Another “my neighbour can get fibre” query

The village I live in mostly has full fibre, iirc rolled out by Openreach under a community voucher scheme in 2021. My home is one of a handful in the village that were omitted from scope as we are just over the border into an area served by a different exchange from the rest. The result is that of the 19 properties in my postcode, mine is the only one with no fibre access. So…

- I raised a “my neighbour can get fibre but I can’t” query with Openreach, but all I got was a generic “we don't have any plans to upgrade your area” response and the suggestion that I should pursue a FTTP on demand solution.

- I am waiting on a fibre on demand quote from one supplier but I have little hope this will lead to an affordable solution. It’s a scattered village and with most of it already covered, finding neighbours to share the cost probably isn’t an option.

- I tried the USO route but the immediate response was “You can already get speeds of 10Mb or more” which is interesting because I absolutely cannot (6-7 Mbps from FTTC at best).

- The village that hosts the exchange I am connected to has full fibre via a commercial altnet, but that rollout stopped about 2km short of my property.

- The early coverage data I saw for the local authority Project Gigabit rollout due to start next year suggests I am also out of scope for that, but once they are through the survey / planning stage I’ll have a better idea. In any event, I’d guess realisticaly it’ll be several years before they’ll look at an isolated property like mine, if they ever do.

- I am doubtful Starlink would be a good option because nowhere in my garden has an unobstructed view of the sky due to the number of tall mature trees. My area is covered by a TPO so cutting them down wouldn’t be an option even if I were minded to do so.

- In theory my area is covered by an older WiMax service (deployed ca. 2007 ?) which I looked into some time ago, but iirc the issue is that my property is in a dip with no line of sight to a mast.

- There is no 5G coverage here and while 4G works up to a point, download speeds are erratic and reliability isn’t great. I use it for some devices to take the pressure off the FTTC connection, but it’s not an entirely satisfactory solution on its own.

The reality of rural broadband Short of selling up and moving, are there any other avenues I could pursue to get fibre rolled out here within a reasonable timeframe ?

Thanks.

You do seem to be knackered at every turn, having all your postcode with FTTP and you not does limit your options, someone may suggest getting an extra FTTP service at one of your neighbours properties and then getting some line of sight equipment to hook you up to it.

Edited by PCJM40 (Fri 12-Apr-24 16:58:03)

Presumably your response to the USO query was via their website, try phoning them and pushing back when they tell you that you can get over 10Mbps, escalate as a complaint if necessary, see what happens.

Hi,

I have one question: What you refer to exchanges and an exchange boundary, are you talking about the exchanges which supply fibre (FTTP and FTTC, aka "head end" exchanges), or are you talking about your local copper exchange? The difference might be important as to how readily Openreach would consider extending the fibre already in the village to your property. If you are at a boundary between head-end exchanges then you will probably have more of a challenge than otherwise.

I would agree that going back to those who are claiming that you already have service that meets the USO is a good idea - they either know something you don't, or more likely, are wrong and need to change their point of view.

Thanks - the land rises in the direction of the village so I can’t physically see any of the houses that have fibre, although they are only a few hundred yards away. The couple of houses I can see from here are in the same situation as me, so unfortunately some sort of private wireless link isn’t going to work in this case.

The exchanges I’m referring to are the local copper ones. I think the only relevance here is that the coverage area of the exchange (Pluckley) that serves most of the village was used to scope the community voucher deployment. I’m just into the area covered by the adjoining one (Charing). Where the village gets its fibre feed from I don’t know.

In terms of USO, I haven’t progressed past the web site so far. Two possible reasons I can think of why it may be saying no - according to the BT DSL checker, my estimated VDSL “high” sync speed is stated as 11.8 Mbps. But I’ve never seen this in the 8 years I’ve had the service… I’m usually syncing at around 8 meg, sometimes less. Other possible reason I guess could be a false flag because of the other properties in my postcode. I’ll give them a call after the weekend and see what I can find out.

sign up on the front page of tbb, and log your speeds over several days, and different times in the day

also look at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gigabit-b...

you may have recourse that way - that route would need 2 properties at a minium and about 2 years wait.

You may be USO compliant from a mobile network, so it could be irrelevant if >10Mb isn’t available from your copper pair service.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

You may be USO compliant from a mobile network, so it could be irrelevant if >10Mb isn’t available from your copper pair service.

True and easily forgotten! That said with starlink and the like, doesn't it make USO irrelevant (in general not the op's case as he's tree los issues)

The USO has a cost element to it, which Starlink doesn't meet as all their plans are more than £56.20/month.

I also don't like the idea that the solution to not having FTTP to a village that is on the mains electricity and water networks is to burn 150W 24x7 a day connecting to a satellite, it's too much like giving up.

Edited by jpm (Sat 13-Apr-24 12:24:30)

I think it’s borderline in my case, depending on exactly how they apply the >10Mbps criterion. Will check with the USO team.