FTTP - Does this mean I won't be able to get it ?

I am trying to work out if I am always going to be excluded from an ongoing FTTP installation in our small village where we currently have only very slow ADSL or potentially BDUK funded Airband (fixed wireless) that has such a poor reputation I wouldn't touch it.

A couple of months ago I checked the Openreach Fibre Checker for our house and the result was "We don’t have plans to upgrade your area yet to our fibre services..." However, every other property in our village apart from us and our immediate neighbour (currently receiving services from the same overhead pole as us) showed "we are starting to roll out our Ultrafast Full Fibre in your area". I contacted Openreach to check and was told that plans had changed and there was no planned roll-out of Fibre in our village.

Out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago I spotted some contractors working in behalf of Openreach cutting branches of trees on our property that are near the road and the line of the overhead copper. After some negotiation, they agreed to minimise the cutting but said, don't worry fibre is being installed as soon as they finish the cutting. Sure enough over the next 2 weeks, fibre was installed from near the Exchange past our house to the rest of the village. A joint was put in on the pole currently serving us and our immediate neighbour, as was the case for all of the poles that served single houses or groups of houses. However, CBTs were installed on every such pole apart from ours, so the nearest pole with a CBT is about 5 away. The Engineer carrying out the installation said he couldn't understand why a CBT wasn't being installed on our pole.

So after raising an online query with Openreach in which the reply said there hadn't been a mistake, I escalated the issue with Openreach and the response was very fast. However after investigating, they came back to me saying that this was a BT initiated USO installation so they couldn't give me any information. I spoke to the BT USO help line and they said that Openreach decides which properties are connected as part of the USO, which doesn't make sense. What is even odder, they told me that of 37 properties in the village only 5 are eligible for the USO as others could receive Airband fixed wireless services. They couldn't/wouldn't tell me why 35 of the properties have connections ready for FTTP (30 of which are not eligible for the USO) and 2 have been excluded. I also can't work out how the cost of this would have been covered by the USO funding on 5 houses. The planned go live date is just before Christmas.

So I am stuck between Openreach and BT trying to find out why my property has been excluded. A single overhead fibre cable runs from near the Exchange about 2 miles away (the last bit to the Exchange will be underground as far as I can tell) all through the village. Houses before and after ours have the CBTs on their poles but not ours. If there is a joint on our pole is it as simple as having a CBT installed there to be ready for our connection and if so how can I make sure that this happens ?

Any thoughts or advice would be very welcome.

Many Thanks. William

Edited by WFH1 (Sat 06-Nov-21 18:30:07)

tl;dr

So 37? houses in village
5 eligible for USO
Openreach have FTTP-enabled 35 of the 37 under USO
2 properties in the village missed

Is that about right?

Hi Pheasant.

Exactly right ! I really can't understand whether Openreach decided to supplement the BT paid USO implementation but then why miss out 2 houses. You would have thought that the incremental cost of adding a house would be very small which makes the whole situation very odd.

I couldn't work out why they bothered to put a joint on our pole if they weren't going to install a CBT there.


Thanks

William

Gotcha. The 2 properties missed are 5 pole spans from the last CBT. They may have decided it was a bit much for them to absorb the additional costs. Playing devils advocate.

Might be worth raising it with the CEO? Sounds like the usual avenues of appeal are drawing a blank.

Many thanks Pheasant. Just to clarify, the two properties missed are 5 poles from the nearest CBT, but the fibre runs right past the 2 properties and even has a joint on the pole that serves them and then continues to the next couple of properties (about 10 poles further on in the other direction) and then on the further properties. So the 2 houses missed are right in the middle of the fibre route with properties either side connected.

I did raise it with the CEO and the team was very responsive but as soon as they saw it as a USO installation, they said they couldn't get involved and couldn't tell me anything. I will try again though.

If this genuinely is a USO implementation, can Openreach piggyback off it in future to serve our property (just needs a CBT and 30m of fibre to the house ?) if we can't get any result now ?

Just surmising here, but the fibre running past the non-enabled properties may be the spine fibre on its way to the splitter node which serves the local CBT’s in the village build from the aggregation node. Therefore may not necessarily be easy to tap into if that makes sense.

Someone from Openreach may be able to explain the ins and out of USO from the perspective of funding, obligations and mixing commercial rollouts etc.

From a techical perspective Openreach FTTP is Openreach FTTP and the network is one and 100% compatible whatever the “funding” pot is to get it built. Saying that there are capacity constraints, and it may be more difficult to extend or piggyback off an isolated build if that makes sense.

The outlook from OR may change after a given period, perhaps 12 months…again surmising don’t know the details around USO and what is or isn’t sacrosanct with ‘em.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 06-Nov-21 21:20:01)

Deep breaths,

Please do not take what i'm about to say means that you are gonna get fttp. But CBTs on every pole, is not how how it goes. From your home to the cbt, can have a span of 160m or more..

I'm confused as to why the uso team are confused.

Five poles from a current CBT to the pole outside the OP’s is going to be around 250 metres …

There met be other issues not immediately apparent to the OP, line of sight, wayleaves, etc.

Pheasant, Taras & Zarjaz - many thanks for your input.

You are right that the nearest pole with a CBT is some 250m away from the pole in front of my house so maybe this would be an option but obviously not intended as per the Openreach Fibre checker where our house is shown as not included (and I have confirmation from Openreach).

I still can't understand why they bothered to put a joint in the fibre on our pole if they didn't intend to make connections possible from there as they could have easily run fibre straight between the poles (5 one way and 10 the other way) that have joints/CBTs on them. I can post a photo if this is of any use . As Pheasant says, there may be technical reasons and it is not easy to see the full details of the installation by just looking at it. It does seem totally linear with no branches off, a single cable between each pole and a joint and CBT on every pole that serves houses (about 8 such poles) , but must confess I don't fully understand how an installation like this is normally structured. At the moment, the fibre is just spooled up on the last pole nearest the exchange (still about half a mile further on from this) right next to the cabinet that currently serves us with phone line/adsl. The final link to the Exchange from there will be in underground ducts I think.

The most frustrating thing is that someone must have planned this installation and made a conscious decision to exclude our house (and immediate neighbour) but include all other houses between us and the Exchange and between us and the last part in the village proper beyond in the other direction. Finding out whether this is the BT USO team or Openreach seems impossible as everyone I speak to only has visibility (or is prepared to share) a very small part of the whole. How so many non USO eligible homes have been included is a mystery.

USO team at BT sound like they’re pointing the finger at Openreach and vice versa.

Devils advocate again; perhaps someone made a mistake covering the 35 properties (outside the 5 under the USO obligation) and they don’t want to compound or exacerbate the error - even though from what you’ve said it makes little logical sense to exclude the 2 remaining properties that are in the middle of the build.

Have you written to the USO Help team asking for clarification and assistance? I know you spoke to them.