FTTP Rollout started, then abandoned

I'm curious to see if anyone else has experienced this at all. Forgive the length of the post, I wanted to insure I had all the information to hand.

In early 2017 I moved onto a newbuild development (still being constructed) in a semi-rural setting on the edge of a market town consisting of roughly 200 houses.

Although the development was built during 2017 and 2018 Openreach did not install native FTTP and we have been serviced by FTTC/VDSL from a DSLAM roughly a mile away. While "ok" it was with some relief that we noticed the Openreach Fibre Checker was updated early last year to confirm FTTP was being rolled out to our postcode(s).

Over the course of last year, both I and several like-minded neighbours liaised with the "Fibre Enquiries Team" at Openreach who confirmed, numerous times, that FTTP was confirmed for our addresses and we were given tentative "Available to order" dates. These dates slipped several times, in no doubt partially due to COVID, but we were continually reassured that FTTP would be available soon.

There was an increase in Openreach activity earlier this year on the estate and sure enough as of March a cluster of addresses in the centre of the estate are able to order WBC FTTP. Availability can be confirmed by the Openreach checker, the BT Wholesale checker, numerous consumer ISP checkers and I know a couple of the lucky homeowners personally - I've seen the ONT(s)

Great news! Not so fast......

With a subset of houses being able to order FTTP in March I liaised with the Fibre Enquiries Team one last time for an update for my property (roughly 50 metres from aforementioned properties) - "Our engineering will take place over the coming month/s. If everything goes to plan, fibre broadband should be available to order by the end of April 2022"

This was the fifth time the "Available to order date" had been pushed back so, slightly annoyed, I emailed Clive Selley (not that I expected him to respond, rather get the attention of someone who would contact me). I explained the above, namely for a year we'd been assured FTTP was on the way and that a number of properties had already been lucky enough to order it. Essentially I just wanted to understand if "April 2022" was realistic or not.

I got a response today - The project has been cancelled due to a lack of funding and the rest of the estate will not be provided with FTTP. The dates, and assurances, we'd been given were "system errors".

All of the work required to get fibre from the 'head-end' exchange some 8 miles away into the centre of the estate has been completed and acknowledged as completed by Openreach, and 15 - 20 homeowners can, and have, ordered native WBC FTTP. Then Openreach, with arguably the difficult infrastructure work done, cancels the project (their terminology not mine).

Does that sound plausible? Has anyone else experienced this?

Edited by BrumskiG (Fri 09-Apr-21 18:59:57)

Yes: it's plausible. Yes: others have seen FTTP partially installed (even to having CBTs on poles with coils of fibre dangling off), only for the project to be abandoned.

People complaining when Openreach give predicted dates, which then slip or change, is probably why Openreach are incredibly reluctant to give any sort of public predictions at all now.

The accounting is complex. From what I've gathered here, it appears that funding for the backhaul to the to the head-end exchange isn't necessarily all paid for up front. Subsequent projects which make use of that backhaul may have to pay back their own proportionate share of it. As a result, if funding was provided only for a subset of properties, it still may not be commercially viable for Openreach to connect the remaining properties at their own expense.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Yes: it's plausible. Yes: others have seen FTTP partially installed (even to having CBTs on poles with coils of fibre dangling off), only for the project to be abandoned.

People complaining when Openreach give predicted dates, which then slip or change, is probably why Openreach are incredibly reluctant to give any sort of public predictions at all now.

The accounting is complex. From what I've gathered here, it appears that funding for the backhaul to the to the head-end exchange isn't necessarily all paid for up front. Subsequent projects which make use of that backhaul may have to pay back their own proportionate share of it. As a result, if funding was provided only for a subset of properties, it still may not be commercially viable for Openreach to connect the remaining properties at their own expense.

I appreciate the response. Useful information and it makes more sense now. Still annoying, but slightly less knowing we're not unique.

Fingers crossed this doesn't happen with the Colaton Raleigh rollout. Sorry to barge in, but I wonder if this is why only 330/50 FTTP is being offered atm because there are problems with the backhaul (someone mentioned it may be something to do with the lack of 10 Gb cable links?)

Sorry to hear this, BrumskiG. We are in a similar position here, though luckily nowhere near as bad as what you're facing, at least not at the moment anyway. We were given a "ready to order" date of by the end of March, then about a month ago that was moved to the end of May. It makes me wonder why OR decided to put up FTTP banners back last Summer when only the first properties have just become live! Maybe there have been other delays that I don't know about, it seems this is all too common, but there will be reasons why. We also live in a semi-rural setting and it will be very difficult to rollout to some of the properties around me.

Edited by Grimers (Fri 09-Apr-21 19:49:32)

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Fingers crossed this doesn't happen with the Colaton Raleigh rollout. Sorry to barge in, but I wonder if this is why only 330/50 FTTP is being offered atm because there are problems with the backhaul (someone mentioned it may be something to do with the lack of 10 Gb cable links?)

TBH, I wouldn't get upset about this: just order 330/50 and enjoy it. This is more than enough for a family, indeed you can run an office with dozens of people on it. That's 40MB/sec of download, and many remote sites can't sustain that level of traffic anyway. I don't begrudge those who want to pay more for higher speeds, and some extra upload speed would be nice, but for me it isn't worth the extra cost.

Uploading 2.5GB takes 6 or 7 minutes at 50Mbps; at 110Mbps it would take 3 minutes. Either way, I'd still end up doing something else in the mean time.

Oh, totally! I wouldn't require much more than we have now (55/7), tbh! Though, obviously having a similar speed on fibre rather than copper is better! It's more a curiosity as to why it is 330/50, not 1000/220, for the people/business that may need it.

Edited by Grimers (Sat 10-Apr-21 11:29:21)

i assume that the development was done in an number of phases. Are you an on a different phase or the same phase of the development that the bit that has FTTP now

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Oh, totally! I wouldn't require much more than we have now (55/7), tbh! Though, obviously having a similar speed on fibre rather than copper is better! It's more a curiosity as to why it is 330/50, not 1000/220, for the people/business that may need it.

Yeah - As i think we concluded on your thread, the ISP's at your head exchange don't seem to of yet got the backhaul capacity (I.e. GEA CableLinks), as we had an insider confirm your Headend is not a ECI capped vendor.

It'll be upgraded soon - May be a deeper problem for all we know with actual dark fibre / other spine cabling needing work, but you've had the hard part done of actually getting it to the CBT's!

That makes sense. Thanks for your explanation!