An unexpected Christmas present from Openreach

Canonbury, London. A month or two ago I noticed on the BT wholesale checker that FTTPoD had suddenly become available for our property. We have only ever had available an EO copper service from Openreach and a pretty pathetic sub 20 Mbps ADSL2 service. We were not in any of their FTTP build plans until at least 2025...

So for shiz and giggles, on 8 November I went through Cerberus for a desktop quote for FTTPoD, not expecting to hear back for another month or so and probably with an astronomic build figure. But I thought nothing ventured etc.

Separately Hyperoptic had notified us, possibly around 6 months ago, that they were now 'available' and so I had arranged for them to put in a service. They were here on the 12th doing a pre-install site survey / recc'y. When they had the footway chamber open, there had been an Openreach CBT installed, possibly some time in the last few months. Apparently CBTs had been installed in chambers along the entire street, according to the Hyper guys who had been trying to pull their fibre in.

A week or so later, on the 20th I had noticed an article and related thread over at ISPreview that our area was spelled as as one the London areas currently in FTTP build, as noted in their Dec 2024 UK FTTP Broadband Build Plan.

Interestingly on the same day I received back that desktop FTTPoD quote from Cerberus - and predictably it was, staggering, at a mere £9,900 - but even more intriguingly the premises passed figure was a very high 24. Now of course I knew from first hand evidence and their own published plan, that they ALREADY have built here anyway! So something perhaps is not quite right / healthy in Openreach database-land me thought.

Anyway a few more searches on the BT Wholesale Checker, revealed that there was definitely no native FTTP available at our address (yet anyway!). However a few surrounding searches revealed that our neighbours two house away, actually *did* have FTTP available to order.

OK too much - there was definitely an OR database delay / muddle up going on here. So dutifully filled out the Availability Checker form yesterday. Having received the standard 'thanks for your enquiry' email, I did not expect *any* real reply for at least a few weeks...

Imagine my surprise when an email arrived just after 1pm today, Christams Day, with the following update from Fibre Customer Service at Openreach:

"Hello Sean,

Thanks for your recent enquiry.

I have looked into this, and the fibre network has been built in your area but there is an error in our records which is preventing you from placing an order. I’m now in the process of correcting this for you.

I need to associate your address to the nearby fibre equipment. It will take us about a week to complete this and you should then be able to place an order. I will update you as soon as our systems reflect this.

I’ve got all of your details, so shouldn’t need anything else before coming back to you. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Kind regards

Divya Divya
Fibre enquiries
Infrastructure solutions customer service
Openreach

Web: openreach.co.uk"

Some six hours later and we now have Openreach FTTP available to order, according to the BT Checker!

So there you have it. An unexpected Christmas pressie from Opnreach 😂

Merry Christmas to all 🎄🎅

A Christmas miracle indeed … you can donate the saved £9000 to the engineers benevolent fund now.

Hope it all goes smoothly from here.

Haha 😜 once I’d laid eyes on that CBT, I thought….surely they’ll can the desk FoD quote… who could have the front to quote £10K for a drop cable! 😅 Let’s just give em the benefit of the doubt.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

A Christmas miracle indeed … you can donate the saved £9000 to the engineers benevolent fund now.

Hope it all goes smoothly from here.

Hampshire Branch?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Haha 😜 once I’d laid eyes on that CBT, I thought….surely they’ll can the desk FoD quote… who could have the front to quote £10K for a drop cable! 😅 Let’s just give em the benefit of the doubt.

Well that was a good prezzie.
I wonder how much it costs for a 'simple' FTTPoD, people down the road from us have a FTTPoD service on a pole one side and BDUK installed FTTP on pole other side, but their pole only has copper.

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

A Christmas miracle indeed … you can donate the saved £9000 to the engineers benevolent fund now.

Hope it all goes smoothly from here.

Hampshire Branch?

Hampshire ? Pah … leafy Surrey more like. 😄

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Haha 😜 once I’d laid eyes on that CBT, I thought….surely they’ll can the desk FoD quote… who could have the front to quote £10K for a drop cable! 😅 Let’s just give em the benefit of the doubt.

Well that was a good prezzie.
I wonder how much it costs for a 'simple' FTTPoD, people down the road from us have a FTTPoD service on a pole one side and BDUK installed FTTP on pole other side, but their pole only has copper.

