When will my area have fibre installed? Openreach, Virgin

Hi there,

So I am in the unfortunate situation that I live in a house where the "best" internet solution available is an all copper ADSL connection.

And I guess we can all agree that in 2022 this is far from optimal, especially in this post COVID-19 world, where working from home has become quite common.

However, I have been told that because this premise does not have FTTC, it is listed as one of the premises that will get FTTP installed, and that it hopefully will be prioritised because of the current connection. However, and this is my question, no one can really give me a date or en estimated time of when this installation will happen, so can anyone help me? Or give me a more educated guess.

When I look up this area on OpenReach's website it says that fibre will be installed in the period from April 2022 to April 2025, haha!

Another thing is that the street adjacent to the one I live on has Virgin Media Fibre installed. As far as I can see the fibre is being via a cable from a telephone pole. However, in order to get to my street a few poles would probably have to be erected. So does anyone have any experience with Virgin Media and them installing fibre, how far are they willing to go with new installations to get new costumers?

You could try using the USO via BT. As you only have ADSL I am guessing your line does not meet the USO minimum. This may possibly trigger BT to review FTTP for you but it also may result in them offering an EE 4G connection (although that is dependent on how good you mobile signal is on the EE network). You could also find that other 4G providers may be able to give you a much faster connection for a relatively low monthly fee (a few on this site have gone that route for their Internet connectivity).

In reply to a post by lo22:

However, I have been told that because this premise does not have FTTC, it is listed as one of the premises that will get FTTP installed, and that it hopefully will be prioritised because of the current connection.

That's not necessarily the case. There are many properties/areas with no FTTC that will likely never receive FTTP.

The lack of a Superfast connection being available may make your property/area eligible for certain subsidies to help upgrade the available broadband but it doesn't guarantee anything or speed up the process of any upgrades.

When I look up this area on OpenReach's website it says that fibre will be installed in the period from April 2022 to April 2025, haha!

That's as much info as you will get out of Openreach.
There's nowhere else you can lookup to get a more detailed timetable or any progress reports unfortunately (apart from watching for local roadworks).

Another thing is that the street adjacent to the one I live on has Virgin Media Fibre installed. As far as I can see the fibre is being via a cable from a telephone pole. However, in order to get to my street a few poles would probably have to be erected. So does anyone have any experience with Virgin Media and them installing fibre, how far are they willing to go with new installations to get new costumers?

It's unlikely that Virgin will extend to you if it requires more poles to be installed.
The poles belong to Openreach and Virgin simply rent access to them. They never deploy their own poles that I'm aware of.

I think there's some kind of mechanism in place where Virgin can request Openreach repair or extend parts of their network so that Virgin can rent access to it but it's probably more likely that Virgin would simply dig their own trench between 2 areas than waiting for poles.

It depends how far your street is from their network, how much it would cost to reach you and how many homes that would give access to.
Basically they have a cost per premises passed target and if they have skipped your street then it may not have come within this threshold.

Basically, there's very little out there that will give you a more detailed timeframe on when FTTP will arrive (if it does).
All you can do is wait and hope.

If your 3g/4g/5g mobile signal is below 10Mb/s then you may also qualify for the USO as mentioned by Ian above.
You can check if you qualify for that here

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 19-Aug-22 11:50:02)

Thank you for the info, although it is of course a bit depressing that I cannot get something more concrete information. And that Virgin probably cannot help solve my issues either.

However, I have done quite a bit of testing with my phone and 4G for all the major carriers (O2, Vodafone, EE and 3). And I have not really got speeds of above 10 Mbps (I have very early in the morning, but not during normal hours, which is what should count I guess). So how do you think they would react if you gave them this piece of news?

Have you applied for a connection to BT under the USO?

No I just learnt of it now from your posts.

But I guess they will just give me one of those 4G routers and say that the problem has been dealt with?

Even though I cannot reliably get speeds of what they promise (15-30 Mbps). Also those connections have higher latency than FTTP or FTTC.

This BT link will let you know if they would give you a 4G router or not

https://www.bt.com/broadband/USO

Edit: sorry should have said you need to pop in a postcode and select an address

Edited by deleted (Fri 19-Aug-22 15:06:10)

It says they would. But what if you could them show results that you do not get speeds of 10 Mpbs DL on average?

Edited by lo22 (Fri 19-Aug-22 15:07:42)

In reply to a post by lo22:

It says they would. But what if you could them show results that you do not get speeds of 10 Mpbs DL on average?

I believe they only use EE for their 4G service so you could try calling and see what they say (if you can't get 10Mbps on a fixed or mobile connection), they may say they would install an antenna and that would solve it but not sure what happens if after all that you still can't get over 10Mbps and 1Mbps upload as that is also part of the USO I believe.

Hi,

This is also my thinking, exactly. I am pretty sure they would do quite a lot to try and avoid installing FTTP. It might be worth a shot though?

Do you think it would be possible to keep the ADSL connection as it has lower latency as therefore is better for gaming I believe.