FTTP availability by exchange question.

If I search https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/exchanges/find

CB8 8YW - Returns a result of Wickhambrook (EAWKB)
CB8 8YR - Also returns a result of Wickhambrook (EAWKB)

The strange thing is, the first search, CB8 8YW says that EAWKB does not have Openreach FTTP enabled, however it is shown as enabled for CB8 8YR.

Anyone know why is this the case?

Not every postcode in an exchange serving area will have native FTTP enabled.

Case in point:
- my address FTTP-enabled
- immediate next door neighbours 50 metres away on a different postcode FTTP-enabled (courtesy of my serving CBT for their address)
- neighbours 50m further along (same postcode as immediate neighbours) not FTTP enabled - too far from serving CBT.

All served by the same FTTP head-end and local copper exchanges. Just the nature of the beast.

Most granular check is the Openreach or BT Wholesale address based checkers.

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 27-Nov-22 17:55:38)

As far as I can tell, both postcodes are served by the same exchange, cabinet and overhead fibre (Which passes my house, before continuing on to the FTTP postcode).
It appears that Openreach / BT have decided not to offer FTTP to the properties closer to the cabinet.

Cabinet proximity unfortunately has nothing to do with it. Do you know where’s the nearest / serving CBT for your property?

What do the Openreach and BTW checkers say?

Yes I know the location of our cabinet. The cable runs through ducting across the main road before emerging by the first wooden pole. The line follows the road through our postcode onto the postcode that has FTTP.
The availability checker reports that it is available for them but not us.

A CBT is not a cabinet it is a fibre connection on a pole or underground to supply a number of properties.

Nope. Not cabinet. I repeat not cabinet 😅

CBT = connectorised block terminal. One of these ether on the serving pole near your house or in footway

For a village of that size it seems likely that the FTTP is from a government sponsored programme and is to ensure everyone can get above 24 or 30 Mb/s.

Those close enough to the cabinet if it's FTTC enabled already get that.

You're lucky to even have FTTP installed at your exchange.

I'm currently connected to the Kelvedon exchange with over 2200 residential premises, and the only people with FTTP are the new housing estates that have been built within the village (there have been over 300 premises approved at both ends of the exchange location), so it's probably providing to over 2500 premises now.

BT refuse to offer FTTP to the rest of the customers due to the fact they can't source the engineers to carry out the civils work (that's what the OR engineers locally have said).

In reply to a post by Bryer:

BT refuse to offer FTTP to the rest of the customers due to the fact they can't source the engineers to carry out the civils work (that's what the OR engineers locally have said).

Strange way of putting it. They have the engineers to do the work of course but they're working elsewhere, with Kelvedon not in the first third of the UK Openreach build to.

And when you do get FTTP, you're likely to be served by a different exchange.

FTTP is served by a smaller number of "head-end" exchanges, each of which covers a larger footprint. I think only about 1 in 6 exchanges are head-end exchanges.

I don't know whether Kelvedon is a head-end exchange or not, but the way to find out is to do a BTW availability check for some property which has *only* FTTP available (maybe the new builds fall into this category), and see what exchange the checker says it is served from.

This is the reason why FTTP does not involve FTTC cabinets: it's a completely separate network. When copper finally goes, the local exchanges and the cabinets will go too.

Are you sure? Checking an example postcode for one of the new estates (CO5 9GB) shows these sites to be OFNL and not Openreach.

I apologise for my ignorance on that one.
The CBT is mounted on the last pole in my postcode.

All the spine work for OFNL was carried out by Openreach and uses Openreach ducts back to the Kelvedon exchange.

Nope but Coggeshall, Witham and Tiptree have already started their Openreach roll outs.

In reply to a post by Thumper:

I apologise for my ignorance on that one.
The CBT is mounted on the last pole in my postcode.

Had a quick look on Google Maps and can see where you mean. Woodcote in CB8 8YW can order, but no other properties in that postcode can. It's right on the border of the FTTP build in CB8 8YR

However as said earlier, it's normal for an FTTP build to have to stop at some point.

As @XGS_Is_On quite rightly noted the properties that had FTTP installed in 8YR look to have pretty poor FTTC speeds on the checker - so that the very likely reason they have received an FTTP upgrade and its not been extended further towards the centre of the village - well at this point in time, as part of a commercial build.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by Thumper:

I apologise for my ignorance on that one.
The CBT is mounted on the last pole in my postcode.

