Ive spoken to Cerberus to get a quote for FTTP On demand but they keep throwing around the 330mbps figure, which is faster than I’ve got but I’m not sure whether its worth the ludicrous construction charges just for a couple hundred meg difference... I’ve spoken to a person on the phone who said the likelihood is that they’ll be able to get me full 1000mbps after the construction is finished. Not sure if i like the lack of certainty.
Almost all FTTP is capable of 1Gbps. However for legacy reasons, the initial order for FTTP is placed for 330/30 (not even 330/50). They recently added the option to switch speeds as soon as the installation is complete, rather than after waiting a year as was originally the case.
When I say "almost all", there is a very small proportion of properties which have FTTP on ECI equipment - roughly 50,000 properties, or just over 1% - which is only capable of 330M. You'd be very unlucky to be in one of those areas.
Ive also spoken to BTNet about a leased line and they’ve said it’ll be £510 a month for a minimum of 5 years which works out at about £30,000, but zero construction charges. Which is £15000 more expensive than Cerberus but they are at least promising the full gig a second speed.
They are two completely different services with different infrastructure.
FTTP is shared infrastructure: a group of up to 32 properties can share the same fibre, sharing 2.4G down / 1.2G up. If you get FTTPoD then at the start you'll be the only user on that fibre, but the delivery may enable some of your neighbours for FTTP as well, and if they take it, they'll be sharing that bandwidth with you. It doesn't generate any problems in practice though - there's plenty to go around. Your ISP may have fair-use policies to ensure that you are not wasting the bandwidth and degrading service for others, although they are typically generous (terabytes per month). Normal home usage typically only averages 2-3Mbps over the day; what you're paying for is peak speed.
A 1G leased line is a fully uncontended, 1G down / 1G up service, just like being in a data centre, with your own dedicated fibre to the POP. You can fill that bandwidth 24x7 without issue. With some contracts you might pay for (say) "committed rate 100M on a 1G bearer" - this means you can burst to 1G, but if you exceed 100M for more than 5% of any month, you'll pay excess usage charges.
Since the infrastructure used is completely different, you don't gain access to FTTP once you've got a leased line. When your term is up, if you cancel the leased line, there's no service of any sort remaining - unless Openreach happen to have delivered FTTP to your area in the mean time, of course.
A 5-year term from BT is ludicrous though: 3 years is industry typical. It could be that they are trying to cover a high construction cost for your location, but more likely they are just being greedy.
It would be gutting to sign a 5-year deal, find 2 years later that native FTTP arrives, but be obliged to pay another £18K for the next 3 years. Of course, it would also be gutting to pay £15K for FTTPoD, and find native FTTP arrives within 2 years.
If you are still interested in a leased line, there are many providers to choose from - linebroker.co.uk is a good start, and you're likely to get better terms.
The £15,000 for FTTPoD from Cerberus is presumably a desktop estimate. You'll need to pay the £250+VAT fee to start the process properly, and you may find the final price quoted is lower or higher. See
here - in the early days the final price was often only 50% of the initial quote, but these days 80% is more likely. And of course you have to find the money up-front, within 30 days of receiving the quote, or else drop out and lose the fee.
But over the long term it works out much cheaper than a leased line. For the first year you're paying a £35/month premium over Cerberus' standard FTTP rates; after that you can either recontract with Cerberus, or switch to another provider (e.g. BT, Talktalk, Sky) and pay standard FTTP rates. Talktalk are £40/month for 500/75.
EDIT: delivery time is also something to consider. Leased lines are usually up and running within 3 or 4 months. For FTTPoD you should expect 6-12 months and sometimes as long as 18.
Edited by candlerb (Wed 06-Jan-21 08:58:36)
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