What makes an Alt-Net build in new areas?

I live in what I consider a fairly large town with a population of about 65-70,000.

We have fairly decent BT Openreach cover over 95% of the town for FTTP.

We also have various Alt-Net FTTP covering the half of the town to the northeast but only in two or three very small (one or two streets) areas in the southwest of the town.

It's almost as if the divide is the railway line (which splits the town in half) and no Alt-Nets want to go south of the river so to speak.

I have checked some of the bigger providers and none seem to be planning on adding to their network the other side of the town.

Why would a fibre provider cover half a town but not bother with the other half? What are the drivers that govern this?

It's just frustrating having no competition to compete with Openreach where I live.

Any thoughts gratefully received . .

I know of an altnet round here that ran out infrastructure, and then couldn’t light it up, as getting permission to run a new spine across (under) a railway line , the time frame itself would be a big stumbling block due to the lack of know return of investment.

So maybe you have answered your own question already ?

Is any FTTP equipment installed in what used to be telephone exchange buildings?

If yes, our telephone exchange is in the half of the town with the near full OR coverage and would explain why other providers are unable to take cables under the railway line.

Most altnets don't use exchanges - they normally have their own infrastructure.

That means that barriers such as railway lines, rivers, lakes and motorways could impact on the costs of getting service to an area and therefore make them too expensive.

I am taking a wild guess that your town starts with an R but I could be wrong.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I am taking a wild guess that your town starts with an R but I could be wrong.

No, it starts with an A but not revealing anymore 😉

My hunch would be that the BT ducts across the railway line are full. It is very difficult to get a new duct track across a railway line.

Edited by FibreBubble (Tue 13-May-25 21:40:24)

A big town in Bucks beginning with A…hmmm 😂

Seems the houses not covered are between the railway line and the new HS2 - could HS2 have just made it even more difficult to get infrastructure to the area? Looks like an island of houses between two railway lines.

In reply to a post by ian72:

could HS2 have just made it even more difficult to get infrastructure to the area?

Anything's possible I guess.

It's just frustrating as friends in other parts of town have a choice of more providers and have better deals with the AltNets than those on OR.

This website https://bidb.uk/ says that Hey!Broadband is planned in my area but when I contacted them, they said they have no plans currently.

My guess is it would be very difficult and costly to cross either the railway line or HS2 with network connectivity - that could make it a hard business case to be able to try and do a build there. Unfortunately it may be that no altnet could justify the costs to get infrastructure to the area.

We're looking at writing up something on this topic on news soon. Your examples are quite interesting so will try to get some answers from people who make the decisions.
I have a situation where there's an altnet quite close but the manhole where they are and the one which serves my home is not linked so it's quite a long extension to run to add a few properties.

Railway lines, major roads and rivers need to be crossed and the options are more limited. What's worse, is trying to in-full edge cases makes it even harder. If you can do 90% of a road using ducts but 10% have direct bury copper, you just might not do those until someone justifies a new pole.

In reply to a post by seb:

We're looking at writing up something on this topic on news soon. Your examples are quite interesting so will try to get some answers from people who make the decisions.

Thank you.

Will be great to get some answers.

If it is because it's too difficult to get fibre cables across railways, rivers, major roads etc, how did Openreach (then the GPO) manage it in the 1940's/50's/60's?

The vast majority of the houses in the area that doesn't have any other provider except Openreach, were built many years after the railway came so the GPO as it was then would have had to lay telephone cables from the exchange across the railway lines to reach the new estates 🤷🏼‍♂️

Edited by astanden (Wed 14-May-25 17:26:37)

Rules governing such things have changed dramatically since those days … add to that, BT/GPO were once all there was … train stations needed phone lines, level crossings needed them, unmanned or otherwise … who ya gonna call ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Rules governing such things have changed dramatically since those days … add to that, BT/GPO were once all there was … train stations needed phone lines, level crossings needed them, unmanned or otherwise … who ya gonna call ?

Also back in the GPO days who really cared if they made any money? BT Group now have paid up share holders who expect them to turn over a profit and pay a dividend, so each deployment has to make financial sense.

The answer will in most cases be opportunity cost.
To roll out to a location a network needs to spend £x. If they can get a bigger return elsewhere using £x they would be better spending the money in the other location. Money is limited and has a cost. You may not have capacity to build everywhere even if it was profitable in isolation, so you cherry pick the best areas.

seb

Hi,

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Rules governing such things have changed dramatically since those days … add to that, BT/GPO were once all there was … train stations needed phone lines, level crossings needed them, unmanned or otherwise … who ya gonna call ?

Well, you'd probably have called BR Telecoms who, providing you were vaguely near a railway line would have provided a line on their own independent network anywhere in the country, no BT/GPO involvement at all.