BT FTTP no huge wait for install?

After a long wait, FTTP is now finally available to order at my address. I thought I'd get my order in as soon as possible, as I heard that there was an extremely long wait for any Openreach work that needed the engineer to come into your home. I was fully expecting to have to wait until June or July to have it installed.

To my surprise, when I went through the order process online with BT, they offered me an install slot on the 23rd of this month!

Does the wait time vary depending on your location? I saw an article back in January that said the wait was already into April, so feared it would be months before I could get it installed. Makes me a bit dubious of the install slot, to be honest. I'm half expecting them to turn up and say they didn't realise they had to come into my house to install (which they will have to, its an overhead line and we currently have FTTC).

The BT Wholesale checker shows a 1 stage install: "Single Dwelling Unit Residential OH Feed with no anticipated issues".

I'm suspicious of the 23rd install date, anyone else think it's a bit fishy? I'm happy for my suspicions to be wrong and they turn up with no issues, but it does seem a bit too good to be true...

Its plausible. FTTP installs didnt completely stop during lock and appointments slots will vary from area to area.

In December I was given an appointment about 2 working weeks later, however, due to lockdown and shielding, I agreed with OR to postpone it through to 24th March. They continued to do installs during that time, where appropriate and both installer and customer were happy.

If it has only just become available in your area and your cabinet is one of the first then the trained staff will be there and there will not be a backlog of appointments.

Don't be dubious, just make sure appropriate precautions are in place and ensure the technician has easy unimpeded access to where the ONT is to be placed. If C-19 gets way worse in your area, then possibly it could be postponed, or if a major storm occurs resulting in emergency repairs on the network, but apart from those reasons, why else would they postpone.

around January they were about 4 months

tail end of last month the waiting time came down to about 4 weeks

I had install date for 4 weeks stage 1 install with bt when ordered few weeks back

in Feb I ordered gigafast with VF over city fibre with a 8 week lead time

FTTP went live in my area on 5th feb, I placed order on 6th.

My Installation date is 12th March.

Almost 5 weeks lead time which isn't bad considering the lockdown.


Going from a 25/5 long line FTTC connection to a 900/110 full fibre (cbt is < 30 m from my home too).

Edited by jhorton88 (Tue 09-Mar-21 11:09:23)

Congratulations!

BTW, the length of fibre from CBT doesn't make any difference to performance - although a long aerial span is more prone to storm damage of course.

That's great news and a good timeline!

I placed my order with Zen in feb after getting an email from Openreach stating I could get 1gbps after their recent work on my estate. Unfortunately, the DSL checkers were still showing network not ready (planned) and show only 330 WBC FTTP orderable which would progress when the network was ready. I still placed my order with Zen though as I can upgrade the speed when it updates. Alas, the last I got from Zen was thanks for your order email 15 days ago. My order tracking shows Waiting for KCI-2 15 days however my line/address went from planned to available 1 stage install on Friday morning still at 330 but no updates to my order on the Zen tracking page. I hope when I get an update with forecasted dates they are as timely as yours... fingers crossed.

Let us know about your install experience after the 23rd