FTTP Availability

With a lot of work on overhead fibre by Openreach and their contractors on our road recently, and with the suggestion by the OR Engineer who was testing the CBTs that the service would be live soon, I have been keeping a watchful eye on the checkers.

Last week Wednesday 5th July still no FTTP availability on the checkers, then on Monday 10th I received a letter to "The Occupier" from Vodafone advising that FTTP was available.

Checked again and sure enough FTTP available at our address. I put an order in with A&A with my choice date of 25th July. Shortly afterwards A&A contact me to say that now the earliest Openreach can install is 31st July, which fits in fine with my plans.

Anyway, on Thursday 13th notice activity a couple of doors away and a new dropwire being fitted.

Today, Saturday 15th, in the post was a letter from BT offering FTTP and then a little later on an OR van and a cherry picker parks outside our house. Ah, I thought, perhaps a visit to survey the job. Turned out that they had come to fix a fibre fault next door! That's strange I said, they don't have fibre. The OR Engineer looked up noticed the lack of fibre and said that it looked like someone had signed off the installation job! Anyway, an hour later they had finished and gone.

So it seems to beg the question of whether Openreach give advance FTTP notification to selected ISPs? My next door neighbour is with Sky, the one two doors away I don't know.

Cheers!

No preferential treatment.

Sky use a service called ‘build to the wall’ . Openreach, upon an order from Sky, provide lit fibre to a CSP at the given premises. Sky’s own installers come later for the fit to the ONT. (and router presumably)

Perhaps the timing relies on the ISP having the relevant network connections in place at the head-end.

Which online checker were you using? The BT Wholesale checker is only for BT Wholesale providers.

Openreach have their own checker. When Openreach mark FTTP as live, it's live. The next stage is providers need to update their own databases and in some cases they may need to install cablelinks or additional backhaul.

It could well be that Sky were ready immediately after Openreach marked the area as live but BT Wholesale were not.

Openreach don't notify some providers ahead of others, but they are often ready at different times for various reasons.

I tried the BT Wholesale checker but since my phone number is VoIP and my A&A VDSL is via SoGEA and I don't know my Access Line ID or UPRN which were their other options, I used the checker on Andrews & Arnold's website. I believe that one checks with Talk Talk Wholesale as well.

Cheers!

If it helps, this site lets you lookup UPRNs

https://www.findmyaddress.co.uk/

Best to use the address based option on the checker. Just need address & postcode.