deploy to the additional properties served from the splitter node and you’d expect that to be reflected in the costs somehow. Or maybe not …

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 12-May-21 11:18:02)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

What was the approx. cost per premises for your neighbours CFP?

They don't know yet - not even an indicative quote. One of the neighbours is organising it, and last heard back that they said they needed to send out a surveyor.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Do you think your previous FoD made a material cost difference?

I certainly hope it will. All they need to do is to put some more CBTs in the footway boxes, and connect them back to the splitter at the end of the road.

Now you mention it, that makes more sense from a future-proofing perspective. Does it potentially even mean that if I wanted to convert my FTTP over to point-to-point leased line one day, there might already be fibre capacity to do this locally? (not something I envisage ever needing to do, by the way.)

I was a little nervous that some of the participants in the linked order might change their minds, but thankfully no one blinked when it came time to commit in December.

In terms of your FoD expansion, I wonder if Openreach would actually implement that on top of the existing infrastructure, or build separate? It occurred to me that FoD projects will probably create some interesting anomalies in their network over time, with little pockets that differ from the broad-brush fibre city type deployments. (or maybe there's more commonality than I'm imagining, and this isn't a realistic concern.)

In reply to a post by adoran47:

Does it potentially even mean that if I wanted to convert my FTTP over to point-to-point leased line one day, there might already be fibre capacity to do this locally?

Not a hope really from an Openreach FTTP network perspective. They deliberately keep the two nets' commercially and physically separate and discrete. Never the twain shall meet.

The only FTTP network that I'm aware offer an EAD (leased line) equivalent is Gigaclear - and its not cheap according to their book prices for such - either comparatively or absolutely. GC is also a Point-2-Point type network rather than PON based (Openreach, City Fibre et al) network which makes a dedicated / uncontended circuit simpler to realise.

In reply to a post by adoran47:

In terms of your FoD expansion, I wonder if Openreach would actually implement that on top of the existing infrastructure, or build separate? It occurred to me that FoD projects will probably create some interesting anomalies in their network over time, with little pockets that differ from the broad-brush fibre city type deployments. (or maybe there's more commonality than I'm imagining, and this isn't a realistic concern.)

AFAIK, FoD is planned according to standard FTTP planning rules. They decide where splitters "should" go to cover the areas in question: when you order FoD they just install the subset of bits necessary to serve your property. For this reason, FoD may also enable one or more neighbours for FTTP - those served by the same CBT.

(That wasn't the case prior to March 2018, when FoD would only enable a single property)

Hi Guys,
I was considering getting the quote then survey done but my folks told me that last weekend there were 2 vans in our street from a company beginning with A doing a survey to do with improving broadband on our street as it isnt great.
We are in the very very very north of Scotland and my folks couldnt remember the company name but I was wondering if anyone here knew who would be doing surveys on behalf of openreach possibly so I can try and figure out if its a gov initiative or something a neighbour is getting checked out.

Fingers crossed its gov related and its on the cards but I thought I would ask here.

Openreach have their own team of people to carry out survey work.

In reply to a post by Derpy:

We are in the very very very north of Scotland and my folks couldnt remember the

Are you north of Inverness or to the east of Inverness? In theory it could be an alternate network using a third party to do a survey.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Openreach have their own team of people to carry out survey work.

Yeah I thought so but my folks were not very IT aware to say the least and I missed speaking them to find out more.

Are you north of Inverness or to the east of Inverness? In theory it could be an alternate network using a third party to do a survey.

Nah much further, up in the northern isles sadly. There are openreach crews but not sure if they outsource it for here for surveys, my folks said they thought there were not *local* as it were so probably contractors.

I have been looking into fttpoD for my house. Just wondered if the survey cost is the same from any of the providers? I have been quoted 275+ vat for the survey so is this what others have paid?

Are there any constraints with fttpoD with regards to speed increases from 330 at some point?

Sadly classed as urban so no gigabit vouchers available.

Thanks

The going rate to book a survey was £250+VAT for a long while, but may have recently gone up. There's only a handful of service providers that will undertake FoD order. Whom did you ask for a quote?

[Do you get an OR employee FoD discount? 😉 Just kidding]

Hi.

I am awaiting for 2 desktop quotes pre survey. The 275 +vat was for amvia. Ball Park guess was 2-8k plus vat....

Still waiting on the other one to get back to me.

No OR discount as no longer work for them.

Cheers

Edited by choppersrock (Sun 16-May-21 18:12:39)

Cerberus charge was £250+VAT three years ago when I did mine. I think it’s still the same so marginally less than Amvia appear to be charging.

So you’ve asked for 2 desktop quotes? You do realise they are purely indicative, often or not wildly different to the post survey quote and would both undertaken by OR in any event.

Yes I am aware of that. If you had a desktop quote how different was it from the survey out of interest.

I may just push ahead with a survey then I will proper info.

Thanks

In reply to a post by choppersrock:

If you had a desktop quote how different was it from the survey out of interest.

Often wildly different. Here is the info collated from forum members since the new pricing scheme started in March 2018:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QFkK1sLBFQjl...

Note that for the last year or two, the minimum is generally £8K+VAT.

Amvia is a reseller of Cerberus, so in my opinion you're better off going straight to Cerberus (unless you are already an Amvia customer or are buying other services from them as a bundle)

It’s practically ancient history now as prices recently for FoD appear to have a floor of around £8K.

But for interest my desktop quote was £4,900 before VAT.

My confirmed build cost (after survey charge, deductions for properties passed etc. etc) was £6,450 before VAT (and before £3000 DCMS voucher).

There’s a spreadsheet link here that candlerb has kindly put together that tracks the desktop and post survey quotes. But as said there was a step change in FoD pricing last year that has resulted in virtually no quotes below £8K and usually much higher.

Edit: oops posted at the same time as candlerb. Apologies for the duplication

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 16-May-21 18:27:45)

Thank you both for the useful information. I think a survey is the only way forward for me.

Cheers

Just to echo the other responses. I recently got a desktop quote from Cerberus at £5,100 + VAT and the full survey came back at £9,184 + VAT. When I challenged the increase, Openreach provided the map of the local infrastructure - agg node is 250m in a straight fully ducted line. Splitter node is even closer at just over 100m away, again straight fully ducted line. They were willing to drop £600 odd if I put a duct in my own flowerbed (7m ish) between the road and the house (currently direct buried phone line), but stood by the quote.

The overall conclusion then, is it doesn't really matter how close you are to the infrastructure or how simple the install is, best case you won't get a lot of/any change from £10k once you add the VAT. I suspect Openreach has decided it doesn't want to be spending time on FTTPoD installs unless it can charge a real premium to do so. Any commercial business can decide that of course, but if that is right, I think the desktop quoting formula should be changed to add that level of realism.

