"The plan has now been cancelled..."

Hello.

I'm a little confused about the status of the FTTP build in my area. I figure here is as good a place as any to maybe get some clarity or see if anyone has had a similar experience.

I'll start things off here: About a month ago Western Power installed several new poles (this is when I thought Fibre was coming to the area) as part of their electricity upgrades in my village, and we were told the old poles are to be taken down. I'm assuming they belong to Openreach as the only thing left on them is the telephone lines.
Naturally, I get curious and put my postcode in their checker and get a message along the lines of 'We're starting to roll-out Ultrafast fibre in your area'. I get even more curious and e-mail Openreach but get this response after giving them my details:
"I've received a reply from our team and as per them you were in a plan to bring fibre to the premises (FTTP) to your area but the plan has now been cancelled. Due to the complex nature of the network our plans occasionally change. For a variety of reasons this can cause some areas to be removed from their expected fibre roll out."

The conundrum I have is that they are still working in my general area, as there's new clusters for FTTP on the thinkbroadband map including a street above mine. Is it possible the newly installed poles have disrupted their plans or the information in the e-mail I received is just wrong?
How likely will it be for them to install fibre when they take the old poles down?

Edited by Jason91 (Thu 01-Jul-21 00:05:03)

Have you any idea if its was going to be a BDUK or commercial rollout.

When they say "complex nature of the network" this to me means costly, so the install to your road may not meet their cost parameters to proceed.

In the next village to here, Buckley, there are some roads where telephone lines have been carried of wooden electricity poles. Now that they are running FTTP in Buckley, the fibre and those yellow labels are appearing on those poles.

Hopefully OR will revisit the OP's area once the electricity supply has been upgraded?

Cheers!

In reply to a post by Jason91:

Is it possible the newly installed poles have disrupted their plans or the information in the e-mail I received is just wrong?

Anything is possible, but it's not likely.

In reply to a post by Jason91:

How likely will it be for them to install fibre when they take the old poles down?

Given that they've already told you clearly that the plan for your area has been cancelled, then it's unlikely that they'll do so in the near term.

Of course, almost everyone will get fibre *eventually*, but nothing is certain until it's actually delivered. There have been people who've seen fibre and CBTs installed on poles, and 3 or 4 years later the service still hasn't gone live. OTOH, there *have* been cases of people being told there are no plans for their area, and then service to arrive unannounced.

The same happened on our development of 200 homes.

OR website stated (and still does to this day) "Full Fibre is coming to your area soon" and sure enough OR started rolling it out on the development. I engaged several times with the "Fibre Enquiries Team" at OR who gave me multiple tentative 'available to order' dates before suddenly telling me the project had been cancelled due to funding reasons.

It has left circa 25 homes in a small cluster available to order FTTP (as confirmed by the BT Wholesale website) however the other 175 homes have been told to figure it out ourselves.

Thank you for taking my call earlier.

I have spoken to our Project Manager for the area to confirm the date of the fibre project.

All fibre projects are subject to survey to see how the service can be provided and the cost involved. Unfortunately I have been advised the project will not be going ahead at this time due to high costs. And I’m unable to advise as to when the fibre will be provided.

I’m really sorry you and you neighbours were given dates the works would be completed. This is something that will be looked into internally.

Followed by -

Thank you for your email. I do understand how disappointing and frustrating the news is for yourself and your neighbours. I have spoken to our senior project manager for the area, with regards to the fibre service. And as it stands there are no plans for the project to continue.

I have carried out some further checks and the FTTP on demand service is available , you would need to contact the service provider for more information.

Edited by BrumskiG (Thu 01-Jul-21 12:03:00)