I think the days of 'simple' and cheap' FTTPoD have long gone. At one point Openreach were openly going to withdraw it completely, concentrating their efforts on normal commercial builds etc. But they relented and kept it.

But realistically it's now a 'trophy' service. For some time even the simplest/cheapest/easiest FoD quotes have had a starting off price of over £8K. It was possible 5 years ago to get quotes under £3K. I'm not sure if @candlerb is still keeping his google spreadsheet of costs going...but there was good selection of quotes there for info.

Back in the 'heyday' of FTTPoD (i.e. a year or two prior to the pandemic) we had done an FTTPoD install in rural Suffolk (September 2018) and we came in at £6450+VAT. There was a generous £3000 DCMS voucher available and we ran it all through the business at the time. So our net cost was £3450 - which we amortised easily over the next 5 years.

There's no way I would do it now given the state of regular Openreach FTTP build + the sheer cost of doing it and virtually no workable cost reduction incentives (unless you want to beg and plead with your neighbours, no thanks) like we had back in the day. The payback would be severely in the negative.

Out of curiosity, I checked up the differance between installing FTTP at one of our other properties and at the property down the road from the house I'm in ATM.
At our other property, the nearest two poles don't have any CBT's, but it is listed as a 1 stage install, the property down the road has a pole with CBT's much closer to it, but isn't listed as having FTTP available. There may be other constraints, but it's not obvious to me what they might be.

Completed this?

https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-avai...

We only ever speak to them when they are walking their dog, next time I'll mention the Openreach query form.

It's worth doing, if only to rule out any database anomalies / NAD associations updates that may have failed to be made.

Get them to choose "I cannot get fibre but my neighbours can" in the tell us what your fibre enquiry is about drop-down list.

The thing is though, as far as I could remember I have always seen the checker show https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/...

Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range (Mbps) Availability Date FTTP Install Process
FTTP on Demand 330 50 -- Available

I have not come across a single postcode that wouldn't show FTTP on Demand as available unless it had native FTTP available already. Like in the case where FTTP is available it will show Multi Dwelling Unit Residential.

However, the checker will always show FTTPoD even if the premises is MDU. This means that you can't simply pay the FTTPoD quote and expect to get the service installed in your postcode address because the building management will still refuse to grant wayleave even if you've spent £9K. The building management doesn't care, as they aren't getting that slice of money.

You won't get this special favourtism and the checker showing it as available is useless unless you are living in an individual house.

Secondly, now that most places in London already have either 1 or 2 of several Altnets available from Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, G.Network and now Virgin Media nexfibre no one is going to bother to pay for FTTPoD, it's just not rational and doesn't make much sense.

FTTPoD was originally designed for people who had no hopes of getting any FTTP whether it be from the Altnets or from Openreach. People fork out this money when they see there's no hope of FTTP coming any time soon particularly in rural and remote areas.

I think most people will simply naturally wait for Openreach FTTP and if it's not coming any time soon but have Altnets available then they are ready to forget about Openreach FTTP altogether for the foreseeable future.

We now have Virgin Media nexfibre available since 18th of December not far from Christmas. Management for whatever reason decided to give wayleave for VM via nexfibre after having Community Fibre available. But no Openreach FTTP plan. This took 8 months for it to arrive here after the letter in April of this year. Interestingly, Community Fibre first showed up as live as of 03/12/2022 2 years ago. So both Virgin Media and Community Fibre went live for me in December.

At some stage native Openreach FTTP is bound to be available whether it be another few more years down the line. It makes sense that Openreach won't want to lose customers to the Altnets. The more Altnets that are getting available within a premise the more Openreach will feel concerned about this and it is very likely that Openreach themselves will try to rollout their service without any of us trying to beg them to do so.

I know a few postcodes around here that don't have any Openreach FTTC available and are only on EO Line. I was in the very same position myself until October 2019 when FTTC finally came. But with Altnets coming around I believe Openreach are more likely to upgrade those areas to FTTP. It is amazing what competition can do!

Cheers. None of that really applies to me. Certainly none of the MDU stuff.

Altnets are very much a mixed bag. Both in terms of coverage and long term business evolutionary stability. Community Fibre have been in network build pause for a long while now. They are not actively building and will only extend from their existing coverage for a business connection, which I've separately written about here. Hyper likewise are pretty fussy.