Unless you can do linked orders with close neighbours, or qualify for some kind of rural voucher, I don't think it is going to be an option for most.

Cheers for that...

Might be cheaper to move house! Lol... been here 13 years but no fttp on the horizon... heavily cabelled VM area but they aren't interested in cabling our estate even though the houses on the main road have vm services (old telewest days).. have tried over the years but to no avail....

In reply to a post by choppersrock:

Might be cheaper to move house!

Stamp duty on a £400K house move is £10K, so if you think of it in those terms, maybe FTTPoD makes sense.

However the time window for FTTPoD relevance is rapidly shrinking. It might take 12 months from ordering FTTPoD to getting live service, sometimes more. In the meanwhile, Openreach is now saying it will cover 80% of the country with native FTTP by December 2026. So you might be buying yourself a service that only gets used for a year or two.

Moving house to where FTTP exists *today* guarantees that you get service right away, but restricts your choice greatly - only about 15% of properties have it currently.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

However the time window for FTTPoD relevance is rapidly shrinking. It might take 12 months from ordering FTTPoD to getting live service, sometimes more. In the meanwhile, Openreach is now saying it will cover 80% of the country with native FTTP by December 2026. So you might be buying yourself a service that only gets used for a year or two.

Moving house to where FTTP exists *today* guarantees that you get service right away, but restricts your choice greatly - only about 15% of properties have it currently.

Agreed. If I can amortise the cost over 5 years (before FTTP would have perhaps otherwise become natively available), then the cost paid to construct in my opinion will have been reasonable.

With the apparent step change in FOD construction cost last year (a floor price of £8K before VAT) in my opinion coupled with a potential shorter payback period now makes it too unattractive. The loss of the “single applicant” GBVS credit pretty much is the nail in the coffin.

What about a 'leased line' ?.

For a leased line, installation time can be as low as 3-4 months. Service will be top notch, with guaranteed bandwidth up and down. However you can expect to pay at least £300 per month with a 3 year contract.

Assuming you'd be paying £50 per month for FTTP anyway, that's a £3K per year premium and a minimum £9K commitment. For a business, or work-from-home where you can treat it like you would a season ticket, it may be worth it.

For a general home user though, I'd say it's a losing bet:

- if native FTTP arrives sooner than 3 years, then you've paid over the odds
- if native FTTP arrives later than 3 years, then you'll continue to pay over the odds until it arrives

Well its 18 odd (December 2019 i started it) months on since i did a field survey quote with Cerberus which came back in Jan 2020 at £8,640 + Vat. 4 Houses passed(desktop was £6,800 + Vat)

Couldn't bring myself to pay it back then.

Fast forward to now and Leicestershire although moved abit forward with some FTTP most places are set for completion 2026 and my village (Ibstock) isn't even included in that.

I can see the 2026 timeframe slipping as well.

So decided to go and get another quote from Cerberus. Desktop this time was a little cheaper at £6k + Vat.

Field survey came back today at £8660 + Vat so almost completely the same for everyone's reference.

Although its a crazy amount of money I am going to move ahead and pay it! Madness but no amount of pestering to OR, virgin media, the council or leicestershire (VERY pointless) superfast team is going to change FTTP is ALONG way away

One question im sure someone here will know the answer. I am going to go onto the Cerberus 300/30 package.

Obviously i will be with that for 12 months but after that will i be able to upgrade to 1gb fibre?

In reply to a post by LordVader:

One question im sure someone here will know the answer. I am going to go onto the Cerberus 300/30 package.

Obviously i will be with that for 12 months but after that will i be able to upgrade to 1gb fibre?

Yes indeed - either from Cerberus or any other FTTP provider.

I stuck with Cerberus and moved from 300/30 to 300/50. 300/30 is something of an anomaly from the way that BT Wholesale provide FTTPoD.

But will I be able to order 500mb/1gb fibre from other providers after when it's swaps to native FTTP

In reply to a post by LordVader:

But will I be able to order 500mb/1gb fibre from other providers after when it's swaps to native FTTP

Yes, done that. Currently have 900Mbps from BT Business (we are one) having moved from Cerberus 330/50 which itself was an upgrade from 330/30 that was an FTTPoD install.

Technically we currently have both Cerberus on Port 1 and BT Business on Port2.

In reply to a post by LordVader:

But will I be able to order 500mb/1gb fibre from other providers after when it's swaps to native FTTP

It swaps to native FTTP as soon as it goes live.

You could order 1Gb as a 2nd service from another provider immediately after your fibre goes live.

After your minimum 12 months with Cerberus you can migrate to any FTTP provider that is available to your address, at any speed that is available.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

You could order 1Gb as a 2nd service from another provider immediately after your fibre goes live.

And three or four(*) of your neighbours, who are covered by the CBT that will be installed for you, will also be able to order native FTTP from any provider of their choice, as soon as your service goes live.

(*) I'm not sure if the "4 properties passed" includes you, or is in addition to you.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by LordVader:

But will I be able to order 500mb/1gb fibre from other providers after when it's swaps to native FTTP

It swaps to native FTTP as soon as it goes live.

You could order 1Gb as a 2nd service from another provider immediately after your fibre goes live.

After your minimum 12 months with Cerberus you can migrate to any FTTP provider that is available to your address, at any speed that is available.

Ok thanks for clearing that up. Its 4 properties including mine, them lucky sods will get my expensive FTTP free if they want it.

I have asked them if they was happy with there 30/35mb broadband and all 3 houses couldn't even tell me what speed there modem is connected at! So cant seem them upgrading to FTTP anyway

If you do migrate away from Cerberus after 12 months and you move to a CP that doesn’t use BT Wholesale for the backhaul etc (for example TalkTalk or TalkTalk Biz) then Cerberus may try charging you an FTTP cease fee of £30+VAT. Check your agreement with them, but mine had no provision for them to charge this and they credited it when challenged.

I wouldn't hold out hope for speedy progress from OR...

They are absolutely useless.
Since I paid my £10K in January, they spent 4 months planning. Some minor civils work was supposed to happen in May, didn't get done. Absolutely no explanation given despite Cerberus asking for updates/clarification weekly. It was then finally rebooked for 2 weeks ago and unsurprisingly again didn't happen. Have got a completely unintelligible response from OR, with no updated date in sight:

"Latest detail that High Level Escalation are aware of is that the Traffic Management was booked for 13/07 - 15/07. Contractor portal does not show any delays or further notes. Regional Jeopardy Rep has added separate note mentioning 25/07. It is not clear from note if this is the actual task completion date or if the Traffic Management was delayed.
He has just been on a conference call with Openreach FOD lead and your order was discussed. Patch Lead is to investigate further and provide accurate update on progress of this task."