Had a quick look on Google Maps and can see where you mean. Woodcote in CB8 8YW can order, but no other properties in that postcode can. It's right on the border of the FTTP build in CB8 8YR

However as said earlier, it's normal for an FTTP build to have to stop at some point.

As @XGS_Is_On quite rightly noted the properties that had FTTP installed in 8YR look to have pretty poor FTTC speeds on the checker - so that the very likely reason they have received an FTTP upgrade and its not been extended further towards the centre of the village - well at this point in time, as part of a commercial build.

Openreach appear to be hiding the presence of FTTP in this area, not even FTTPoD

Not sure if this is relevant.
We have FTTP, this was installed via a BDUK contract, the fibre follows the same ducts as the copper from the cabinet, it goes past 3/4 of the houses in village before the first house to get FTTP, all those houses it passes show FTTPoD as available, but then lower down it shows this.

FTTP is not available.

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

FoD was definitely there when I checked a random sample in 8YW

In reply to a post by Bryer:

All the spine work for OFNL was carried out by Openreach and uses Openreach ducts back to the Kelvedon exchange.

Almost certainly PIA. OFNL's fibre going via Openreach's duct to an OLT in Kelvedon exchange. Presumably OFNL decided it worked out cheaper to pay Openreach to do it rather than get their own engineers on site to prove and unblock ducts then cable.

All their recent build that I've seen has used PIA back to an OLT in an exchange.

The alternative is that they paid all those costs to lease a gigabit or few from Openreach via a leased line which they'd be paying a ton for as they're using it for FTTP backhaul, and use OLTs at the estates in powered cabinets or rooms which would be insanity if done after PIA became easier.

Either way only a little help to you. Proved out some ducts. Will make life easier for an altnet, too. The fibre in the ground if it belongs to Openreach won't be much good for FTTP: not enough of it, in the wrong place via the wrong infrastructure.

EDIT: This is you, isn't it? https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/11/sheffi...

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Tue 29-Nov-22 01:18:41)

In reply to a post by burble:

Not sure if this is relevant.
We have FTTP, this was installed via a BDUK contract, the fibre follows the same ducts as the copper from the cabinet, it goes past 3/4 of the houses in village before the first house to get FTTP, all those houses it passes show FTTPoD as available, but then lower down it shows this.

FTTP is not available.

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

Fibre Priority programme simply means the exchange being part of the fibre stop sell list.

Most exchanges have "some" FTTP but most of them aren't FTTP Priority exchanges (yet).

Most exchanges have "some" FTTP but most of them aren't FTTP Priority exchanges (yet)

Probably worth noting for folk that out of the 5000+ exchange estate only around 800 or so will be FTTP/TC serving head end exchanges. The bulk of the rest being local copper only exchanges, that will close in the fullness of time

Hence it's worth talking about "exchange areas" rather than "exchanges".

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by burble:

Not sure if this is relevant.
We have FTTP, this was installed via a BDUK contract, the fibre follows the same ducts as the copper from the cabinet, it goes past 3/4 of the houses in village before the first house to get FTTP, all those houses it passes show FTTPoD as available, but then lower down it shows this.

FTTP is not available.

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

Fibre Priority programme simply means the exchange being part of the fibre stop sell list.

Most exchanges have "some" FTTP but most of them aren't FTTP Priority exchanges (yet).

I was confused by the checker saying 'FTTPoD available' then saying 'FTTP not available', I now realise the difference, but looking at Thumper's posts I see that in his case FTTPoD is not available, which would seem odd it the fibre passes his house in a similar way to it passing most of the houses in our village, and the more I think about it a BDUK contract would be my best guess, Thumper hasn't (that I've seen) posted the speeds he gets, if it's 'Superfast' then BDUK would go straight past without provision for them.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Hence it's worth talking about "exchange areas" rather than "exchanges".

Maybe so. But then for absolute clarity you would need to say “fibre serving exchange areas”.

There could otherwise still be confusion with the exchange down the road so to speak, and its ‘exchange serving area’. Semantics perhaps 🤔 😅

When they list the tranches of individual FTTP stop sell exchanges do they list only the head-ends?
Must say I haven't looked at the list in all that much detail.

