FTTPoD cost with a CBT 100m away

Hi,
I'm wondering what the maximum distance engineers will run fibre to a property from a CBT is? As I don't want to bother wasting £300 on a field survey if it's gauranteed to be extortinate.
I'm located right in a deadzone on the middle of my road where the maximum i can get on FTTC is 30/5, while a few doors to the right can get in excess of 60 and a few doors to my left can get native FTTP. The nearest pole mounted CBT is about 100m away, and there is ducting running all the way up the road - with an access chamber directly in front of my property. My copper line is currently ducted from this chamber directly into the property so i don't forsee any civils work being required either.

In reply to a post by emcacc:

Hi,
I'm wondering what the maximum distance engineers will run fibre to a property from a CBT is? As I don't want to bother wasting £300 on a field survey if it's gauranteed to be extortinate.
I'm located right in a deadzone on the middle of my road where the maximum i can get on FTTC is 30/5, while a few doors to the right can get in excess of 60 and a few doors to my left can get native FTTP. The nearest pole mounted CBT is about 100m away, and there is ducting running all the way up the road - with an access chamber directly in front of my property. My copper line is currently ducted from this chamber directly into the property so i don't forsee any civils work being required either.

FTTPoD never installs just a drop fibre to a CBT. Each CBT is planned to serve a specific set of properties. Therefore, either you are in the service footprint of the existing CBT - in which case you can order fibre - or you are not. There are occasional errors, so if database says No, then you can fill in the Openreach contact form and select the reason "I cannot get fibre but my neighbours can". However, if you are served from a different copper DP than them, then almost certainly you're not served from that CBT, and you're simply unlucky to be just outside the existing FTTP coverage area.

With FTTPoD, a new CBT will be installed, which will then either be connected to an existing spiltter, or a new splitter will be installed too, which will be connected to an upstream fibre aggregation node. The new CBT will likely cover a handful of other properties in addition to your own.

If you get your order in before the end of May, then there is a near network trial which gives a limited fixed cost if you are within 500 metres of an existing splitter or fibre aggregation node. If you are within range of an existing splitter, the cost to you will be £250+VAT for the survey deposit and then £2620+VAT to complete the installation. If a new splitter is required but you are still within 500 metres of a fibre aggregation node then there will be an additional £1025+VAT to build the new splitter node. There are various exclusions including MDUs and where any civils are required.

The costs I show are higher than the published Openreach prices. This is because there are additional charges slapped on by BT Wholesale and by Cerberus (the ISP that you'll deal directly with). See here and here for real quotes obtained by forum members.

You will then pay an elevated service charge for the first 12 months of service, after which you can either recontract at a lower rate or switch ISP. With Cerberus a 300/50 service costs £80+VAT per month instead of their standard £40+VAT per month, an additional uplift of £480+VAT over the year. Higher and lower speeds are also available.

So your first year's worth of 300/50 service will cost, at minimum, (250+2620+960)+VAT = 3830+VAT = £4,596, after which you can get regular FTTP prices and speeds.

Cerberus have national coverage for FTTPoD. There are a handful of other ISPs who will provide it, but either they are resellers of Cerberus (e.g. Amvia) or they have limited geographic coverage and/or are very expensive. By all means check if any of them apply to you.

I started the FTTPoD process with Cerberus in March 2018, and although it didn't get running until Sep 2019, I am glad I did it. These days, it is an expensive gamble as to how much use you'll get out of it before FTTP would be rolled out for free by Openreach in your area. Even if all the duct and pole infrastructure is in place as you describe, you should expect the process to take a minimum of 6 months from placing your survey order to getting service, and possibly 12.

I hope that gives you something to think about!

Edited by candlerb (Sat 19-Mar-22 09:12:44)

The post from 'candlerb' gives some excellent information on the charging structure but the whole idea of a survey is to determine the level of work to achieve the job, unless you know the outcome of the survey before you have it done its always going to be a risk. If you can't afford to lose the money on a survey sit and wait for the FTTP infrastructure (for your property) to come along for free.

The gamble at survey time is that you may end up being quoted more than the figures I've given (because your connection is not suitable for the near-network trial).

But remember that even in the best case there's a minimum spend of £4,596 for the first year's service. So if you already accept you're going to pay at least that much, the survey itself is only 6.5% of that; it's a low amount to risk, and if you don't like the results of the survey you are free to withdraw without paying any more.

The much bigger gamble is that say one year later, Openreach come along and do a native FTTP rollout. Then you'll have paid about £4,000 over the odds for that one year's FTTP service. That gamble is against the whole amount, and there's no information you can use to assess realistically how long it will be before native FTTP comes along.

Publicly, Openreach is aiming for about 85% UK FTTP coverage by end of 2026, and that will be all the easy-to-reach areas - including expanding existing FTTP to adjacent areas.

I wonder if there’s going to be any appetite from Openreach to extend the near network trial beyond May?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I wonder if there’s going to be any appetite from Openreach to extend the near network trial beyond May?

With the project gigabit tenders going into build phase later this year, i doubt it .. I can see fftpod only being available in areas that are not being covered by PG

Finished your post off for you

In reply to a post by Taras:

I can see fftpod only being available in areas that are not being covered by PG tips.

In reply to a post by dect:

Finished your post off for you

In reply to a post by Taras:

I can see fftpod only being available in areas that are not being covered by PG tips.

But but i like Tetley 😂

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I wonder if there’s going to be any appetite from Openreach to extend the near network trial beyond May?

With the project gigabit tenders going into build phase later this year, i doubt it .. I can see fftpod only being available in areas that are not being covered by PG

How do you figure that? Project Gigabit is aimed at the hard to reach areas, virtually all rural locations and selected.

FoD on the other hand is a nationally available product irrespective of area. “Near network” is a subset of FoD. There will be plenty that don’t qualify under the present criteria.

There’s no talk or inkling of removing FoD completely. I’m struggling to conclude how there any relationship to PG builds which aren’t really going to cover a huge number of premises. Only the non-commercially viable places.

Thanks for the reply - incredibly helpful!
I've now contacted OR via their form to see what's going on with the infastructure in my area.

and regarding CBT's being reserved for their intended addresses only - i'm assuming they still won't connect my property even if the nearest CBT has zero utilised connections?

MJ Quinn have been carrying out various works on the road in the past few months so maybe the intention is to eventually offer native fttp at my address even though it currently shows as not planned on the OR checker.