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There seem to have been a number of posts recently about planned FTTP installations that have been cancelled for various reasons (or excuses). For example here, here, here, here, and here.
Is this just coincidence, or is the steam starting to go out of the great national FTTP effort? Maybe the general economic situation means that the take-up rate is lower than some providers had hoped for, and they are having to scale back their ambitions?
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Could be we are just coming to the end of the financial year.
Edited by deleted (Fri 31-Mar-23 12:02:30)
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It was always going to slow down as the coverage % grew, the easier stuff gets done first. Possibly some of the planned deployments relied on money that was cheaper than it is currently.
What's probably frustrating for the affected residents is the lack of transparency, the reasons *why* they may have been de-scoped, and the opportunity to have a discussion about the cost implications of this with the ability for the affected community to perhaps commit to slightly higher monthly costs for a few years in exchange for the build going ahead - these are areas where you'd expect the smaller size of the altnets to enable them to be a bit more agile.
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What's probably frustrating for the affected residents is the lack of transparency, the reasons *why* they may have been de-scoped It would be a fools game to explain to residents why they have be de-scoped as that would give them a bigger range of reasons to complain. Deploying full fibre infrastructure to an area is a decision for the company providing the infrastructure as they are the ones paying for it. If the residents want a say then there are other payment avenues for them to pursue.
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Openreach have already announced some months ago they were changing their strategy, so whats happening now isnt unexpected at least for OR.
CF also have had to get some new financing and lay staff off.
Telco projects do tend to get cut back late on.
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What's probably frustrating for the affected residents is the lack of transparency, the reasons *why* they may have been de-scoped It would be a fools game to explain to residents why they have be de-scoped as that would give them a bigger range of reasons to complain. Deploying full fibre infrastructure to an area is a decision for the company providing the infrastructure as they are the ones paying for it. If the residents want a say then there are other payment avenues for them to pursue.
Ultimately the customers pay for it long term via means of paying for the service.
I do think there needs to be transparency, as community funding projects rely on knowing this type of information as well as any government schemes to plug the gaps.
In some cases it might be obvious, houses in middle of nowhere 100 miles from network, but in some other cases the reasons ideally could be disclosed, such as a few houses been left out on a street, dense city areas not been part of rollout, that sort of thing.
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Even if disclosure were to become the norm it would still be likely to suffer from obfuscation and misinformation as no business is going to tell people that its plans are on hold because it is running out of money.
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There seem to have been a number of posts recently about planned FTTP installations that have been cancelled for various reasons (or excuses). For example here, here, here, here, and here.
Is this just coincidence, or is the steam starting to go out of the great national FTTP effort? Maybe the general economic situation means that the take-up rate is lower than some providers had hoped for, and they are having to scale back their ambitions?
The only metric I pay any attention to are the Openreach KPI figures published in the BT Group quarterly report - (1) because they are the largest of any network (2) their rollout is truly nationwide (3) the snapshots are regular and trending is fairly clear (4) they are the bar that others set themselves to (whether they admit it publicly or not)
The trouble with quoting isolated, anecdotal examples from the smaller AltNets, like Swish, is that they are relatively comparatively tiny compared to the overall Openreach FTTP rollout and secondly they only regional rather than national.
You'll get a very distorted and mixed view with the latter.
Edit:
Snapshot of Openreach Operational KPI's up to and including FY23 Q3
Edited by Pheasant (Sat 01-Apr-23 18:30:41)
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The only metric I pay any attention to are the Openreach KPI figures published in the BT Group quarterly report - (1) because they are the largest of any network (2) their rollout is truly nationwide (3) the snapshots are regular and trending is fairly clear (4) they are the bar that others set themselves to (whether they admit it publicly or not)
The trouble with quoting isolated, anecdotal examples from the smaller AltNets, like Swish, is that they are relatively comparatively tiny compared to the overall Openreach FTTP rollout and secondly they only regional rather than national.
You'll get a very distorted and mixed view with the latter.
What He Said™.
If anything, the Openreach rollout is picking up speed. Anecdotes about individual properties don't make a case, nor do the troubles of tiny individual altnets.
However, you can be sure that more of these are going to be getting into trouble over the next few months, with the combination of high interest rates, over-optimistic business plans, squeezed household finances and general consumer disinterest.
They will have to cut retail prices to the bone to tempt sufficient numbers away from copper-based services. The majority don't care about speed - they just want it as cheap as possible.
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The only metric I pay any attention to are the Openreach KPI figures published in the BT Group quarterly report - (1) because they are the largest of any network (2) their rollout is truly nationwide (3) the snapshots are regular and trending is fairly clear (4) they are the bar that others set themselves to (whether they admit it publicly or not)
The trouble with quoting isolated, anecdotal examples from the smaller AltNets, like Swish, is that they are relatively comparatively tiny compared to the overall Openreach FTTP rollout and secondly they only regional rather than national.
You'll get a very distorted and mixed view with the latter.
What He Said™.
If anything, the Openreach rollout is picking up speed. Anecdotes about individual properties don't make a case, nor do the troubles of tiny individual altnets.
However, you can be sure that more of these are going to be getting into trouble over the next few months, with the combination of high interest rates, over-optimistic business plans, squeezed household finances and general consumer disinterest.
They will have to cut retail prices to the bone to tempt sufficient numbers away from copper-based services. The majority don't care about speed - they just want it as cheap as possible.
What He Said™ x 2 🤣
Bumpy road ahead. Buckle up. 😅
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