FTTPoD. Did the Previous Tenant Install it?

Can anyone offer me some advice? I’ve just moved into a business address and to my untrained eye, I suspecting the previous tenant had FTTPoD. I’m making that assumption based on two factors:

1 - I see a white BT box on the wall with a “laser light” warning triangle, fibre cable coming into a “comms room”, each one labelled with circuit number, date and installer. There are also 4 abandoned fibre switches (ADVA FSP150CP)

2 - Contacting BT they were adamant there is only FTTC and no FTTP. I think they were reading from a cue card, as they ignored all attempts to talk about what I could see (circuit numbers and fibre switches).

I’ve requested a desk survey through Cerberus Networks but wondered if there’s a more precise method to establish whether my previous tenant paid for FTTPoD and whether I can reuse that (and avoid the high costs normally associated with FTTPoD).

EDIT - as some replies have indicated it looks like Leased Lines (not FTTPoD), same questions remain though (how do I find out exactly what I have, and who's best to contact for quotes).

Any advice is appreciated as I'm drawing a blank right now. Many thanks!

Edited by fidoedidoe (Tue 03-Aug-21 16:29:13)

I suspect that’s not FTTPoD, it was a standard point to point business fibre circuit.

The fibre infrastructure being different., it doesn’t go via a splitter node for instance

Adva’s are typically used to terminate leased line circuits and definitely not FTTP of any flavour.

That's a leased line, nothing to do with FTTP.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Adva’s are typically used to terminate leased line circuits and definitely not FTTP of any flavour.

If he's got some ADVA's kicking about. might be able to get a cheaper leased line deal of sort?

In reply to a post by Whitehall11:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Adva’s are typically used to terminate leased line circuits and definitely not FTTP of any flavour.

If he's got some ADVA's kicking about. might be able to get a cheaper leased line deal of sort?

Possibly yes, but he'd have to contract with a provider that would use the same tails. Might make a diff on a 1 year deal where you have to cough up the ECCs, but probably not a 3 year deal if they can absorb them.

Worth finding out though, if the OP has the need and the appetite for a leased line.

In reply to a post by Whitehall11:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Adva’s are typically used to terminate leased line circuits and definitely not FTTP of any flavour.

If he's got some ADVA's kicking about. might be able to get a cheaper leased line deal of sort?

No. They are provided by Openreach with every EAD service and the price for those is regulated and the same for every CP.

I would suggest trying to get Openreach to take all the spare ones away if you get a new leased line installed. They aren't worth anything and otherwise you'd be paying to dispose of them.

okay - many thanks for the replies (and apologies if this turns out not to be the right thread to post this in)

As most have already realised, I'm very new to this and the assumption of FTTPoD now looks very wrong based on your sound feedback.

Leased (fibre) lines is a new one to me, and I'll need to read around the subject. As some have kindly pointed out: it's (dedicated) fibre, rather than shared. To me the key piece is “it’s fibre” and I'm assuming far more capable (in terms of up/down capacities) than the 80/20 FTTC option BT are offering – even if this comes in at a (significantly?) higher monthly costs.

I guess even with leased lines, the same question stands.

1 - Who should I approach to verify what was previously installed (number of leased lines into the building c/w capacities) – Open Reach?
2 – Are the companies for question (1) the same companies I should I be approaching to get quotes to reuse these leased lines – or is there a whole telco market I need to brace myself for? Are there any obvious players I should reach out to?

BTW - I'm not interested in reusing the ADVA equipment (ebay was selling for £15), I only mentioned it to help with understanding what was previously installed.

As always - all advice is welcomed, I've learned more in the last 30 minutes than in the last few weeks. Thank you!!

EDIT - corrected typo's and improved context

Edited by fidoedidoe (Tue 03-Aug-21 16:33:33)

Significantly is correct. Spitfire publish their prices and in my experience they're very competitive.

https://www.spitfire.co.uk/products/business-interne...

Thanks for the suggestion JPM. I've reached out to Spitfire explaining my situation and inviting them to contact me. .

In order to identify the original provider it may be worth posting the circuit numbers in case folk on here have tools to perform a lookup, or if the ID format conforms to a particular provider's standard scheme?

Personally I am with Exponential-e but they will not be the cheapest option. Very good service though.

As alluded above, leased lines or Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) based services for internet access are quite different to broadband. I’ll list out some of the major differences :

1. They are dedicated circuits, meaning that a dedicated fibre (in reality multiple fibres, including spares) are connected from your premises to the nearest provider Point of Presence (POP). Although there are dozens of communications providers that you can contract with to buy such a service, typically the “tails” the parts of the circuit from your premises to the local POP are provided by a handful of large telcos: Openreach/BTW, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, SSE (now Neos).

2. They are typically uncontended, meaning you don’t share with anyone and the service bandwidth is all there, there is no concept of peak or committed/minimal data rates. You get what it says on the tin.

3. They are symmetrical bandwidth wise. Openreach provided FTTP is very much an asymmetric service by comparison.

4. They are designed for business critical service - therefore you will find there are typically strict contractual service levels for performance and fault resolution backed off by service credits.

5. They can be bought as a managed service, with a provider managed router (in addition to the circuit NTU e.g. those Adva’s) or as “wires only” - meaning that you will have to configure the network protocols, such as VLANs and address and routing.

6. They are expensive! Even though prices have dropped significantly in the last 5-10 years (due to much cheaper wholesale prices) they are still much more expensive than FTTP

7. There could be excess construction costs ranging from hundreds of pounds to (and I kid you not) several hundred thousand pounds - the latter if you are very remote and the infrastructure has to be built. In the centre of major towns and cities there is usually quite a large metropolitan level fibre infrastructure already in place by many of the providers mentioned - so there could be zero ECCs or in a lot of cases they are absorbed by the provider if you sign up for a few years!