I'm pretty au fait with FoD, so it was never a realistic option here. Elsewhere in another date and time. Yes, as evidenced above. Now, in this place. Definitely no.

FTTC has never come to this little pocket of N1. Not sure why.

It used to be that FTTPoD was only available to properties which were already in FTTC coverage (therefore excluding EO lines) but they changed that a couple of years ago IIRC. But clearly they didn't go round updating the availability checker.

Incidentally, in the long run, Openreach will surely need a process to find properties like yours which have FTTP built but not able to order - otherwise there will be an area where they would like to switch copper off, but according to the database there are some properties which prevent this happening.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I have not come across a single postcode that wouldn't show FTTP on Demand as available unless it had native FTTP available already. Like in the case where FTTP is available it will show Multi Dwelling Unit Residential.

If that's in answer to my post, it's maybe my bad wording, they are listed as able to order FTTPoD, but not WBC FTTP, and as I posted they are closer to a CBT than our other property which is able to order WBC FTTP, and to my uneducated eye it looks a much easier install for them.
Due to the way the fibre was installed it comes past most of the houses in the village, along the same ducts as copper, to our end of village, all of those house are FTTPoD

Don’t worry it was a reply to my OP. Your neighbours situation could be a NAD association issue like ours recently. It’s worth getting them to follow up as noted.

There is some delicious irony in getting an email for a £9900 FTTPoD build quote and precisely a week later getting this email telling you can order FTTP now 😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Don’t worry it was a reply to my OP. Your neighbours situation could be a NAD association issue like ours recently. It’s worth getting them to follow up as noted.

There is some delicious irony in getting an email for a £9900 FTTPoD build quote and precisely a week later getting this email telling you can order FTTP now 😂

At least your desktop quote had an amount, Cerberus gave me a blank one 😂

But the bigger Q is, will you be getting OR light!!!!? 😂

Yes it was a completely accidental “discovery” (obv. not a clue to see from above ground).

I have no idea if this was just dumb luck in this respect, or how widespread or for how long these sorts of NAD association and build anomalies go unnoticed. Presumably they would have caught the error eventually…would however be quite interesting to know how they sweep the database or run QA, especially following fibre builds in an area.

Probably a question for @kitcat if he can answer publicly.

I would imagine they maintain databases of where they've built to and service takeup and a postcode-sized difference between built and service takeup would get noticed. Individual premises probably not, but that's where ISPs are meant to add value and you have to hope that someone operating at A&As level would be able to do a quick check of adjacent properties rather than only selling what the computer says is available.

Oh yeah blank = write any amount you wish. Like a blank cheque. £50 ought to cover it! 😅

You have to pay them £300 before they will fill in the amount on the blank cheque

Inflation: £325+VAT nowadays

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Canonbury, London. A month or two ago I noticed on the BT wholesale checker that FTTPoD had suddenly become available for our property. We have only ever had available an EO copper service from Openreach and a pretty pathetic sub 20 Mbps ADSL2 service. We were not in any of their FTTP build plans until at least 2025...

So for shiz and giggles, on 8 November I went through Cerberus for a desktop quote for FTTPoD, not expecting to hear back for another month or so and probably with an astronomic build figure. But I thought nothing ventured etc.

Separately Hyperoptic had notified us, possibly around 6 months ago, that they were now 'available' and so I had arranged for them to put in a service. They were here on the 12th doing a pre-install site survey / recc'y. When they had the footway chamber open, there had been an Openreach CBT installed, possibly some time in the last few months. Apparently CBTs had been installed in chambers along the entire street, according to the Hyper guys who had been trying to pull their fibre in.

A week or so later, on the 20th I had noticed an article and related thread over at ISPreview that our area was spelled as as one the London areas currently in FTTP build, as noted in their Dec 2024 UK FTTP Broadband Build Plan.

Interestingly on the same day I received back that desktop FTTPoD quote from Cerberus - and predictably it was, staggering, at a mere £9,900 - but even more intriguingly the premises passed figure was a very high 24. Now of course I knew from first hand evidence and their own published plan, that they ALREADY have built here anyway! So something perhaps is not quite right / healthy in Openreach database-land me thought.

