FTTPoD - 5 years on!

While reading a thread on here recently, I was reminded that it's been over 5 years since placing my FTTPoD order with Cerberus. (My original username now shows as "deleted", I think because it was registered to my old Demon address which no longer exists - I'm still sore at Vodafone for that, I'd had it for 18 years and they nuked it.)

Anyway - I was one of the lucky ones with pricing, being quoted a five figure sum but ending up with something around £3,600. It was a gamble, but I took it...

...and five and a half years later, having had my connection live for the past 4, it's as good as ever. The 300Mbps connection was upgraded to 900Mbps, and I've switched to native FTTP (as I'm well outside the contract period - this halved the monthly fee!)

I've had several spam flyers in the letterbox over the past year, mostly from Sky, informing me that it's great news - I can get full fibre! I suspect my neighbours have had the same, and indeed Openreach have hooked up a pole in the neighbouring street - it still feeds off the CBT installed on the pole over the road. Talking of which, that pole is now very busy, with most of the 12 ports now in use. At the time of ordering I was given a discount based on 7 properties passed, but a quick check shows more than that are now connected!

The only thing that's gone wrong was recently, when I finally ditched the FTTC backup line which I'd kept - it was with Merula. They removed it a couple of weeks ago and it seems while fiddling around my FTTP connection was damaged - as the dreaded LOS light lit up on the fibre ONT. Cerberus were a bit puzzled and this was where it went wonky: I booked a day off work, then sat indoors only to find the engineer had been sent to a different county! Another day of leave booked and this time the engineer came (apologising for being 15 minutes late) and amongst other things I now have a new CSP outside. He said he'd never seen fibre run directly through the wall and terminated the way mine was... it was so old! It's only four years old, and it seems Openreach have been recruiting lots of new engineers in recent years.

The upshot is that my copper line is now disconnected entirely (which has knocked out the seldom-used landline), but I've received an email from BT saying that as I no longer have broadband I can have £14 a month off my bill. I think I'll take the money off rather than having a working copper line...

All in all, it's been well worth it. It was a gamble to pay so much with no firm date for "proper" FTTP in mind, but it turns out I won the gamble - just recently Openreach's rollout data has gone from 2024 to "by 2026", with "no firm date" set. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath waiting, and at the very worst I'll have had 5 years of something I'd otherwise not been able to have.

(And as for the neighbours - I don't think most realise just how lucky they are!)

Dare I ask what your old username was back then ?

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

Still none the wiser 🤷‍♂️

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

I think it's now (if it wasn't before) soooooo incredibly eye wateringly expensive that most folks don't bother. That and the commercial rollout is steaming along at pace.

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 01-Oct-23 20:51:31)

Hi Retron Mk1 or is that Mk2...I do remember your posts 😎👍 Welcome back!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

I think it's now (if it wasn't before) soooooo incredibly eye wateringly expensive that most folks don't bother. That and the commercial rollout is steaming along at pace.

Quite - I was quoted well into 6 figures.

Luckily another full fibre provider is now building - and OR are also building my exchange out - so it may well be a case of waiting for buses...

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

I was quoted well into 6 figures.

So over £100,000? bloody hell!!!!

I had a blank desktop quote - which was funny..

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

I was quoted well into 6 figures.

So over £100,000? bloody hell!!!!

Closer to £150K than 100!

Did it come with a house? 😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Did it come with a house? 😂

That was my solution to getting FTTP

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Did it come with a house? 😂

That was my solution to getting FTTP

In some parts of the UK thats a fair few houses 😂

Just a quick update - all 12 ports are now filled on the CBT on the pole opposite my house, with fibre cable being run to several other poles along my road (and the neighbouring one).

Checking for availability for one of my neighbours now says "Waiting List", and my own connection on the BT chceker now says:

"Our records show the following FTTP network service information for these premises:-Single Dwelling Unit Residential OH Feed with no anticipated issues.

ONT exists with active service. No spare ports are available. A new ONT may be ordered and will be placed in Waiters list until the network is ready."

I suspect that's the first full FTTPoD connection to be reported here! I'll be very interested to see what happens next, as the BT website would still happily take orders for my neighbours... will they add extra capacity, bearing in mind that's the one and only CBT for a mile or so, or will they decline orders?

I'll keep an eye on things and no doubt will find out in due course!

(The plans for my area used to say 2026 in terms of rollout, and I can't find a current forecast, so they won't be enabling the wider area for some time yet.)

It's good some other neighbours are getting the benefit.

In my case four other properties were enabled (over 3 years ago), a couple of neighbours are more elderly so I never pushed it really because if I do that and they have issues (they use their landlines a lot) with a VoIP service I would end up sorting it out, and they really don't do much on the Internet anyway. Another neighbour told me they already had fibre, I tried to explain the differences but they didn't believe me when I said it was not actually fibre they had, but of course its on their bills as fibre and sold as fibre, so I gave up on that.

I kind of expected they would move over to FTTP over the years as they renewed contracts or shopped for cheaper packages, but that hasn't been the case to date, so its just been for me.

Edited by E300 (Wed 28-Feb-24 15:47:57)

In reply to a post by E300:

I kind of expected they would move over to FTTP over the years as they renewed contracts or shopped for cheaper packages, but that hasn't been the case to date, so its just been for me.

It's interesting to see how it's gone - my area also has plenty of retired folks (mostly bungalows), with a few younger families mixed in. It's been a pretty even split in terms of uptake, some of those who I thought would jump at it haven't, and vice-versa.

The other thing that happened is that over the past couple of years the checker has shown greater availability - originally it was just people connected to the pole with the CBT, but the range now goes to the other end of the road (2 further poles away), and to the neighbouring road (with cables now running over the T junction to another pole). I guess that there's a set distance that fibre can be run from a CBT, and even if it has to go via other poles they'll still do it! I also suspect those folks in the next road are blissfully unaware of why they could suddenly order FTTP...

It also shows how much pent-up demand there is. Bearing in mind the expensive stuff (laying a mile of fibre, sorting out ducts along the main road and so forth) has been done already via my order, I'd have thought it'd have pushed my area further up the totem pole in terms of rollout... but it's not to be.