8. Constriction time could be anything from a few weeks (fibre is already there like you!) to several months. FTTPoD can be anything up to a year, sometimes more by comparison.

In reply to a post by fidoedidoe:

Thanks for the suggestion JPM. I've reached out to Spitfire explaining my situation and inviting them to contact me. .

I’m currently with Focus Group (using Virtual1 wholesale) in London on an Openreach provided tail. Service has been impeccable. They are pretty price savvy.

A couple of sites which will give you instant indicative quotes:

leasedline.co.uk # comparison site (apparently)
linebroker.co.uk # brand name for X.COMM

The fact that you already have a fibre termination won't make much difference. It'll mean you will probably get the service installed quicker, and since there's no digging required, the provider may offer to sell you it on a 1-year term rather than a 3-year term (no construction costs to amortize)

But still expect to pay £300+ per month.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

linebroker.co.uk # brand name for X.COMM

Its a bit of sneak the name etc of that site. Not really a "broker" at all just an internal comparison of what they'd sell you with various combo's of provider circuits.

They are definitely not the cheapest either.

[Edit- typo]

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 03-Aug-21 21:44:28)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

leasedline.co.uk # comparison site (apparently)

Used them too. They just harvest your details out to a "panel" of their providers. Its a bit hit and miss I found, you don't actually get any comparison of prices, but suppliers ringing you. It's like a lead generating service.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

They are defiantly not the cheapest either.

Their defiance is an admirable quality

Touché. I'll lay that one at the feet of my (non-trusty) spell checker 😂

Many thanks for this information/insight - so useful, clears up much of the uncertainty I had.

If you're getting a quote for a leased line: I'd say 100M should be plenty for a normal small office. Some providers will sell you 100M on a 1G bearer, which means you can burst up to 1G on demand. Typically your usage is metered in 5 minute buckets, and if you use more than 100M for more than 5% or 10% of the buckets in a given month, there's an excess charge to pay. If you expect your continuous usage to be over 200M then you're likely better off paying for 1G unmetered.

Sound advice I'll keep that in mind when talking to Telco's / getting quotes. thank you

You may as well get quotes for various bandwidths, right up to the full bearer bandwidth. There’s not terribly much ££ per month between some of the higher splits.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

If you're getting a quote for a leased line: I'd say 100M should be plenty for a normal small office. Some providers will sell you 100M on a 1G bearer, which means you can burst up to 1G on demand. Typically your usage is metered in 5 minute buckets, and if you use more than 100M for more than 5% or 10% of the buckets in a given month, there's an excess charge to pay. If you expect your continuous usage to be over 200M then you're likely better off paying for 1G unmetered.

That is not how leased lines work.
If you get a 100Mb on a 1Gb bearer, it means you're paying to get 100Mb bandwidth on a connection that can deliver up to 1Gb if you upgrade in the future.
The connection to the NTE is 1Gb but you are limited to 100Mb.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by fidoedidoe:

Sound advice I'll keep that in mind when talking to Telco's / getting quotes. thank you

Will put my 2p in the meter - We have an SSE (Neos) Leased Line on a 1GB bearer, it uses Openreach fibre to connect to the SSE POP in the local exchange to us.

You're in the fortunate position that since fibre has been pulled the way to you anyway, you're likely not to face an ECC's like we got put towards us when we first decided to try Vodafone for a leasedline.
As others have mentioned, it's rural areas like ours that get hit with the large cost of laying fibre as they have to dig up roads / ducts to get to us!

Upload is the real advantage of a leased-line, having the ability to upload 500mbs symmetrically has been bliss for our business purposes!

There are so many possible solutions in communications tech these days that you have to be careful stating what is or isn't correct. It very often isn't as clear cut as you think.

Some leased lines can have burst speeds up to the bearer rate such as this from Aquiss....

Aquiss Leased Line

That looks like a 200Mbps service with 1Gbps burst speed to me.

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

If you get a 100Mb on a 1Gb bearer, it means you're paying to get 100Mb bandwidth on a connection that can deliver up to 1Gb if you upgrade in the future.

Not necessarily. The provider *may* hard-limit you to 100M, but often do not.

The amount of bandwidth you're guaranteed - and pay for whether you use it or not - is normally referred to as the Committed Data Rate (CDR). However you may be allowed to burst above it, and are generally charged if you do so for an extended period, normally measured at the 90th or 95th percentile.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

If you get a 100Mb on a 1Gb bearer, it means you're paying to get 100Mb bandwidth on a connection that can deliver up to 1Gb if you upgrade in the future.

Not necessarily. The provider *may* hard-limit you to 100M, but often do not.

The amount of bandwidth you're guaranteed - and pay for whether you use it or not - is normally referred to as the Committed Data Rate (CDR). However you may be allowed to burst above it, and are generally charged if you do so for an extended period, normally measured at the 90th or 95th percentile.

I have hundreds of leased lines installed for clients with a lot of different providers and they all have a hard limit

Thanks
Dan

The only people I'd seen offering burstable until that Aquiss link were Colt. I would imagine that being able to burst requires you to be on-net with your chosen provider, because if they take a tail from BTw or TalkTalk then they are going to have to pay for the capacity regardless of whether it's being used.

In recent years the cost differences between 200Mbps and 1Gbps have become so small than I'm not sure having burstable capacity or percentile billing when we're talking about simple internet connections to a business provides that much value - it's definitely not something I'd go in search of.

Where it does seem to have value is if you're using something like Giganet on CityFibre as the prices end up putting it somewhere between a business broadband connection and a leased line.