Anyway a few more searches on the BT Wholesale Checker, revealed that there was definitely no native FTTP available at our address (yet anyway!). However a few surrounding searches revealed that our neighbours two house away, actually *did* have FTTP available to order.

OK too much - there was definitely an OR database delay / muddle up going on here. So dutifully filled out the Availability Checker form yesterday. Having received the standard 'thanks for your enquiry' email, I did not expect *any* real reply for at least a few weeks...

Imagine my surprise when an email arrived just after 1pm today, Christams Day, with the following update from Fibre Customer Service at Openreach:

"Hello Sean,

Thanks for your recent enquiry.

I have looked into this, and the fibre network has been built in your area but there is an error in our records which is preventing you from placing an order. I’m now in the process of correcting this for you.

I need to associate your address to the nearby fibre equipment. It will take us about a week to complete this and you should then be able to place an order. I will update you as soon as our systems reflect this.

I’ve got all of your details, so shouldn’t need anything else before coming back to you. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Kind regards

Divya Divya
Fibre enquiries
Infrastructure solutions customer service
Openreach

Web: openreach.co.uk"

Some six hours later and we now have Openreach FTTP available to order, according to the BT Checker!

So there you have it. An unexpected Christmas pressie from Opnreach 😂

Merry Christmas to all 🎄🎅

lucky you

Edited by adslmax (Fri 27-Dec-24 21:44:13)

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I have not come across a single postcode that wouldn't show FTTP on Demand as available unless it had native FTTP available already. Like in the case where FTTP is available it will show Multi Dwelling Unit Residential.

If that's in answer to my post, it's maybe my bad wording, they are listed as able to order FTTPoD, but not WBC FTTP, and as I posted they are closer to a CBT than our other property which is able to order WBC FTTP, and to my uneducated eye it looks a much easier install for them.
Due to the way the fibre was installed it comes past most of the houses in the village, along the same ducts as copper, to our end of village, all of those house are FTTPoD

Not at all. It was aimed at the OP after reading this.

A month or two ago I noticed on the BT wholesale checker that FTTPoD had suddenly become available for our property.

I meant that this is the first thing that struck my mind how the BT wholesale checker would suddenly show FTTPoD for his property when I've always noticed this showing up in all postcodes over the years.

I've gone through dozens of postcodes and all of them will show FTTPoD as available. Indeed the MDU factor won't apply for you as you live in a village. But the checker is generic and doesn't distinguish between an address that is a house or a residential block so it will throw as available.

This is important for other viewers to know as some might mistakenly believe that they can pay the FTTPoD quote thinking they'll get the service even when they don't live in an individual house. Housing authority may still refuse the wayleave despite giving permission for other altnets.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Don’t worry it was a reply to my OP. Your neighbours situation could be a NAD association issue like ours recently. It’s worth getting them to follow up as noted.

There is some delicious irony in getting an email for a £9900 FTTPoD build quote and precisely a week later getting this email telling you can order FTTP now 😂

Imagine if you had paid £9900 for FTTPoD and then a week or a month later you get the very same email telling you that you can now order FTTP? Instead of being happy, you'll end up being very much depressed that you've lost all that money!

Then you'll be trying to get the refund of this arguing that it isn't fair that you lost all that money when it came so shortly after paying this amount.

That's the point of this FTTPoD thing being pretty much irrelevant for the vast majority of people. Over the years I've had people tell me to sell my flat in Central London and buy a house somewhere in Kingston Upon Thames, etc etc. With some saying it was not commercially viable. Well, I knew that was nonsense as I knew the whole problem was with my authority not granting the wayleave as every other property nearby had FTTP.

Even if theoretically I could get FTTPoD by paying that hefty sum, It would be a major injustice and a personal defeat! If due to some lousy management I had to shell out £9900 to get FTTPoD. I'd rather spend a fraction of that amount and take the authority to court, that would be more justifiable.

Nevertheless, waiting patiently meant it was only a matter of time for getting FTTP available by one of the altnets. Whether in the long term they'll be stable or not is another matter. The worst case scenario is that they'll be bought out by the bigger fish.