God knows how many levels of escalation there are in OR, it seems to go to a higher level escalation team each week.

I know this isn't unusual but find it quite shocking that that a service being sold to the public costing in the order of tens of thousands of pounds is allowed to run in this way. Decent communication at least would solve many of the problems. It's far more frustrating to be told something is going to happen and then it doesn't (accepted issues occur, but an explanation would be nice!).

I've written to OR (through cerberus) to complain about their poor communication. Unsurprisingly haven't got a response...

Rant over!

Should have gone for Starlink...

Unfortunately that’s par for the course. Our FoD order took almost 11 months to get installed. That was three years ago in a rural location that was almost exclusively overhead feed from the Ag Node, but small pockets of ducting on the run. Other folks have had FoD installs that take over a year to get done. There’s not much that can be done I’m afraid. It will take as long as it will take.

Just to concur with others ours took about 9 months after giving the go ahead. The run was all underground with a couple of blockages. Overall with good organisation and willingness to get it done quickly ours could have all be done in a few weeks, blockages were cleared in a few hours as I saw the contractors do it, but it took about 3 months before they were out doing it! I asked the contractors about it and they said their lead time was a week or less from being booked and no issues getting permission from the council, could be same day as residential road with no through traffic and all pavement digs.

What you find is there are weeks and weeks where nothing happens, then a flurry of activity, you think you are getting somewhere, then another month or two with nothing happening. Updates from Cerberus never made much sense and when they did it was usually a couple of weeks out of date.

Nothing you do or complain about will likely make much difference to the speed things get done, it's done when it's done.

Aware that this is not unusual for a FOD deployment, it just seems extraordinary that it is just so disorganised and poorly communicated, and this is just the way it is.

If I paid any other company £10K+ for a project (and yes, this is pocket change in OR's world), I'd at least expect some sort of a plan from them.

Well at least Clive Selley got a CBE, they must be doing something right somewhere...

In reply to a post by bcsalt:

it just seems extraordinary that it is just so disorganised and poorly communicated

From the outside it certainly seems that way but I don't think its limited to just FTTPoD as a lot of BDUK rollouts seem to suffer in the same way from what I've seen. On the flip side the speed at which they do Fibre First locations seems to be at the other end of the spectrum in my opinion.

In reply to a post by E300:

Updates from Cerberus never made much sense and when they did it was usually a couple of weeks out of date.

Nothing you do or complain about will likely make much difference to the speed things get done, it's done when it's done.

I looked back at some of the updates I got from Cerberus, they were so coded as to be practically indecipherable. There was one towards the end of the build where it became obvious there was exchange work to do:

“ All external build has now been completed. We are currrently dealing with an issue with the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) mapping before this can be sent to commissioning.”

After spitting my coffee out, I replied the Cerberus chap what on earth “optical character recognition” had to do with the my FTTP order…he went back to Openreach and clarified a week or so later it was actually Optical Consolidation Rack! Thankfully the comedy was all done not too long after that.

Our order was blocked for nearly three months pending the replacement of a 'D' pole, which serves two of the households on the joint order. Despite OR's contractor missing a couple of planned dates, OR took over the task themselves under direct labour, and the pole was replaced two weeks ago. It was really quite encouraging to see they lined the fibre people up to be present on the day, so they could mount the CBT onto the new pole at the same time, taking advantage of the cherry-picker being there. They also took care of the remaining jointing on the day.

According to the latest updates received through Cerberus, it's now just pending submission of light loss level testing, and then an audit. Really hoping we're nearing the finishing line.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I looked back at some of the updates I got from Cerberus, they were so coded as to be practically indecipherable. There was one towards the end of the build where it became obvious there was exchange work to do:

“ All external build has now been completed. We are currrently dealing with an issue with the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) mapping before this can be sent to commissioning.”

After spitting my coffee out, I replied the Cerberus chap what on earth “optical character recognition” had to do with the my FTTP order…he went back to Openreach and clarified a week or so later it was actually Optical Consolidation Rack! Thankfully the comedy was all done not too long after that.

That is hilarious but as you say confusing.

A question. does the desk quote, flag up any forthcoming work to install fttp in your street ?

You won't necessarily get warned as part of the desktop survey.

Some folks on here have paid for their survey and were in the process of getting a formal quote when they were told a native rollout would take place. Other folks actually placed an order only to then be alterted - like this old thread.

In reply to a post by Taras:

A question. does the desk quote, flag up any forthcoming work to install fttp in your street ?

I requested a desktop quote in May 2020 and received response in June 2020 that FTTP was already planned at the address.

The exchange appeared on the 'to start build within three months' list published 29th July 2020. Arguably, it had been planned since the Jan 2020 list as the area heading exchange total increased to 2, but without the second exchange being named. It later became apparent that was my exchange.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

You won't necessarily get warned as part of the desktop survey.

Some folks on here have paid for their survey and were in the process of getting a formal quote when they were told a native rollout would take place. Other folks actually placed an order only to then be alterted - like this old thread.

interesting, I've asked for a desk quote, for two reasons, one is the above and b) if they decide to delay the install in my further, the costs of doing fttpod .. I can claim on the voucher scheme, despite the fact theres a bduk project on it and that openreach is sposed to be doing the exchange area in their may update... I did believe those who have future rollout inclusion would be excluded from the voucher scheme.

Was that seperate to the quote, or just that information?

Dear Customer

Thank you for requesting an estimate of the installation costs for FTTP on Demand at *, Bransgore, Christchurch, BH23 8**.

We have now received the estimate of the charges from BT. These are detailed below.

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges

The build charge includes the estimate for the work and materials required to deliver the service. It also includes the connection charge.

Number of premises passed for FTTP: Unknown (Subject to survey)

Given that theres a cbt(not yet connected to the or network) about 20m away from me, would that explain the above ?

Seems highly probable it has something to do with it. Thing is do you want to pay for survey only to be told what you already suspect.

If it was me I’d chase down Openreach via the CEO team and find out what’s stalling their connection of the CBT.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Seems highly probable it has something to do with it. Thing is do you want to pay for survey only to be told what you already suspect.

If it was me I’d chase down Openreach via the CEO team and find out what’s stalling their connection of the CBT.

I'd happily do that, if i knew what email to use, community fibre post that should have meant community fibre partnership that is the current state of play.