If they are only listing head-ends then that could cause some confusion.
Most people on a child exchange don't know what their parent (head-end) exchange is.
If they are listing each individual exchange then they have a very long way to go having only listed only around 130 exchanges last time I looked.

Edit: it's all the individual exchanges and not only the head-end exchanges. So when discussing FTTP stop sell/FTTP Priority exchanges then the serving head-end is somewhat irrelevant.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 30-Nov-22 22:17:54)

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by burble:

Not sure if this is relevant.
We have FTTP, this was installed via a BDUK contract, the fibre follows the same ducts as the copper from the cabinet, it goes past 3/4 of the houses in village before the first house to get FTTP, all those houses it passes show FTTPoD as available, but then lower down it shows this.

... nested quotes trimmed ...

Fibre Priority programme simply means the exchange being part of the fibre stop sell list.

Most exchanges have "some" FTTP but most of them aren't FTTP Priority exchanges (yet).

I was confused by the checker saying 'FTTPoD available' then saying 'FTTP not available', I now realise the difference, but looking at Thumper's posts I see that in his case FTTPoD is not available, which would seem odd it the fibre passes his house in a similar way to it passing most of the houses in our village, and the more I think about it a BDUK contract would be my best guess, Thumper hasn't (that I've seen) posted the speeds he gets, if it's 'Superfast' then BDUK would go straight past without provision for them.

Which properties did you look at? All the ones I checked were showing FoD, as you’d expect if you had FTTC already.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

Fibre Priority programme simply means the exchange being part of the fibre stop sell list.

Most exchanges have "some" FTTP but most of them aren't FTTP Priority exchanges (yet).

I was confused by the checker saying 'FTTPoD available' then saying 'FTTP not available', I now realise the difference, but looking at Thumper's posts I see that in his case FTTPoD is not available, which would seem odd it the fibre passes his house in a similar way to it passing most of the houses in our village, and the more I think about it a BDUK contract would be my best guess, Thumper hasn't (that I've seen) posted the speeds he gets, if it's 'Superfast' then BDUK would go straight past without provision for them.

Which properties did you look at? All the ones I checked were showing FoD, as you’d expect if you had FTTC already.

I never checked any postcodes, I went off Thumper's post which said

Openreach appear to be hiding the presence of FTTP in this area, not even FTTPoD

Woodcote has CB8 8YW has FTTP available
The Haven has CB8 8YW has FTTP available
The Old Village Hall CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Holts Mansions CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Bridge House CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Church House CB8 8YW doesn't have FTTP available

These are the houses listed in order from the next postcode coming towards me.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-Nov-22 18:27:28)

In reply to a post by Thumper:

Woodcote has CB8 8YW has FTTP available
The Haven has CB8 8YW has FTTP available
The Old Village Hall CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Holts Mansions CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Bridge House CB8 8YW has FTTP available
Church House CB8 8YW doesn't have FTTP available

These are the houses listed in order from the next postcode coming towards me.

I quick look and they seem to get good speeds on VDSL, so unlikely to be BDUK, so that blows away my theory.

Having a look around on t'internet and am now overloaded with 'facts', it would seem that 8YW possibly meets the criteria to apply for funds from 'Project Gigabit', got this via links from 'Better Broadband for Suffolk' website, that's enough digging for me tonight.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

When they list the tranches of individual FTTP stop sell exchanges do they list only the head-ends?

No, it's local exchange areas.

So when discussing FTTP Priority exchanges (the ADSL/FTTC stop sell) there's not much point talking about the wider exchange area.

It's the Ultrafast coverage on the local exchange that will matter and the status of the head-end should be somewhat irrelevant.

I would love to know how they pick the FTTP Priority exchanges as I know a couple small rural exchanges with almost blanket FTTP coverage (definitely over 75%) that aren't on any of the exchange tranches listed so far.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

I would love to know how they pick the FTTP Priority exchanges as I know a couple small rural exchanges with almost blanket FTTP coverage (definitely over 75%) that aren't on any of the exchange tranches listed so far.

Equally, there are some exchange areas which had less than 1% FTTP coverage when they were added to the stop-sell list, with the stop-sell date less than 1 year in the future - e.g. Burnley.