Small FTTP cluster

A cluster of about 6 postcodes on the edge of my village show on the BT Wholesale checker as WBC FTTP 1000/220, Availability Date = Available, FTTP Install Process = 1 Stage. The BT (retail) broadband availability checker agrees, and shows up to Full Fibre 900 as available to order at addresses in these postcodes. The rest of the village has no OR FTTP availability. The exchange (same one for all the village) is not on OR's latest Full Fibre Build Programme list to get FTTP by end 2026.

What does "FTTP Install Process = 1 Stage" mean exactly? The area is residential, but not new build, properties prob. about 50 years old. Are these lucky few likely to be the result of some FTTPoD order which now has spare slots in a CBT?

Possibly as one of the house or more paid for FTTPoD and the other houses are 'passed' properties or the whole group got a community project up and running and used vouchers to contribute to costs.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

What does "FTTP Install Process = 1 Stage" mean exactly?

That it is expected to be a simple installation: the internal and external parts will be done in the same visit, and no pre-installation survey is required.

Usually 1 of 3 reasons.
FTTPoD, a community fibre partnership or BDUK (publicly funded).

BDUK work is usually done on properties with under 30Mb/s available to them. If that end of the village is furthest from the local FTTC cabinet or wasn't connected to 1 at all then it may be that.

1 Stage simply means after ordering FTTP the install will be done in 1 stage, on a single day.
Some installs are 2 Stage where the exterior work up to the CSP is done 1st.

As these cover 6 postcodes it is unlikely to be a FTTPoD . More likely to be CFP or BDUK type scheme, but may be an OR funded if they were out of spec from the FTTC cab.

It is likely to make future FTTPoD orders cheaper

Distance from cab is a possibility. Don't know off the top of my head, and it's raining hard else I might take an afternoon stroll and have a look. They are on "cabinet 1" - is there any way to find out where this is located?

Codelook gives the postcode of the cabinet.

If you have seen they have FTTP, then you will also have seen the est speeds for FTTC and/or ADSL, this will gave a clue as to if it was BDUK.

Mmm, interesting site, didn't know about it. According to the info there, "cabinet 1" is 150 - 250m from the postcode cluster (crow flies distance), so they shouldn't have any trouble getting >=30Mb FTTC. Unless the copper cables go a very pretty way round.

The area covered by cab 1 is long and narrow, along a road. cab 1 is right at one end of it. Some postcodes are 1.5km away (cfd) - but these do not show up as having FTTP available.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Mmm, interesting site, didn't know about it. According to the info there, "cabinet 1" is 150 - 250m from the postcode cluster (crow flies distance)

No, no, no. Don't put any faith on CodeLook's cabinet locations. They're based on the postcode and I've never seen one located correctly on the map. You need to go and find it for yourself, either using shoe leather or Google Street View.

Est speeds for VDSL A and B are 21.3 to 11.9 downstream. Something somewhere doesn't add up.

That gives a clue that it might have been BDUK, but good luck with finding out as we have BDUK FTTP but neither BT or BDUK seemed to know at first.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

According to the info there, "cabinet 1" is 150 - 250m from the postcode cluster (crow flies distance)

No, it can't tell you that.

All it tells you is the *postcode* that the cabinet is within: the actual point plotted is the centre of the postcode, that's all. But you can often spot the cab in streetview if you look around.

The postcode given for the cab is not large geographically, only a couple of dozen houses maybe. It's not far away, and the sun is shining (at the moment), so I will walk round and have a look at some point.

There's a mystery here, and I want to get to the bottom of it. If the cab is within even a few hundred metres of where CodeLook says, then I can't see why VDSL performance at the cluster should be as poor as quoted on the BTW checker, unless the cable routing is bizarre.

A search on postcode alone will pick up on the location of the postcode 'centroid' which is supposed to be in the centre of all the properties in the postcode, it will not be the location of the cabinet.

So I walked round the whole postcode, twice (addresses checked on the PO postcode finder) and there is no sign of a cabinet anywhere. If that area is instead served by a cable coming up the hill from the nearby small town, I can understand why their VDSL performance is so poor.

On the way there and back I checked other cabinets. The cabinet I'm on is not shown in the correct postcode on the CodeLook site. There are other cabinets shown on the map which aren't there, and cabinets which do exist that are not on the map. So at least in this area, the CodeLook site does not seem reliable regarding cabinet location info.

Any property with no access to SuperFast (30Mb/s) would have been eligible for BDUK funding.
There was limited BDUK funds and they always targeted the cheapest to cover premises.

It's possible that these properties are all under 30Mb/s on the Wholesale checker meaning they are all eligible for funding.
It matters not where the cabinet is located. Sometimes lines go in the opposite direction and halfway round the village before getting to a property.

This cluster of properties may have been the cheapest in the village to provide FTTP to therefore the only properties eligible for the limited BDUK funds available.

Openreach also do some rural FTTP as part of their commercial rollout, paid for by their own funds.
If they surveyed your village and this cluster fell within a deployment threshold and everywhere else didn't then that would also explain it.

As already mentioned this could have been a CFP arranged by that part of the village.
This won't be documented anywhere and the only way to find out would be to ask someone who was involved in arranging the CFP.

There's a high chance you will never find out why these properties have FTTP.