The whole thing is a mess - delay upon delay, hence checking fttpod and cfp.

[removed by tbb]

Edited by seb (Mon 02-Feb-26 22:02:40)

Thank you 😊

No worries. There's a dedicated executive team which manages complaint emails to the CEO, by most accounts quite responsively and often or not with a petty good probability that something get done to sort the issue.

Well today I had some great news.

I almost bit the bullet with Cerberus for £10k+ FTTPoD but over the past month really up'ed my calls/emails to OR. Managed to get high up engineers/local planners on the case who have been very good keeping me in the loop unlike the normal fobbing off you get.

Past 2 weeks they have been out with field engineers surveying and had a call this morning from the chief head engineer that they have agreed to build to the half of my estate that missed out! Got emails confirming as well.

Had a good few chats now and they are hopefully it will be completed in 3 months. Not counting my blessing but 18 months of countless calls/emails to OR/council/bellaway my hardwork and pestering has paid off

What a result. Well done you!

if the fod was installed in 2019 you might find the Agg node that the FOD used might be ful;l and therefore you migth have extensively more fibre to get back to aggregation node that has capacity

so it will be with be really cheap or really horrid

the fact it needs to be surveyed tends to indicate there a capacity / issue around it

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

if the fod was installed in 2019 you might find the Agg node that the FOD used might be ful;l and therefore you migth have extensively more fibre to get back to aggregation node that has capacity

That's not going to be the issue. The cable they pulled from the splitter back to the aggregation node was as thick as a sausage: I'd guess 96 strands or more. Basically, when they are installing spine cables, they don't mess about with capacity!

Slightly longer version of this story: the first guys had pulled this thick cable all the way through to the chamber outside my property. Then the auditor said this was wrong: it should only have gone to the chamber where the splitter is installed. So they cut it back to there, and pulled a smaller cable through to serve my 4-port CBT. This new cable was about as thin as a TV coax.

So basically there's a ton of fibre to the splitter node, and there's enough space to pull the smaller cables to each of the (newly required) CBTs in the ducts between the footway boxes.

As I understand it, the CFP survey was required for the physical ducting. For historical reasons, this road has a mix of direct-buried and ducted. The surveyor told me that over time, as and when faults needed to be fixed, they'd upgraded to ducts.

This makes sense: the road was built around 1960, but most of the footway box lids say "BT" which places them in 1980's onwards. There are still one or two smaller covers with "GPO" on them.

Still no quote back from the CFP survey though

to be clear if is gone to CFP survey theres a reason it will have been sent (and it will have been reviewed before it was sent to survey) - either it seen as too cheap and the costing tool does not recognise all the premises (especially if part of the development is built withing the last 5 years or so or the Aggregation node node the costing tool is proposing is not yet in place , or is full or is fully allocated -- (so my assumptions of why it went to survey are still valid)

I would be very surprised if a CFP ever gets to a final committed costing *without* a surveyor visiting at least once. Records can be, and often are, wrong. Do you have experience of a CFP which didn't have a survey?

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Do you have experience of a CFP which didn't have a survey?

I do and the contract was based on a fixed price, I asked about a survey and they confirmed they were happy with the records they had and didn't need to do one.

majority do not get surveyed before contract

only those where an issue is expected or something untoward raises a red flag

Well its only been a week but today spotted a couple of OR vans on the estate opening chambers on my road putting blue pull rope though ducting.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Still no quote back from the CFP survey though

At last the quote came back. Openreach expanded the scope to 57 properties (including an adjacent road), and the quote is £57K. This is in Ofcom area 2, therefore since Feb this year there are no gigabit vouchers available.

Even with a 50% takeup that would be £2K per participant: the CFP organizer is going to canvass everyone, but my guess is that it isn't going to happen.

A shame about the vouchers and the costs coming out as high as they did. I can’t see that flying either. I think you’d be doing well to get a 30% take up.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

At last the quote came back. Openreach expanded the scope to 57 properties (including an adjacent road), and the quote is £57K.

Wow, and this is in your road and a neighbouring road where you already have fibre via FTTPoD?

Yep.

I must be missing something as surely most of the hard work was done when your FTTPoD was installed, its as if they are not taking that into account or worse still trying to load the CFP to reclaim costs for work that has already been done. I personally would challenge the cost and state I didn't believe the price took into consideration the existing infrastructure, a friend asked me to look at their CFP costings and it was clear they hadn't with theirs so I suggested this to a friend and Openreach did reduce the price by about £20K although it did delay the process by 8 weeks.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Aug-21 11:03:56)

I just had confirmation from Cerberus that our Audit, and Commissioning tasks have completed. Just a matter of waiting for the end user appointment now. As the lead in a linked order of 14 properties, I'm told we'll be the first to get connected. Hopefully not long now.

Received a call out of the blue yesterday morning from an Openreach engineer telling me he was on his way to do our fibre install. (very surprising on a bank holiday, too!)

Drop wire replaced with hybrid cable, some very neat external cabling down the soffits into the house for the ONT, and service up in a couple of hours.

Linked FTTPoD order originally raised at the end of September 2020. Will be interesting to see how long the other 13 houses take to get theirs installed. Very pleased with the result.

4 OR vans today with aload of engineers on estate putting what looks like fibre cable on big rolls though underground chambers.

I'm amazed at how fast they SEEM to be doing this. They are hoping to have it live and commissioned by the middle of September.....would have been fine if they meant September 2022!

Edited by deleted (Wed 01-Sep-21 14:01:45)

LordVader, are you live yet?

Not yet, lots of OR van on the estate the past 2 weeks (3/4 vans everyday!). Think all the work is done installing all the CBT in the underground chambers, fibre all pulled though the estate.

Believe just waiting on testing/commissioning now. Will say it again amazed how quick OR have done this.

Yes, probs because OR have done it, not contractors which have done most of the rollout around here.

Well lucky i was off work this morning. Had a knock at the door, 2 Openreach engineers who know my name and what was going on ready to install the CSP and ONT.

They ran a cable from the CSP around the side of my house to where I wanted the ONT without issue.

All went fine, the ONT is powered up. the PON light is flashing which they said should go solid in a day or 2 once the ONT is registered.

https://ibb.co/7n2ttB7

So in 6/7 weeks Openreach has done the field survey, built the network AND installed into my house. This has got to be some sort of record. Can not fault all the engineers I have spoken too, they all really great and very experienced/negligible.

Its my understanding the other 69 houses within the estate which missed out should be able to order any day once the network is released from commissioning.

Edited by deleted (Wed 15-Sep-21 14:08:58)

What a result, shows persistence pays off!!

