Options for a newly not-spotted neighbourhood

I don't hold out much hope here, but just in case someone has some wild ideas, I figured it's worth a post!

We live in an 80s build estate, which got FTTC back in 2011, and we're currently getting ~52/12 (so above the MSO). There is conflicting information as to whether we are direct dig or ducted - neighbours claim they have spoken to OR engineers who say it's ducted, but I'm not completely convinced.

I'd rather not give a precise postcode, other than to say our FTTC connection is from Cabinet 20 on exchange STRINGW. Quite happy to fetch any other information that might be of use.

There's a few fibre operators around here, the first of which is (was?) Giganet, who distributed a flyer way back at the beginning of 2022 or so claiming they'd be live by the end of the year - they still haven't activated a single property in our town, though they have dug plenty of holes with their name on them, including one at the bottom of our road. The last time I saw a van in the area would probably have been the middle of last year. Considering their present rejiggle with Cuckoo, I think this might have completely stalled.

Trooli are live in the vast majority of our area, but have our postcode (along with a few others on similar build dates) marked as "no plans" - frustratingly all of our neighbouring properties that aren't on our road can get it. I have contacted them, but they claim that it would not be profitable to fibre us after a survey - citing a lack of infrastructure such as ducting. Grr.

Openreach did have us marked for a rollout (and have for a number of years), and are very active in the area - but it appears that they have, at some point in the last 6 months, revoked their plans for our postcodes. The Project Gigabit review from May now shows us as Gigabit White, along with a few neighbouring postcodes.

Wessex Internet hold the Project Gigabit contract for our area (New Forest), but we are just outside the catchment for the contracted area by roughly 500 metres - I've also been in touch with them who confirm they have no plans to fibre our town.

It is my understanding that, as we're now a Gigabit White postcode with no plans for a fibre deployment whatsoever, we would theoretically be entitled to the voucher scheme, but no such scheme exists in Hampshire now (likely because of the Wessex Internet contract) - and as far as I can ascertain from Hampshire County Council's reports and filings there is no further plan at present for the council to get involved.


As far as I can ascertain, we're a bit stuck at this point, and I can only see the following options:
* Petition OR to re-survey / find out more information about why they've withdrawn the rollout from our roads
* Ask Trooli very, very nicely if they would run a fibre through a neighboring property's garden (which would involve buying said landowner a lot of whiskey) - I think this is probably a longshot all things considered
* Wait for Giganet to golive our area - and presume that they still have plans to fibre our postcode - seems like this is setting up for more disappointment
* Go down the Satellite / Starlink route - strongly not preferred for many reasons, mainly the high latency & cost
* Look into setting up a WISP to service ourselves alongside the ~50 properties that are also stuck - besides the exorbitant setup cost of getting a 10G leased line installed and stress of getting enough properties to commit so that it breaks even, I don't find it unlikely that OR would probably take the opportunity to install GPON at the same time that they're ripping the road up to install said leased line, rendering the entire thing completely pointless / a great way to burn £20k+ in one swoop
* Wait for Hampshire to be included in the voucher scheme once more (potentially once Wessex Internet have fulfilled the contract? who knows)
* Sulk at local MP

Has anyone got any brighter ideas for things to follow up? I'm kind of at the end of where my research has brought me, unless I'm missing some other options that I could prod.

Thanks in advance!

Before I got fibre I was using 4g and was getting a reliable 120mb, you will get a lot more if a 5G mast is close by.

Unfortunately cellular coverage here isn't great, the 4G performance is routinely sub-50mbps (let alone the dreary upload) and the only 5G network is EE who want £50 p/m for 100mbps / <5mbps up - we're also on the edge of a mast so it's not uncommon to fail over to 4G with similar performance to the other networks

The upload & reliability is pretty important to us, it'd save us a fair penny on cloud storage for bulk items, so wireless is an absolute last resort.

Update: Just checked the speed I'm getting on 5G at the moment (with my phone next to an upstairs window), it's 26/8.8 - presumably getting screwed by traffic management

Edited by duckfullstop (Fri 06-Dec-24 16:11:56)

A dedicated 4G router with antenna will get much better speeds than a phone.

1pmobile do unlimited data for £25 a month and use the EE network, but EE may cap the speed, you would have to ask.

Its been 2years since I used it so tech has moved on so worth asking the question on the mobile broadband section of the forum.

At one time I had two 4g routers each pointing at a different mast and aggregated them with a Draytek dual wan router.

The 120mb was from an EE mast 7 miles away..

