Community Fibre Project

Hi

I'm running a Community Fibre Partnership for a small village in Somerset.

Please may I tap into others' experience and knowledge?

We attracted 45 properties in our initial pass. Openreach has given us an indicative price of £73,000 for FTTP to these, or about £1,600 each. We have a few businesses in our 45 so at best would raise £85,000 in voucher subsidy.

All good then, but not much contingency!

We're at the point now where the Openreach lady wants to confirm our addresses. So ... there are perhaps half-a-dozen new builds currently empty but where new people are soon moving in. Should we take a chance and include these in our confirmed list? On the one hand the downside seems small: if (say) 3 of the 6 decide not to commit we've still got 3 x £1,500 = £4,500 in vouchers more than we would have had.

That decision all hinges in what the incremental cost from Openreach is in adding each new house. I am assuming that the £73,000 is now pretty static, and that the cost to them of adding a couple of extra homes close to ones already in the programme is relative buttons, which means it's likely worth including houses we're not 100% certain on.

But that IS just an assumption. Does anyone have any real-world experience and advice please?

Thanks
N

In reply to a post by ntruby2:

Hi

I'm running a Community Fibre Partnership for a small village in Somerset.

Please may I tap into others' experience and knowledge?

We attracted 45 properties in our initial pass. Openreach has given us an indicative price of £73,000 for FTTP to these, or about £1,600 each. We have a few businesses in our 45 so at best would raise £85,000 in voucher subsidy.

All good then, but not much contingency!

We're at the point now where the Openreach lady wants to confirm our addresses. So ... there are perhaps half-a-dozen new builds currently empty but where new people are soon moving in. Should we take a chance and include these in our confirmed list? On the one hand the downside seems small: if (say) 3 of the 6 decide not to commit we've still got 3 x £1,500 = £4,500 in vouchers more than we would have had.

That decision all hinges in what the incremental cost from Openreach is in adding each new house. I am assuming that the £73,000 is now pretty static, and that the cost to them of adding a couple of extra homes close to ones already in the programme is relative buttons, which means it's likely worth including houses we're not 100% certain on.

But that IS just an assumption. Does anyone have any real-world experience and advice please?

Thanks
N

Hey - We're going through this at the moment with a mixture of Business and Residential Vouchers/.

Our property list is 116 for £59k so looks like your area is a bit more rural than mine!

To date we have 26 / 116 which has hit our target with several business and the rest coming from a residential properties.

My biggest advice would be to target the properties you know who will be on-board, whether that is local knowledge or just knocking on their door and asking. We used a platform called NextDoor which our local parish uses to communicate which was how i managed to get word of mouth out, in combination with letter box stuffing.

I wouldn't add any more properties unless you know they we're for certain happy to pledge their vouchers / understand what you're talking about!

Best of luck!

Hi, thanks for your reply. Yes, we are pretty rural and spread out. Our properties are in 3 clusters, the village main, a cluster of 3 about 1km away, and another hamlet with 7 addresses about 2km away and actually served by a different exchange about 2km away.

Done lots of door knocking and used nextdoor. We have deliberately kept it restricted to people in our area that we know and trust us.

Openreach is reluctant to tell us how much each cluster is but I suspect if we'd thrown one of the smaller ones under the bus it would have been way cheaper for the largest one. But we're not like that!

I still would like to know, if anyone has any sense of it, in a cluster of houses being included anyway what's the incremental cost from Openreach to add one more. If it's £1 it's probably worth taking a punt that a new resident will sign up. If it's £1,499 it isn't. I just have no idea.

In reply to a post by ntruby2:

Hi, thanks for your reply. Yes, we are pretty rural and spread out. Our properties are in 3 clusters, the village main, a cluster of 3 about 1km away, and another hamlet with 7 addresses about 2km away and actually served by a different exchange about 2km away.

Done lots of door knocking and used nextdoor. We have deliberately kept it restricted to people in our area that we know and trust us.

Openreach is reluctant to tell us how much each cluster is but I suspect if we'd thrown one of the smaller ones under the bus it would have been way cheaper for the largest one. But we're not like that!

I still would like to know, if anyone has any sense of it, in a cluster of houses being included anyway what's the incremental cost from Openreach to add one more. If it's £1 it's probably worth taking a punt that a new resident will sign up. If it's £1,499 it isn't. I just have no idea.

It honestly really depends - It could be anywhere from £100 if it's a next door neighbour for example to £2000 if they need to put ducting in etc.

