Community Fibre Project

Our Community Fibre Project covers 76 dwellings most of which hold a voucher. The lead contact with Openreach is woefully provided with any kind of progress reports on our scheme and when he does enquire about progress, is not given any meaningful response. This leads residents to wonder if the project is really going to happen.

I understand that a scheme from approval has to be completed in 12 months, so in our case that would be towards the end of February next year.

Is this lack of informed progress reports usual, leading only to the presence of installation teams suddenly appearing in the target area? I don't think any kind of site survey has been made. This project is in Farnham, Surrey where for now there in no FTTP to any property except for the few who have opted for FTTPoD.

Have you had quotes for the project, and have you all signed the contracts etc ?
My experience was that it took nearly 5 months just for OR to get quotes. When quotes did arrive they were verbal and then took another 2/3 months to become a formal written quote.

The quote was really expensive and thankful and Altnet cam along took about 3 months to build a business case and is now currently putting in Full Fibre into the village I live.

So.. in summary I am really disappointed by the OR Community Fibre Programme.. but I am guessing OR just have too much on their plate to focus on this to make it a much better experience.

PGRE

so you asked for something that you actually couldnt afford and decided not to go with and you disappointed in the scheme that it took took long to get quotes and stuff (so how much do you think Openreach spent in costing that (and did you provide all the information you required in the beginning , only for you to decide it was too expensive -- and you disappointed -- wonder much time and resource openreach spent on producing that and engaging with you on that at total cost to openreach and zero (financial) cost to you

Hi, we had the go ahead for our CFP in February 2021, this was a demand led project, I have received several 'automated' update emails since then about progress, and one more personalised earlier this month advising that the project should be completed by January 2022.

Other than these emails, I've not seen any of the infrastructure being built in the project area just yet, and no sign of any roadworks (however the project area is generally village based and roadworks may be unrequired). Fully expecting to see progress very soon though!

Was your project a demand led project? When did you get the go ahead (assuming February like myself)?

" only for you to decide it was too expensive "

Your words not theirs.

My experience is similar. Ours is a CFP that was put in place after a previous programme ran into a problem outside of budget. 41 properties and we managed to get vouchers to cover the full cost.. I found that emails sent to the CFP team were opened about 10 days after I sent them and then replies were "standard". Even though the original project was nearly complete it has taken several surveys and eight months for work to restart. We are told that much of the equipment installed was obsolete immediately afterwards and is now being replaced or bypassed. At least now the local engineer talks to us. The CFP team (in Liverpool?) just give out standard answers. The project is due to complete by the end of October or so we are told.

Which AltNet out of interest was it that decided to do a commercial rollout?

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

PGRE

so you asked for something that you actually couldnt afford and decided not to go with and you disappointed in the scheme that it took took long to get quotes and stuff (so how much do you think Openreach spent in costing that (and did you provide all the information you required in the beginning , only for you to decide it was too expensive -- and you disappointed -- wonder much time and resource openreach spent on producing that and engaging with you on that at total cost to openreach and zero (financial) cost to you

I can make no sense of your posting, if indeed it is directed to me is the OP.

It was directed to forum user "Pgre", who made the second post on this thread.

In reply to a post by Fastman3:

PGRE

so you asked for something that you actually couldnt afford and decided not to go with and you disappointed in the scheme that it took took long to get quotes and stuff (so how much do you think Openreach spent in costing that (and did you provide all the information you required in the beginning , only for you to decide it was too expensive -- and you disappointed -- wonder much time and resource openreach spent on producing that and engaging with you on that at total cost to openreach and zero (financial) cost to you

The time spent building quotes based on customer requirements is a cost of doing business for every organisation that sells things. I don't really care if a company I am looking to buy something off has to throw loads of resources at it to produce a formal proposal, that's their own problem and they need to look at their business processes if they feel it's disproportionate.