Have you taken a straw poll of people in your street and assessed their feelings towards telegraph poles? You might be in a better position with Openreach if you can go to them and say that they won't have a fight on their hands if they wanted to do an overhead delivery of FTTP.

I'm a bit surprised that a 1980s build is direct in-ground though, I thought BT moved to ducting a decent number of years before that.

Edited by jpm (Fri 06-Dec-24 18:07:42)

In reply to a post by kommando:

A dedicated 4G router with antenna will get much better speeds than a phone

Only if you can find a Cat 6 or higher router. Most are Cat 4 which don’t do carrier aggregation. Entry level Android phones easily beat most routers for throughput on using the network signal… the ONLY thing routers can do better is attach an external antenna.

If in urban area that MAY not be enough to get higher speed. If rural it CAN be the magic required.

The 4g B818 routers I stopped using 2 years ago were cat19.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

If in urban area that MAY not be enough to get higher speed. If rural it CAN be the magic required.

We're kind of uniquely placed, being both suburban to a medium sized town yet also 200M from a national park / a lot of trees. Means we don't necessarily get the investment for being in a large, densely-populated area, but also get passed up for not being "rural" - same thing happened with the FTTC rollout. Frustratingly, that also likely contributes to our cell network being oversubscribed - planned for being rural, handles (sub)urban traffic levels.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Have you taken a straw poll of people in your street and assessed their feelings towards telegraph poles? You might be in a better position with Openreach if you can go to them and say that they won't have a fight on their hands if they wanted to do an overhead delivery of FTTP.

I'm a bit surprised that a 1980s build is direct in-ground though, I thought BT moved to ducting a decent number of years before that.

This estate is strange in a number of ways (the sewers are collapsing...), but I do concur it's a bit unusual that we're not ducted - and that I'm getting conflicting reports on whether it is or not. Perhaps it's something silly like a blocked duct that nobody wants to bother digging the road up for?

But supposing that there was a consensus for poles (which is probably unlikely, knowing the layout around here...), what would be the best way to reach out to OR? Finding a bit more clarity on exactly what the issue is would probably be a competent next step from that approach of things at least

Edited by duckfullstop (Fri 06-Dec-24 19:48:01)

It’s relatively easy to confirm if an area is fully ducted by Openreach or not , look for the grey plastic of the duct entry / exit ( duct connector 4a ) , the capping 25 and cover 101a ( or a BT66 ) , if these are not visible on the external wall of the properties, opposite the footpaths , then it’s not a ducted area, and 1980’s is the tail end of DIG , early 1990’s was when a fully ducted network was the standard BT ( now Openreach ) method of provision.

Unfortunately your area is going to be in something of a Mexican standof when it comes to Openreach and Alt Nets spending money , extensive ( and expensive) construction will be required to enable a DIG area for FTTP , Alt Nets ( not all , but many ) are only interested in areas where usable Openreach infrastructure exists ( poles , fully ducted areas ) and although they have exclusive access to any infrastructure they do build , spending money on doing this is not currently a priority for these companies wholly dependent on borrowed money with limited income from their customers , Openreach do not have any exclusive access to any infrastructure they build ( including brand new infrastructure ) so are unlikely to build out an area like yours where arguably their direct competitors effectively get ‘more’ benefit from that new infrastructure ( no upfront costs and regulated ( cheap ) rental costs to use it )

In reply to a post by duckfullstop:

* Go down the Satellite / Starlink route - strongly not preferred for many reasons, mainly the high latency & cost

BUT it will give you an immediate solution that works, and no long-term commitment. I think it would be a great way to bridge the gap while you wait for one of the other solutions to come along - which may happen tomorrow, or not for five years. Then you can stop worrying about it, and get on with your life. I believe you can sell the dish when you no longer need it.

If you're using the Internet for web browsing or streaming, or large file uploads and downloads, you shouldn't give a hoot about latency. I regularly use SSH to the West Coast USA, where the latency is over 150ms, and it's quite acceptable. (But if all you want to do is play games, you can stick with your FTTC, and download them overnight)

All the various types of "petitioning" you mention are pretty worthless. Commercial entities make their rollout decisions dependent on their own big-picture ideas of where they can get their best return, and individual requests are just noise at best and an annoyance at worst. Several altnets have ceased expanding completely, concentrating on growing their take-up in existing coverage areas.

Are you in Whitshire, hampshire or dorset ? The New forest boundry is pretty weird at times, it left out Ringwood, a large part of my village is out of the NF area and is part dorset and part hants.

Wessex internet is currently doing sway, ringwood, and Fordingbridge atm..