FTTC probably did not become available for you as EO Line was too expensive to upgrade especially as you've said the MDU doesn't apply for you making the upgrade more expensive for Openreach. In my case I've had to wait for over 6 years since 2013 for it to finally be available in Oct 2019. Plus we had major problems with connection drop-outs under ADSL. 2-5 times a day something that was a problem regardless of what ISP I signed up to. But I would still not pay for FTTPoD even if it was possible because I think that wouldn't have been fair anyway.

There's another residential building near us owned by same management EastendHomes, Cityscape Apartments and they also don't have FTTC! It was originally planned and then it was cancelled. No amount of persuasion was going to help convince authority to grant permission for FTTP. It was only a few years later when New UK Law Passed to Spread Gigabit Broadband into Big Buildings Friday, Mar 5th, 2021. That was the turning point. Now we have Community Fibre and VM Nexfibre and I believe it is only a matter of time when Openreach FTTP will also come. What seemed like an almost impossible thing to get has now become spontaneous.

There was never any serious risk of me splashing out £9K for FoD here. Hence my "So for shiz and giggles..." opener in the second paragraph of my OP. In some ways I was actually surprised that they returned a desktop quote, with a figure attached.

As said, this is not my first rodeo with FoD. Having gone through the quite torturous process in Suffolk near enough 6 years ago. I pretty well know the scores on the doors, timescale, costs / payback. There is no logical way it would make sense here, now. Please make no mistake I'm not that naive.

Perhaps I genuinely missed that FTTPoD was in fact listed on my address entry in the wholesale checker, or indeed became so some point, as a global change or otherwise. We've never had FTTC and historically FTTPoD was never on the record - shame I didn't screen shot it. Anyhow that's beside the point.

Quite probably the only reason I discovered this all was due to a Hyperoptic biz install I had booked in, since that was advertised as available. Thus the "holy cow there are Openreach CBTs in chambers all along the street" moment when those lads were trying to pull their fibre in. Who knew? Well clearly not me. Probably not many/any of the neighbours and we certainly wouldn't have known from the Wholesale or Openreach checker records. Meanwhile it's still (or was) possible to get FoD quotes (and technically accept them...though they'll doubtless get rejected after you've paid your non-refundable deposit). I think that was the key point I was trying to get over.

Anyway good luck in your endeavours getting FTTP. Peace and goodwill for the New Year ✌️🕊️

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Quite probably the only reason I discovered this all was due to a Hyperoptic biz install I had booked in, since that was advertised as available. Thus the "holy cow there are Openreach CBTs in chambers all along the street" moment when those lads were trying to pull their fibre in. Who knew? Well clearly not me. Probably not many/any of the neighbours and we certainly wouldn't have known from the Wholesale or Openreach checker records.

As I've posted before, notification of availability seems very poor in some cases.
When our FTTP infrastructure was installed the only people informed where BT customers, One household near us only knew about 2 years after.
In fact going back to FTTC, a sticker on the cabinet saying "Superfast available here" isn't much use when the cabinet is quite some distance from people who might not even go past it, as is the case with our cabinet.

That was a nice surprise it gives you another option should you ever want to take it up

In reply to a post by burble:

As I've posted before, notification of availability seems very poor in some cases.
When our FTTP infrastructure was installed the only people informed where BT customers, One household near us only knew about 2 years after.

Ours, was weird, a few who had contacted OR, found out about a week later than I knew that we were gonna get FTTP. OR basically phoned me to explain the change of dates had been approved and now a new network build would be done. But if we hadn't had the mass of OR vans i think most wouldn't have known fibre was in the village.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I meant that this is the first thing that struck my mind how the BT wholesale checker would suddenly show FTTPoD for his property when I've always noticed this showing up in all postcodes over the years.

I've gone through dozens of postcodes and all of them will show FTTPoD as available. Indeed the MDU factor won't apply for you as you live in a village. But the checker is generic and doesn't distinguish between an address that is a house or a residential block so it will throw as available.

This is important for other viewers to know as some might mistakenly believe that they can pay the FTTPoD quote thinking they'll get the service even when they don't live in an individual house. Housing authority may still refuse the wayleave despite giving permission for other altnets.

Historically, FTTPoD has not been available for:

1. Properties not served by an FTTC cabinet
2. Properties which are MDUs

Rule (1) was intended to exclude properties where the FTTP network was nowhere nearby, but in practice it also excluded EO lines. It appears this is why the property in question did not show FTTPoD available.