If you know roughly where your nearest aggregation node is you'll be able to work out which properties will be cheapest

A few other things to consider:

* You could contact the developer and find out what Internet connectivity they are putting in. It's possible they already have FTTP already arranged with Openreach (even if that seems unlikely, given the location)
* If not, then you could pass on a message to the new buyers via the estate agent. Some of them may bite your hand off to be included in an FTTP project.
* Talk to the Openreach CFP manager and be up-front about your conundrum. If these new-build properties are very close to the CFP, such that they would be in the footprint of an existing FTTP splitter, Openreach may add them in commercially. (That doesn't help your voucher target of course). Or she may be able to give an indication of the incremental cost.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have indeed tried to contact the new owners in this way.

>> Talk to the Openreach CFP manager and be up-front about your conundrum.
Mmm, that would be nice! But I've already had my 7 minutes allocation this quarter ....

include them regardless as there will be an relief provided for them - they will be on a new DP - otherwise the scheme will be built those new build will not be covered and the cost of doing them alone in another scheme will be ridiculous (if the development is only 6 premises 100% include it)

Developer will probably have done nothing (if they have openreach will know and let you know you dont need them)

whitehall -- there are many things that determine what might make an addition to CFP -- dont make assumptions about what costs might be incurred as they could be wildly inaccurate and set the cummunity lead in a difficult conumdrum) and any number of things could affect the gap (which could be significantly more that your assume figures) new node, new splitter, direct in ground, buried and of the above could change the figure

In reply to a post by ntruby2:

That decision all hinges in what the incremental cost from Openreach is in adding each new house. I am assuming that the £73,000 is now pretty static,

Hi,

Have you checked that is the cost including the OR Demand Led CFP contingency ? They will add around 30% on top of the actual cost to give you your 'voucher target' for DLCFP projects.

Have you checked that is the cost including the OR Demand Led CFP contingency

Hi, thanks for your reply.
I don't know what this is and have never heard of it, so I think the answer must be "No". .

In none of my exchanges with Openreach has it ever been suggested that the final cost will be significantly different from the £73k. If it is, our scheme will be unviable as the very most we can hope to raise in voucher subsidy is £86k, and that's if everything goes our way.

We may as well give up now if this is a significant possibility?

Demand Led is one way a CFP can be run although its not open to all projects, it must be fully funded by voucher pledges via the Openreach Pledge website and you do not need to setup a CIC to sign contracts with Openreach. They add 30% onto the price of the project to cover them taking the risk with the project.

Thanks.
What is DP please?

In reply to a post by dect:

Demand Led is one way a CFP can be run although its not open to all projects, it must be fully funded by voucher pledges via the Openreach Pledge website and you do not need to setup a CIC to sign contracts with Openreach. They add 30% onto the price of the project to cover them taking the risk with the project.

During my last conversation with Ms Openreach we discussed the firming of a CIC. Her advice was to wait for the formal quote. So I guess that this 30% thingy is not going to apply to us?

In reply to a post by ntruby2:

During my last conversation with Ms Openreach we discussed the firming of a CIC. Her advice was to wait for the formal quote. So I guess that this 30% thingy is not going to apply to us?

Yes if they are talking to you about a CIC then your's is not Demand Led.

In reply to a post by ntruby2:

What is DP please?

Distribution Point. In the case of FTTP this is a Connectorised Block Terminal (CBT) - the place where the individual property connections are plugged in.

This will generally be either in an underground chamber or on top of a pole, and a small number of properties will be served from that point.

And, IIRC if it isn't on your DP then don't be concerned as there doesn't have to be a CBT on every DP for each property.

sometime yes sometimes no but let me assure you the new build it it has its own DP will not form part of the scheme, will not be included as part of the build and will be left on it own at the end

Ok, well I'll give you an example. Our property is planned for FTTP, there is a CBT on the DP that serves the next house up the road, and OR have said that all work has been completed outside of our property up until an order is placed.

Not quite sure what you are getting at. A DP can serve a fair number of premises, each house does not have its own exclusive DP.

I know that... AFAIK, currently our DP only serves our property, whereas the one further up the road, which has the CBT, serves a different property, but it will serve both them and us when it becomes activated. Well, I assume that will be the case, if all the work has been completed.

Edited by Grimers (Mon 05-Apr-21 18:18:22)

You can have a CBT on one pole serving properties which are reached via intermediate poles.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry if my post wasn't clear.

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Not quite sure what you are getting at. A DP can serve a fair number of premises, each house does not have its own exclusive DP.

The CBT serving my place is a 4-port unit, but I'm aware that CBT's range in size from 4 ports up to 12 ports.