Edited by Taras (Sat 07-Dec-24 14:38:10)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

It’s relatively easy to confirm if an area is fully ducted by Openreach or not , look for the grey plastic of the duct entry / exit ( duct connector 4a ) , the capping 25 and cover 101a ( or a BT66 ) , if these are not visible on the external wall of the properties, opposite the footpaths , then it’s not a ducted area, and 1980’s is the tail end of DIG , early 1990’s was when a fully ducted network was the standard BT ( now Openreach ) method of provision.

If the outer plastic sheathes are the litmus test of ducting, then we're definitely not ducted. Grr.

Equally however, there are smaller estates than ours that also aren't ducted that are live on OR. Who knows.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by duckfullstop:

* Go down the Satellite / Starlink route - strongly not preferred for many reasons, mainly the high latency & cost

BUT it will give you an immediate solution that works, and no long-term commitment. I think it would be a great way to bridge the gap while you wait for one of the other solutions to come along - which may happen tomorrow, or not for five years. Then you can stop worrying about it, and get on with your life. I believe you can sell the dish when you no longer need it.

If you're using the Internet for web browsing or streaming, or large file uploads and downloads, you shouldn't give a hoot about latency. I regularly use SSH to the West Coast USA, where the latency is over 150ms, and it's quite acceptable. (But if all you want to do is play games, you can stick with your FTTC, and download them overnight)

Bit of everything, really - hosting, large downloads (and uploads), plus just the nerd factor. Trying to do SFTP uploads on 50mbps when someone else is watching 4K Netflix becomes a bit of a fine art of tuning the smart queues to avoid bufferbloat, and inevitably leads to degraded service for at least someone.
Starlink, while viable, is expensive for what we'd be getting compared to our present service - if we were only getting like 15mbps or something then I'd be more strongly considering it, but >twice the price for double the down (and goodness knows what up) and throwing the idea of low latency out the window doesn't seem like an attractive tradeoff.
I'd also really, really prefer to avoid giving Musk more money.

In reply to a post by Taras:

Are you in Whitshire, hampshire or dorset ? The New forest boundry is pretty weird at times, it left out Ringwood, a large part of my village is out of the NF area and is part dorset and part hants.

Wessex internet is currently doing sway, ringwood, and Fordingbridge atm..

Ringwood, bordering the NF National Park. There's some recent works by Wessex to our south, but as far as I can ascertain that's just to enable their deployments in the National Park (which they're contracted to do under Project Gigabit).

Edited by duckfullstop (Sun 08-Dec-24 15:14:36)

yeah WI have done some work in the high street in Ringwood and southampton road, which was odd. Check with Cityfibre as they have contract with Project Gigabit for hampshire.

Also to note, OR has not finished in Ringwood.

In reply to a post by Taras:

yeah WI have done some work in the high street in Ringwood and southampton road, which was odd. Check with Cityfibre as they have contract with Project Gigabit for hampshire.

Can only presume that it's for their backbone infrastructure (possibly to connect up with their existing deployments in East Dorset), they seem pretty adamant that they're only doing what they're contracted for. Cityfibre are just operating in North / East Hampshire as far as I'm aware - though it might be that they take the Voucher Scheme if that relaunches.

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also to note, OR has not finished in Ringwood.

Indeed, but the fact they've reverted our status from "planned" to "not planned" implies we're finished (even if they're not)!

Edited by duckfullstop (Mon 09-Dec-24 13:22:11)

In reply to a post by duckfullstop:

Can only presume that it's for their backbone infrastructure (possibly to connect up with their existing deployments in East Dorset), they seem pretty adamant that they're only doing what they're contracted for.

Yes they will only be doing postcodes (even if its only property in that postcode) that are gigabit white. So you might be right about the fibre spine backbone.

In reply to a post by duckfullstop:

Cityfibre are just operating in North / East Hampshire as far as I'm aware - though it might be that they take the Voucher Scheme if that relaunches.

No Cityfibre have won the full hants area except the new forest. WI has the New forest pot! At one state both pots were combined and they then split it. CF seems to be at slower speed at building whilst WI are going too fast and making mistakes..

Weirdly it may be done a exchange area basis too as i've seen WI work done in a Hants area but on a new forest exchange area.

You may need to contact Project gigabit to see what happening as CF may say its not us and WI may say the same too. I would at this stage contact CF.

In reply to a post by duckfullstop:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also to note, OR has not finished in Ringwood.

Indeed, but the fact they've reverted our status from "planned" to "not planned" implies we're finished (even if they're not)!

Ours have been pushed back and forth multiple times - Hants CC stated to me back in 2017ish that we would get fttp in the summer of 2018. Thankfully after some pushing my me it when into build stage in jan of this year.