Multiple Fttp installers in my area....

Hi all,
I currently have multiple ISP's installing FTTP in my area ( Clacton on Sea), being Lit fibre, Be fibre, Lightspeed fibre and Openreach. Both Lit and Openreach already have some areas available to order although not my road as yet, fingers crossed it's soon.
The quest I'm hoping someone can answer is what happens after the initial contract ie 12 or 24 months with which ever ISP, are you able to migrate to another ISP or are you stuck with whoever you initially sign up with?
Are you able to choose anyone that provides FTTP? or restricted to those who have installed in the area?
cheers in advance

OpenReach wholesale the service so you can sign up with any provider that sells their wholesale service.

For the others you are going to be much more limited as to what providers are available. In many cases to change provider will require a new fibre cable being installed for the new provider and new terminating equipment. It isn't possible to switch from one alt-net to another because their networks are physically separate networks and so new cabling and equipment will be required.

Ok, thankyou.
Makes sense I suppose

Its worth saying from the outset that Lit fibre, Be fibre, Lightspeed fibre and Openreach do not use the same fibre infrastructure so they will only become available in your road if the infrastructure is installed in it. As has been said by Ian if you have the option of Openreach then you will be able to select an ISP like Sky or BT retail plus many others but if you select one of the other infrastructure providers (aka Altnets) you will be very limited if you want to switch unless the infrastructure is there for another infrastructure provider. Remember not all infrastructure is the same in the sense of speed so make sure you understand what you will be getting before you sign up.

I would suggest contacting Lit fibre, Be fibre and Lightspeed fibre to find out what if anything you have to do to be able to use their service at some time in the future. You might have to agree to some sort of cable termination on the boundary of your property. If you have more than one then you could no doubt switch from one to another though you would end up with multiple cables entering your property.

Some of us have altnets but don't get a choice.

I have noticed that different ISP's have been installing in different areas of the town all 3 alt-nets say they are coming into the area, not much about openreach though.
So do they just run new fibre from the green cabinet that the street is served from for FTTC or do they install a whole new lenght from the exchange? I have seen some guys working on pulling some cable??? fibre???? through on Thursday of last week with the addition of the metal CBT bracket on Friday afternoon, but no dangling fibre loops on the poles as yet.

Lit fibre are installing 10Gb fibre cable not that anyone can pay for that service though, but clearly future proofing the areas they service, which makes sense.

Time will tell I suppose.

Thanks for the responses

Only Openreach FTTP will necessarily come from a BT exchange (and it may not be your local exchange either but a larger one) and not from the green cabinet like copper/FTTC.

The other AltNets will lay their own independant fibre networks from each other and Openreach, although they may use Openreach poles and/or ducts in what is called Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) basically renting the space from Openreach, rather than trenching for themselves or putting up their own poles. One would hope that they can do so in your area otherwise there may be quite a lot of disruption as the various civils works are completed.

Both Openreach FTTC cabinets and FTTP PON networks are run from aggregation nodes which are large fibre spines that are typically dotted around towns in underground chambers that go back to an Openreach handover exchanges so any FTTP will come from an aggregation node not the FTTC cabinet itself.

In reply to a post by highlander317:

Lit fibre are installing 10Gb fibre cable not that anyone can pay for that service though, but clearly future proofing the areas they service, which makes sense.

Worth noting that the fibre in the ground for all these network is basically identical, single mode fibre. The architecture is identical too - passive optical network or PON.

The difference is the Day 1 technology that hangs off either end. In the case of Openreach that is asymmetric GPON giving a maximum package bandwidth of 1000 Mbps downstream and 220 Mbps upstream. In the case of quite a number of AltNets (not sure on all those coming to your town but…) they have decided to use a later development of GPON called XGS-PON which has a trunk bandwidth of 10 Gbps in both downstream and upstream directions, although it is rare to find retail packages at the full speed mostly up to 3 Gbps symmetric and typically up to 1 Gbps symmetric.

In any event GPON can be seamlessly upgraded to XGS-PON in future or even higher bandwidth kit with speeds up to 25 Gbps, 50 Gbps and even 100 Gbps. So the fibre and other infrastructure in between you and ‘them’ has plenty of future capacity.

From what I've seen in the "Live" areas it is using poles and ducting, like you say PIA, think they all mention that in finer details. Most of Clacton is overhead except for the town centre and newer estates built after the WW2, which mostly use Aluminium cables, poor them, I did work experience with BT about 7 years ago and the aluminium cable was so fragile, it was easy to see why those areas had so many issues and faults.

There is only one exchange in Clacton about 1.1 miles away but oddly alot of work seems to be taking place in the middle of Clactons largest roundabout where Openreach have green boxes (not mine for FTTC) and ducting and u/g stuff lol

Thanks for the responses again