To the best of my knowledge on Openreach CBT's at least, there is no optical splitting inside the CBT, the ports within the CBT have individual fibres spliced back to a DP which I believe does have a 1:n optical splitter in the trays.

Can any Openreach folk provide any more detail?

gimers that probably because you on the same DP as the premise up the road and in distance for the CBT (the small new build will not be on any systems will no be on the premises on the contract or in the build scope and will be left behind)

Yes, no splitters in the CBT.

No splitters in the DP nodes either.

There IS splitter(s) in the splitter node though. Suspect you knew that though.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Yes, no splitters in the CBT.

No splitters in the DP nodes either.

There IS splitter(s) in the splitter node though. Suspect you knew that though.

I think you have previously said that not all ports are necessary lit on a CBT so even if its a 8 port CBT there could be say 6 ports lit. I'm assuming this is still the case?

Well, I know for a fact that our line comes off a pole that doesn't have a CBT on it.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Yes, no splitters in the CBT.

No splitters in the DP nodes either.

There IS splitter(s) in the splitter node though. Suspect you knew that though.

I think you have previously said that not all ports are necessary lit on a CBT so even if its a 8 port CBT there could be say 6 ports lit. I'm assuming this is still the case?

Yep.

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Well, I know for a fact that our line comes off a pole that doesn't have a CBT on it.

As I said before, the drop cable can be strung between multiple poles until it reaches the pole with the CBT.

I suspect your nearest pole doesn't have a "DP" label on it. If it does, then it's a copper DP, but the fibre topology doesn't have to match the copper one.

ntruby2

Let OR know about the new half dozen properties and that they are empty at present. They may decide to cover them as well at their own cost, ( may be little different from the total anyway and to their long term benefit).

Just include x unoccupied new builds with their addresses as an appendix with the suggestion they include them for future proofing.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Yes, no splitters in the CBT.

No splitters in the DP nodes either.

There IS splitter(s) in the splitter node though. Suspect you knew that though.

Thanks Zarjaz. That makes sense.

Beyond the Ag Node is the Splitter Node logically then at two levels - Primary Splitter and Secondary Splitter - and are these effectively in the one physical node or physically separated i.e. downstream of each other and all upstream of the DP and finally CBT?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Beyond the Ag Node is the Splitter Node logically then at two levels - Primary Splitter and Secondary Splitter -

I'd be interested to know this too. My suspicion is that OR's motivation in bringing ports back individually from CBTs is to make more efficient use of splitters, and as such they'd have x number of fibres into a splitter node and 32x out. They could just work along the desired number of outputs, filling up each splitter as they go and potentially having one CBT span more than one PON.

If you push splitters to the CBT level there is a higher level of split 'wastage', or more complicated splicing instructions/greater quantity of splices required.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Beyond the Ag Node is the Splitter Node logically then at two levels - Primary Splitter and Secondary Splitter - and are these effectively in the one physical node or physically separated i.e. downstream of each other and all upstream of the DP and finally CBT?

I would have put money on there only being one level of splitting not two.

I thought it went like this (CBT infrastructure deployments)

1) Head End/exchange
2) Aggregation node
3) Splitter node
4) DP node (not always)
5) CBT
6) CSP *(not always)
7) ONT

* Especially for Pheasant

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Apr-21 23:28:22)

Not really sure. Hence the question. Was it always single level 32-way split or did they have the primary /secondary split concept ever in reality?

[Make that CSP (not always) too. 😄]

Various Openreach FTTP diagrams over the years....

Ag. Node with Primary and Secondary Splitter arrangement

8-way and 4-way splitter arrangement

Single 32-way Splitter Node

Ag. Node with Splitter Node and DPs

Splitter Node with CBT and drop cables

Yep, as per the Dect’s ‘flow chart’

lets hope your in distance then of the CBT or that migth be in issue

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Was it always single level 32-way split or did they have the primary /secondary split concept ever in reality?

Openreach certainly released diagrams around 2015 showing 2 level splitting for both the original manifold type and pre-connectorised (including a splitter in the CBT) type but I have yet to hear anyone say it went into production but thats not to say their isn't the odd one out there somewhere

Was two-level splitting the original architecture when they launched FTTPoD and was subsequently refined or updated to become single-level splitting at some point since and especially since mass rollouts began? Dunno.

FWIW I have never come across two splitters in a fibres routing

👍 Got it. Likely never saw the light of day then. Just exists in various schematic drawings and erroneous YouTube videos 🤣

Yes I am, the CBT is only ~50 m up the road and all work has been completed for our property which is in the plan.