This rule was relaxed in March 2022 - announced Nov 2021, reference here.

However, just as when FTTPoD was increased from 300/50 to 1000/120 before that, Openreach didn't go round all the properties in their database and correct them. The record is only updated later on, when they happen to be updating all the properties in a given area for some other reason.

This is why people have observed FTTPoD changing from 330/50 to 1000/120 a few days before FTTP becomes available: database updates in their area are underway.

In this particular case, it appears the database record was recently touched for some reason, causing FTTPoD to change from "unavailable" to "available". But in practice, FTTPoD could have been ordered since 19th Mar 2022.

Case (2), no FTTPoD for MDUs, still applies AFAIK - for the reasons you state about wayleaves etc. If the checker shows it as available, then it will be rejected either at desktop survey or field survey.

Edited by candlerb (Sat 28-Dec-24 13:29:18)

Wonder if there's something intentional about OR sending these sort of emails on Christmas Day? Here was the one that I received: https://i.imgur.com/jmvAiL1.png - 9am Christmas Day!

(And yes, 4 years later, they've still not come up our street...)

🤔 Maybe. To be fair I had approached them the day before, about the NAD anomaly. Just wasn’t expecting them to reply the next day, which so happened to be Christmas.

The “ready for ordering “ glossy OR email came 2 days later. I was already registered on the OR email database for any updates, and I thought it had simply taken this long for the database updates to percolate through their various systems etc.

Better than the email they sent me .... "Here is your bill - £65+VAT"

How lucky you are. I have fttp on a pole in my garden just two feet from the house which feeds other houses in the village but Openreach are refusing to connect me. The reason appears to be that they are hoping that, eventually, a government grant will be given for other houses near me and that connecting me would weaken their case. I have had a face-to-face meeting with OR's planning engineer who agrees that it would be simple and cheap to connect me but his "auditor" refuses to allow the connection. My approach to OR executive level has been rebuffed by an executive complaint team.

Sound like your situation is basically being passed by the spine fibre on the way to the village but not having any splitter nodes or serving CBT anywhere nearby.

Following the last database update, our wholesale checker address record now has no copper products at all showing. All gone.

I guess as individual DB records are now updated, following WLR Withdrawal stop sell, they are taking the copper products off the record completely.

Did you have FTTC/SOGEA before? This is what I get

https://i.imgur.com/pViLcGY.png

At this address we’ve never had FTTC, only ADSL as the copper was EO back to Canonbury.

Previous to this most recent update, like last week, copper service was similarly showing at the top of the table, like yours.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I've gone through dozens of postcodes and all of them will show FTTPoD as available. Indeed the MDU factor won't apply for you as you live in a village. But the checker is generic and doesn't distinguish between an address that is a house or a residential block so it will throw as available.

This is important for other viewers to know as some might mistakenly believe that they can pay the FTTPoD quote thinking they'll get the service even when they don't live in an individual house. Housing authority may still refuse the wayleave despite giving permission for other altnets.

Well my dear chap I'm here to show you that this ain't the case!

Snapshot from 31 December 2024 - BT Wholesale Checker

This is further along my street, a slightly different postcode, but OR may or may not have extended FTTP up that far (yet)

As you will see there is currently no FTTPoD showing for these properties. Like there wasn't with mine. Until the period before Christmas (when it was updated again). Now we don't have any copper products showing on my record (nor indeed for the 12 nearest neighbouring houses.

But the way this is N1 in Central London, not a village. Not for a few hundred years anyway.

I knew I wasn't losing the plot. completely. yet anyway 😎🤣

I’ve found all permutations and combinations of wholesale records on my street now. There are about 60 premises along a 300 metre-ish stretch…

We have records with:

- copper only (ADSL), and no FTTPoD
- native FTTP only, no copper listed (me now)
- copper only (ADSL) and FTTPoD

It’s such a mixed bag. Hilarious. 🤣

This is strange and I don't know why the BT Wholesale checker will show no FTTPoD for some areas and none in another.