I thought Openreach engineers registered the ONT when they did the installation, maybe it's different with FTPPoD. Is it working yet?

Mine definitely was. It was up and running whilst the engineer was on the phone. Ditto the replacement (ONT not engineer 🤣)

Update, all went live this morning and showing on the wholesale checker.

Placed my order with BT at 8am this morning. Engineer visit had to be scheduled for next Friday.

Had a phone call from the person at OR who i have been dealing with at 9:30 this morning saying they have remotely activated my service and cancelled the engineer visit PON light gone solid now.

Smart Hub 2 should arrive in a couple days but unless there is issues wont use it and just connect my mesh Deco's to the ONT.

Will give it a go once i am home from work. 25Mb to 1Gb build in 7 weeks D

Edited by deleted (Fri 17-Sep-21 09:49:46)

Certainly impressive. Glad the install went well. May I ask, was it an overhead or underground feed?

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

I thought Openreach engineers registered the ONT when they did the installation, maybe it's different with FTPPoD. Is it working yet?

What’s slightly confusing (given this is an FTTPoD thread) is that LordVaders connection turned out not to be FTTPoD in the end (after much leg work by him) but an ordinary commercial rollout / expansion. Hence why these latter stages are somewhat different.

Yes looking back through the thread I had forgotten that LordVader never had to go ahead with the FTTPoD order, which I am sure caused great delight and relief.

Agreed, mine was also registered and live before the engineer finished for the day, at least I believe I was his final job.

Completely underground feed.

1Gb BT fibre started working Friday, all working as expected

Speedtest

And it continued to be ‘par for the course’ with my fod order!

After my last post, OR finally did the work on their 3rd date (still have no idea why the first 2 didn’t go ahead). Seemingly they then ‘discovered’ a loop of fibre that meant they only had to cable 300m rather than 2700… it’s unclear if they will revise their costing from this and reduce their £17000 build cost that has been paid (hahaha).

They then planned the cabling task for early November, and actually turned up on the day they had specified. First time and everything! Engineer came back a week later, said all was good and we would get a visit soon to run cable from the pylon to our house.

Of course in usual Openreach fashion, no one is still clear yet whether the audit and commissioning tasks have been completed. My update from OR through Cerberus for the last 4 weeks has been identical each week and opaque as usual.

11.5 months in, I may be nearly there, who knows!

Meanwhile a neighbour signed up for starlink in September and has been loving it.

I would be really hard pushed to recommend FoD to anyone, for such an expensive offering it has been the most frustrating thing I’ve been involved in in a while. No idea what all the planning stages involved as clearly it bore no relation to any work plan.

In reply to a post by bcsalt:

I would be really hard pushed to recommend FoD to anyone, for such an expensive offering it has been the most frustrating thing I’ve been involved in in a while. No idea what all the planning stages involved as clearly it bore no relation to any work plan.

The fact they have kept your build to a similar timeline as other previous orders during a national lockdown/global pandemic, while also massively increasing the pace of their nationwide fibre rollout, should be applauded.

You knew the likely timescales when your ordered.
I understand the lack of updates to be frustrating but I'm not sure why you expected your order to be any different from every other order example on here.

I knew the timescales but had anticipated at least a project plan, some sort of planned timescale of works or a basic level of communications for my several thousand pound investment.

I’m not sure why you find this an acceptable way of working for openreach? I don’t think the excuse that ‘this isn’t unusual for fod projects’ really holds up, and certainly wouldn’t find it ok from any other company.

It remains my opinion that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone particularly with high speed, viable, cheaper alternatives now available on the market.

Both of you are right.

Openreach's planning and delivery process for FTTPoD is pants, and not really "acceptable" by a reasonable person's definition.

However, similar problems have been documented here several times over. So I'm afraid your experience is "not unusual", and it's what a thinkbroadband reader would expect as being a relatively common occurrence, although we don't necessarily hear about all the trouble-free deliveries.

As for discovering the nearer fibre: it sounds like the original surveyor didn't do their job properly, and that would be grounds to push back for a rebate.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Openreach's planning and delivery process for FTTPoD is pants, and not really "acceptable" by a reasonable person's definition.

If you go back to summer of 2019 there was a long discussion in an earlier version of this thread (starting at about https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4619519-re...) where some long-standing and well-respected members of this community took great offence when it was suggested that the FTTPoD process was not really "acceptable" and that it might even fall foul of legislation (to the extent that I was accused of stalking for having the temerity to support that view).

That thread was about the time my connection went live. Found some of my FTTPoD order 'update' posts in there

PhilipD the main protagonist of that commentary though hasn't posted in almost 2 years. dect is still here, baby_frogmella stopped posting here around the same time, but is active over at ISPreview

Got to hand it to BT, they make a pigs ear of virtually all FTTPoD installations and that becomes a justification for another pigs ear installation being deemed as OK.

In my former employed life similar treatment of customers would have caused justifiable termination of employment.

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

If you go back to summer of 2019 there was a long discussion in an earlier version of this thread (starting at about https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4619519-re...) where some long-standing and well-respected members of this community took great offence when it was suggested that the FTTPoD process was not really "acceptable" and that it might even fall foul of legislation (to the extent that I was accused of stalking for having the temerity to support that view).

Once I read 'well-respected' I knew you wasn't referring to me

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Dec-21 16:08:37)

Absolutely, I spent a lot of time reading through others experiences on here before committing which is why I’m sharing my experience and opinion for others in the future.

Obviously it didn’t sink in quite enough how bad the normal was.

I think the landscape has however changed with starlink on the market as a real competitor for those of us who are rural. Before there really was no other option, so it was a case of suck it up, pay up and wait.

Im probably a bit sour as the public beta of starlink went live only a couple months after I signed up for fod and I would have been enjoying those sweet sweet download speeds for months, and have cash in the bank to splurge on a holiday (or not!).

I do (or did) share your pain. The memory recedes quickly when it's all complete - and you can console yourself that you won't be suffering Starlink dropouts or variable bandwidth.

Received a Desktop quote for FTTPoD from Cerberus to a semi-rural premises in the South East currently on 2MBps ADSL.

Posting so it can go on the tracking google sheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QFkK1sLBFQjl...

Estimated Build Cost: £12,300.00
Number of premises passed for FTTP: 3

I have requested the physical survey and will update once that has occurred and a price provided.

Cool, good luck. I'll add it to the sheet once you have your final quote.

Do you know if there's any other FTTP near to you? If there's a splitter or fibre aggregation node within 500m, you may benefit from much-reduced pricing. However, since the locations of these are not published, there's no real way to know in advance.