We have 3 properties here in Central London and one of them that we are renting out is Exchange Only Line

Address LONDON ....... on Exchange STEPNEY GREEN
Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range (Mbps) Availability Date FTTP Install Process
FTTP on Demand 330 50 -- Available --
SOADSL Products Downstream Line Rate (Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range(Mbps) WBC SOADSL Availability
WBC SOADSL 2+ Up to 17.0 -- 10.0 to 19.5 Available
SOADSL Max Up to 7.5 -- 6.5 to 8.0 Available
SOADSL Fixed Rate Up to 2 -- -- Available

No FTTC and the ADSL service is not connected via a cabinet and never been on a plan for neither FTTC or FTTP.

But it does have Community Fibre and Hyperoptic available.

FTTP on Demand will show and it has always shown for all 3 of our postcodes.

Another address, which we also rent out. Address ............. on Exchange SHOREDITCH is served by Cabinet 36
Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Handback
Threshold(Mbps) WBC FTTC Availability WBC SOGEA Availability
High Low High Low
VDSL Range A (Clean) help 80 75.7 20 19 68.2 Unavailable Available
VDSL Range B (Impacted) help 80 74 20 19 67 Unavailable Available
G.fast Range A (Clean) help -- -- -- -- -- Unavailable --
G.fast Range B (Impacted) help -- -- -- -- -- Unavailable --
Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range (Mbps) Availability Date FTTP Install Process
FTTP on Demand 330 50 -- Available --

However, this postcode will show Build planned between now and Dec-2026 on the Openreach website checker.

It also doesn't really make much sense why FTTP on Demand must be available when Openreach FTTP is planned! That option should be excluded in planned areas because let's just say someone did theoretically pay for FTTPoD and then shortly later Openreach upgrade their area to native FTTP, this will be a scandal!

In most areas that has FTTP it will also show both FTTC and FTTP. No copper showing for a native FTTP only area but being connected to Cabinet 18 is hilarious. It should either show no copper at all equally for everywhere.

But the checker and plans are very scattered and chaotic. For example, in one of our properties that is connected to Stepney Green Exchange will show "We're planning to build in this area in the future" yet I know many other postcodes and areas within the same exchange that recently got upgraded to Openreach FTTP and that's Winterton House as an example, I mentioned this before. They happen to also have Community Fibre, Hyperoptic and Virgin Media.

It's not fair when some areas have multiple FTTP providers including Openreach FTTP when they have excellent FTTC service 79 Low and 80 High Mbps.

I have always been a firm believer that Openreach FTTP should've been high priority for those with no FTTC or FTTC with poor broadband speeds. But often I've seen those who already are benefiting from top FTTC speeds are also getting upgraded to native FTTP earlier and even get more altnets. One of the fibre cabinet is within less than 50 meters distance from the property and it is a small block with only 16 addresses but is planned for 2026 FTTP.

My area while there's no plan for FTTP, Openreach moved our fibre cabinet closer to our property around 2 years ago and now get higher sync and better stability. But that might also be explained by less crosstalk as some customers upgraded to the Altnets.

Yep that was the whole point of my latter post to you; the BTW checker clearly doesn't show FTTPoD across the board like you claimed it did. Irrespective of the order-ability of the FoD products in reality or indeed whether it's 'sensible' or not to do so.

"I meant that this is the first thing that struck my mind how the BT wholesale checker would suddenly show FTTPoD for his property when I've always noticed this showing up in all postcodes over the years."

It's totally possible to have all permutations and combinations - as I've demonstrated - even just in the the one street.

The records are NOT universally updated. Even when they are supposed to be....

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 02-Jan-25 12:13:39)

My side gig had nothing but ADSL showing on the checker (business park with no FTTC deployment) and then FTTPoD appeared around the same time I got an Openreach email that the premise was now in-scope for FTTP. Which matches up with what you're seeing, FTTPoD was released to everybody but only updated in the BTw checker when there was some other reason for the database record to be touched.

👍

In reply to a post by jpm:

My side gig

Off topic I know but that sounds like a euphemism for a mistress...

One of the property have G.fast Range A 330/50 max and FTTC Range A 80/20 and got FTTP while other property have no G.fast, No FTTC just standard ADSL2 up to 16Meg with FTTPoD option are seem unfair by Openreach. I agree with you that it should priority those with no FTTC area first. But, Openreach won't care as they can see no growth or profits for no FTTC area might be the reason have to wait longer for FTTP until 2026 to 2030.