There is some FTTP up the road. I measured it on Google Maps and the nearest splitter I could see was I think over 500m away - I wondered the same as you about the new pricing. Will add all the updates I get as they come in to this thread.

You probably saw a Connectorised Block Terminal (CBT). Splitters are normally (or exclusively?) underground; they need fibres to be spliced to them. Operating a fusion splicer while strapped to the top of a pole would be hairy

My bad! A CBT indeed.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Operating a fusion splicer while strapped to the top of a pole would be hairy

I have seen pole-attached splicing tables for sale for that purpose. Hardly the easiest way to complete the task...

I received an enormously positive update from Cerberus following Openreach's physical survey:

Originally, Openreach estimated the build charge at £12,300.00 + VAT.

The confirmed build charge is £2,620.00 + VAT.

This includes the reduction for the survey and a deduction of £665.00 for premises passed. A breakdown of the charges is below:

Labour

£2,290.00

Contract Labour

£0.00

Civils

£0.00

Stores

£0.00

BT Connection Charge

£495.00

Cerberus Connection Charge

£500.00

Deduction

£-665.00

Total

£2,620.00

It's not entirely clear to me if this is because the property falls into the new trial of "near network" prices, and there's no indication on the quote that this is the case. I will ask Cerberus if their info from Openreach indicates it falls into the new pricing.

Either way, this is an outstanding result for me and I will be proceeding.

You're a great example of why its always worth getting a survey, Its been a while since we have seen any quotes as low as yours on this forum.

Really pleased for you, good luck and keep us updated on progress.

Cerberus confirm:

This is the near network costing of £1625.00 + VAT. This means a splitter exists, but a connectorised block terminal (CBT) needs to be built (the CBT usually goes on top of a telegraph pole or in an underground chamber).

I’ll provide updates as to how long this takes to be provisioned. Appreciate all the existing members who have contributed to this thread. Made a huge difference to my understanding of likely process, costs and timelines.

You may have started a stampede for another survey

Excellent result. Over on ISPReview, NotADog got exactly £2,620 as well, under the same circumstance.

I see £2290 "labour" less £665 "deduction" makes the £1625+VAT as advertised. Shame that BT and Cerberus then slap their fees on top - and your £250 survey fee already paid. Still, it's a very attractive price compared to standard quotes, even if you only get a couple of years benefit before native FTTP comes along.

Welcome to the club!

You must be chuffed. That's great result. Hopefully it won't take too long to build. Enjoy!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Still, it's a very attractive price compared to standard quotes, even if you only get a couple of years benefit before native FTTP comes along.

It is indeed.

Will be interesting to see how Openreach will position FoD pricing longer term as the FTTP network infrastructure reaches a certain breadth and depth. There will almost certainly be a bigger pool of resource internally that can be deployed now too, that there wasn't a few years ago in its relative infancy.

Are you able to use DCMS funding to help pay this off ?

GBVS eligibility rules have changes since I did this, but I believe the OP would now need to be part of a group (so minimum 2 connection) and satisfy the 'rural' location criteria. Single connections aren't eligible as they once were.

Indeed, because I am not part of a group and didn't want to introduce that complexity I cannot make use of funding.

Plus, the near network trial explicitly excludes FoD "cluster" orders, so you'd probably be looking at a much higher cost to cover.

That's a shame.. but still hopefully a positive result for the OP - and hope they do in a reasonable timeframe.

I would have likely done the same (and probably paid unto around 5K) but instead managed to the whole village set up with FTTP at no cost.
Hence why I asked the question about DCMS funding.. since I empathise with the OP for hanging on through the process.

interesting - my view is the exact opposite there is now a smaller pool of resources to do such bespoke work such as fod as the Openreach Machine is now totally focussed on delivering its 6m FTTP coverage by 2025/226 - what will be interesting in the nex few days when Q3 results are in is whethey they are ahead, on track or behind (or on track because they pulled forward easier later premises) in the drive to 6m by 2026

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

interesting - my view is the exact opposite there is now a smaller pool of resources to do such bespoke work such as fod as the Openreach Machine is now totally focussed on delivering its 6m FTTP coverage by 2025/226 - what will be interesting in the nex few days when Q3 results are in is whethey they are ahead, on track or behind (or on track because they pulled forward easier later premises) in the drive to 6m by 2026

Your figures are very out of date. They've already exceeded 5m properties. The target is currently 25m by end of 2026.

Edited by candlerb (Tue 01-Feb-22 13:34:52)

Since Openreach started their UK rollout a fair few sub contractors and sub contractors of them have started up so there has to be more boots on the ground to do the Openreach fibre work.

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

interesting - my view is the exact opposite there is now a smaller pool of resources to do such bespoke work such as fod as the Openreach Machine is now totally focussed on delivering its 6m FTTP coverage by 2025/226 - what will be interesting in the nex few days when Q3 results are in is whethey they are ahead, on track or behind (or on track because they pulled forward easier later premises) in the drive to 6m by 2026

6.44M already passed in the latest KPIs at an average run rate of c.50k premises per week.

https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/investors...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

6.44M already passed in the latest KPIs at an average run rate of c.50k premises per week.

Will be much happier when its the entire UK but they are making progress which is the most important thing.

And at the current rate, they won't get to 25m properties until March 2029. They are going to have to crank things up substantially to meet the Dec 2026 target.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

And at the current rate, they won't get to 25m properties until March 2029. They are going to have to crank things up substantially to meet the Dec 2026 target.

Maybe another one of your excellent spreadsheets is required so we can all have a good stab in the dark at the grand total

Winner gets absolutely nothing other than the kudos

In reply to a post by candlerb:

And at the current rate, they won't get to 25m properties until March 2029. They are going to have to crank things up substantially to meet the Dec 2026 target.

It's quite some task. Even the current build rate is impressive, given the difficulties in obtaining labour and materials these days. Keeping the quality up will be a challenge.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

And at the current rate, they won't get to 25m properties until March 2029. They are going to have to crank things up substantially to meet the Dec 2026 target.

It’s fast, but not fast enough! They were making headway at c.70K per week at one point, but if you were to draw a straight line you get:

Weeks to 31 Dec ‘26 = 256
Properties to pass = 25M - 6.5M = 18.5M
Required (average) run rate = 18.5M / 256 = 72,266

So the current run rate is 22,265 per week short. In other words they have to accelerate (on average) by 44% over the current average run rate.

Either they have to ramp this up or as you say at the present run rate, they won’t pass the 25M mark until the end of first quarter of 2029.

looks like they are on on track probably because they pulled forward easier later premises looks like then so this now uplhill so expect other bespoke problems to be extended out in leadtime to enable the primary 2026 number to be reached

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

looks like they are on on track probably because they pulled forward easier later premises looks like then so this now uplhill so expect other bespoke problems to be extended out in leadtime to enable the primary 2026 number to be reached

I recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss 😉

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

looks like they are on on track probably because they pulled forward easier later premises looks like then so this now uplhill so expect other bespoke problems to be extended out in leadtime to enable the primary 2026 number to be reached

I recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss 😉

😂😂😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss 😉

I think there is a big difference between those who can but don't and those who try but can't.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Feb-22 13:51:43)

Righto

Just got my quote from Cereberus.

£10,160 + VAT.
3 properties passed.


Now the only question is do I go and give Openreach £10k + VAT for what the people on the other side of the road got for free or not ? Honestly can't decide.

Apart from the other side of the road there will also be three properties on your side which will have FTTP available for free once your FTTPoD goes live.

Shame you couldn't take advantage of the "near network" trial pricing.

In reply to a post by thematt:

the only question is do I go and give Openreach £10k + VAT for what the people on the other side of the road got for free or not ? Honestly can't decide.

Have you tried what has been suggested to others?

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

You could fill out the Openreach availability form and select the option "My neighbour can get fibre but I can't"
https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-avai...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Shame you couldn't take advantage of the "near network" trial pricing.

Yeah I don't get that. I was really hoping that with the street next to ours having it, I'd probably be looking at 5 grand? at a guess. Boy was I wrong.

Have you tried what has been suggested to others?

Yep. And I've even spoken with their technical escalations manager from the chief engineer's office. Nice guy, but he told me flat out I'm not getting it, they've told me "no plans".

In reply to a post by thematt:

I was really hoping that with the street next to ours having it

OK, I thought the FTTP was available to the properties opposite you rather than a street away

So its one of those Russian roulettes, do you pull the trigger early and pay the £12k and maybe in a few years it comes for free to the rest of the street or do you keep your money in your pocket and sit and wait it out.

Edited by deleted (Thu 10-Feb-22 22:52:41)

If you take the technical escalations manager at their word, then its not going to happen before the current rollout plans complete in December 2026.

So I would hazard it's at least a 5 year ROI...then again FTTP rollout plans change all the time

So far I'm coming up to 3 years out on mine, and it will be another 2 years before we potentially would have gotten WBC FTTP in IP12, at least according to the latest programme. That is if our little lane ever was lucky enough / intended to get it. No guarantees...

However now its got an FTTP spine running down it...maybe I've upped everyone else's chances 😂

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 10-Feb-22 23:16:02)

I live on a 90 degree corner plot. So my house borders two different streets.

Opposite us yes they have FTTP. As do the streets to the East of us. The closest property to us that the wholesale checker says can get WBC FTTP is 50m away. Which is why I can't understand these build quotes.

But yes, would be an even bigger kick if I paid out £10k and then they fitted it to everyone else anyway. But I suppose everyone who places an FoD order has that problem. Unless they live in the middle of a field by themselves.

Not sure if I should stump up, wait, get a leased line, or what.

Edited by thematt (Thu 10-Feb-22 23:46:06)

When did you pay for the survey?

I wonder why you haven't qualified for the near network trial pricing. There's a high likelihood that you are within 500m of an existing splitter node with FTTP being so close to you.

I know they have a few specific exclusions (direct buried lines?) to the trial.

In reply to a post by thematt:

Just got my quote from Cereberus.

£10,160 + VAT.
3 properties passed.

Can I ask, did you get a desktop quote first, and if so what did it say?

Sadly some people have no option when they are bypassed by the Openreach full fibre rollout due to excessive costs and BDUK say they won't do it either because its way to expense for them as well.

In reply to a post by thematt:

Not sure if I should stump up, wait, get a leased line, or what.

Have you had any actual quotes for leased lines? I don’t mean linebroker either.

There could be excess construction costs with them too. Many folks presume it’s subsumed into the rental but it’s not always, especially if you are away from town centres where there is already fibre in the ground / fibre nodes exist. At least Openreach aren’t the only game in town for private circuits. But be careful going down that road it’s an expensive commitment and there are huge variables in price, so I’d suggest you do your homework thoroughly. Been there got the shirt.

They came back and said they can't estimate for a desk survey.

Exact wording:

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges.


I have decided not to pay Openreach £10k.

virgin media have told me £0 installation/build charges.

Their green box thing is at the end of my driveway. Just not a massive virgin media fan.

I would suggest you speak to some other resellers as well as approaching the bigger players directly. The former may have access to better pricing than going directly ironically. However you need to be careful who you go with. Good luck.

In reply to a post by thematt:

They came back and said they can't estimate for a desk survey.

Exact wording:

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges.


I have decided not to pay Openreach £10k.

I'd say that's the right call.

Did you pay for your survey after 1st December 2021, meaning that you would be eligible for the near network trial if your property were suitable?

In reply to a post by thematt:

virgin media have told me £0 installation/build charges.

Their green box thing is at the end of my driveway. Just not a massive virgin media fan.

My initial experience of ordering a Virgin leased line through a provider didn’t end well:
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/which_isp/f/465277...

Luckily as per the end of that saga, found a good alternate provider, cheaper rental and install in 4-5 weeks ish using Openreach tails.

Hi

I paid for my survey on January 14th this year.

Thanks

Edit oops that was supposed to quote Candelrb

Edited by thematt (Fri 11-Feb-22 16:48:36)

Just in case this is of use to anyone, I did a write up about my experience with FoD (ordered Sept 2020, delivered August 2021):

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rural-fibre-internet-...

Edited by adoran47 (Thu 24-Feb-22 16:47:30)

Quick update...

Cerberus report most of the necessary work has been done: Latest update from Openreach indicates that all build work has been completed and light loss readings obtained. We are waiting systems to be updated correctly with these results. Once this has been completed successfully an audit will be requested prior to submitting your order into commissioning. The next Update will be on 26.07.22 , which will be updated by the allocator on the portal.

I'm hopeful I will be able to book the final connection, soon. But I have been stuck at this status for two weeks now.

Ironically, even though I decided not to bother to seek my neighbours input for a group order, I saw an OR contractor blowing fibre outside my house a few of weeks ago and got very excited. Turns out that my immediate neighbour was having their FTTPoD installed and have been waiting a LONG time for it.

Still, if I can go from order to install in about 6-9months total I think that will be a terrific result.

In the meantime, 5G with an external directional antenna (we're located in the countryside outside a small town) has served me very well, even for latency sensitive use cases like FPS gaming, so it took the pressure off my requirement for the fibre to be done quickly.

Turns out that my immediate neighbour was having their FTTPoD installed and have been waiting a LONG time for it.

Too late now, but if you’d known then you could have had native FTTP installed gratis once your immediate neighbours FoD went live. Presuming of course your both fed from the same CBT.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Turns out that my immediate neighbour was having their FTTPoD installed and have been waiting a LONG time for it.

Too late now, but if you’d known then you could have had native FTTP installed gratis once your immediate neighbours FoD went live. Presuming of course your both fed from the same CBT.

I think the OP likely wouldn't of benefited from it by the sound of it if they had left their neighbour to it. If the neighbours project captured the OP's property, surely the OP's order would not of progresed?

Possibly yes, possibly no. As the neighbours FoD connection hasn’t been built / by the sounds of it they were roughly quoted in parallel. So one not dependant on the other. Unlike say a planned commercial deployment - which would flag up to the planning team when the FoD was being quoted.

Almost the last update... I hope.

An engineer attended 11th November 2022 to try and complete final connection from the CBT placed on the pole opposite side of the road from my property and failed because the duct was blocked about 1M from the chamber just outside my property.

He requested Civils Avoidance (gulley sucking) to clear out the chamber of crud and try and unblock the last 1M of the duct.

Finally, 6 vehicles turned up yesterday...

Traffic management truck,
Van with Hoist,
Gulley sucking vehicle,
3 Openreach Vans.

Installation engineer arrived first very surprised that the duct needed clearing and was about to leave when everyone else arrived. The classic lack of communication and coordination was all one expects from Openreach . Everyone who attends the premises has always been pleasant and competent but their overall coordination as an organisation... crikey.

Once the road was closed outside my house they managed to unblock the duct, clean out the chamber and get the fibre up the pole and back to my front door where I now have an ONT with a glowing green PON light and confirmation that the fibre is lit back to the exchange. Hooray.

Just waiting for Cerberus to do their final activation now. All in all, just over 12mo from Survey request to installation (provided the activation all works!).

In reply to a post by psimon63:

Just waiting for Cerberus to do their final activation now. All in all, just over 12mo from Survey request to installation (provided the activation all works!).

Fingers crossed! For me, it was just under 48 hours from ONT installed to PPPoE coming up.

In reply to a post by psimon63:

The classic lack of communication and coordination was all one expects from Openreach . Everyone who attends the premises has always been pleasant and competent but their overall coordination as an organisation... crikey.

There are lots of ex and present BT and Openreach folks that frequent the forums, so I try too be as respectful as possible - but as a customer (personal and business products) - I completely concur!!

In reply to a post by psimon63:

Once the road was closed outside my house they managed to unblock the duct, clean out the chamber and get the fibre up the pole and back to my front door where I now have an ONT with a glowing green PON light and confirmation that the fibre is lit back to the exchange. Hooray.

Just waiting for Cerberus to do their final activation now. All in all, just over 12mo from Survey request to installation (provided the activation all works!).

Oh and welcome to the "I survived FTTP on Demand delivery with my sanity intact club"!

You're very nearly there! Good luck.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 07-Jan-23 13:55:55)

Absolutely. I've nothing but respect and admiration for all the people I've met from Openreach who were genuinely doing their best to get me connected and all very willing to share info with me when I showed an interest about how it all hooked together and where the aggregation node was etc.

The first engineer was genuinely crestfallen to fail when I told him he wouldn't be able to avoid the duct via his suggested workaround to get me connected via an overhead feed because my property is a listed building.

It's just a giant organisation and you can only be a bit sad when all the well meaning people doing a hard job out in the elements collide with the bureaucracy.

Edited by psimon63 (Sat 07-Jan-23 14:09:24)

My employer recently placed an order for FTTPoD for me through their wholesale agreement. I think I might have broken a few records: -

Final quote came out at over £135,000.

Oh well. FTTP Fibre First checker says "Not yet available". My area IS being built right now, with assurances from Openreach via my councillor that my street is definitely included.

I am in a no duct, no pole street, with abolsutely zero alternatives.

Do you live in the outback cobber!? 😅

Did your employer pay that or some deal less as part of their umbrella agreement?

It would be cheaper for them to buy you a small one bedroom flat to use Monday to Friday!

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

My employer recently placed an order for FTTPoD for me through their wholesale agreement. I think I might have broken a few records: -

Final quote came out at over £135,000.

Oh well. FTTP Fibre First checker says "Not yet available". My area IS being built right now, with assurances from Openreach via my councillor that my street is definitely included.

I am in a no duct, no pole street, with abolsutely zero alternatives.

I'm surprised your employer was able to get a quote as normally if you're in scope (as you say above) they wouldn't normally bother quoting. We've heard on here about a lot of streets being missed on the commercial rollouts because of existing cables being direct in ground.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It would be cheaper for them to buy you a small one bedroom flat to use Monday to Friday!

Ha... around here they start at about £190k...

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

My employer recently placed an order for FTTPoD for me through their wholesale agreement. I think I might have broken a few records: -

Final quote came out at over £135,000.

Oh well. FTTP Fibre First checker says "Not yet available". My area IS being built right now, with assurances from Openreach via my councillor that my street is definitely included.

I am in a no duct, no pole street, with abolsutely zero alternatives.

I'm surprised your employer was able to get a quote as normally if you're in scope (as you say above) they wouldn't normally bother quoting. We've heard on here about a lot of streets being missed on the commercial rollouts because of existing cables being direct in ground.

Yeah this is a big worry for me. I since contacted Openreach via their Fibre First portal, and despite my area being built now, they did come back with July 2025 as a date for building my street. So that's... something? I guess?

In the meantime, with no alternative in sight, I took up the Starlink £99 rural offer and I am actually pretty excited about it - hoping it will work out and get me over 200Mbps... That should tide me over nicely until then.

We should learn tomorrow about the upcoming changes to FTTPoD:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/05/openre...

It has already been announced that there will be a new charge of £2,932 (+VAT) for "a full, detailed survey, covering the network route from the end customer premises to the serving head end exchange. It is anticipated that CPs will request this survey where a high build charge has been quoted by the FOD NBE, and there is an expectation that a full detailed survey will result in an improved network design and an adjusted cost for the FOD Build Charge."

The problem they are trying to solve is that 90% of people pay the ~£300 survey fee but then drop out of the order when they see the final price - either because it's higher than the original estimate, or they were hoping it to drop further than it did.

But I can't see how this change will make any difference, unless the initial NBEs (Non-Binding Estimates) effectively become binding on the customer at time of placing the order, and the only way to challenge them and/or drop out of the order is to pay nearly £3K.