FTTPod or wait?

I am thinking about getting FTTPod, quote is 15K plus VAT, which is a huge amount to spend.

I have checked with an accountant and i cannot claim tax back on this on a self assessment , which is a real shame.

Our house is an a group of 3, which are 0.5miles away from the nearest other house and about 0.7miles away from the nearest house with FTTP.

Our current connection is awful at best its 20mb down and 1-2 up.

I have tried
4G and 5G (with antennas), no good.
Two broadband connections - not a lot of benefit
Starlink - amazing initially, then was so hit and miss i cancelled it.

So I either wait or get FTTPod…

My guess is that if i don't get FTTPod, our house will never get it.

Does anyone know if some houses will never get it?
Is there any new tech coming out that will make FTTP unnecessary?

If I look at the 18K over a 10year period, its slightly more palatable, but it will be frustrating as hell if i find in 18 months a new type of of broadband comes out that means I didn't need it!


Any ideas?

OpenReach are the biggest fibre provider and they are targeting 25 million premises by end of next year. What they do after that hasn't as far as I know been announced.

There are also a large number of other providers building in various places. Whether any of these will come to you would likely take a lot of research to find out.

Even in 10 years time there could still be some premises that don't have FTTP for one reason or another. So, your gamble is whether you end up in the tail end where it just isn't economically viable to roll out to you. If that is the case you might find FTTPoD worthwhile (although I understand it could take over a year to get it installed). But, if you pay it out and then 2 months later one of the providers puts in FTTP then I suspect you will be pretty hacked off.

Your best bet may be to see if there are any other FTTP providers nearby and contact them to ask if they can install to you. If none of them will or OpenReach are the only ones nearby then as you say either wait or pay - I don't think many people will be able to give you a solid answer as to the chances of you getting FTTP in any particular timescale.

In reply to a post by Robduke:

I am thinking about getting FTTPod, quote is 15K plus VAT, which is a huge amount to spend.
[...]
Our current connection is awful at best its 20mb down and 1-2 up.

I'm going to be devil's advocate and just say there are far more 'awful' connections out there than that!

In reply to a post by Robduke:

I have tried
4G and 5G (with antennas), no good.
Two broadband connections - not a lot of benefit
Starlink - amazing initially, then was so hit and miss i cancelled it.

Curious as to the issues you had with Starlink? There seem to be so much out there from people saying that it was transformative for them.

Hi,

Is this a final quote i.e they’ve done a site survey?

I’ve just been quoted £78k ex VAT for 0.25 miles from nearest fibre,, passing 9 properties. No new poles required.

I would love if you could share your quote with me as I’m currently pleading my case with Openreach, local MP, etc. In my view my quote just doesn’t seem to stack up.

Thanks

Colin

Also, what status is your property on the Thinkbroadband Project Gigabit status map?

Is it Yellow (no commercial plans) or Blue (under review)?

Grey dots have a fibre service.


https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=...

In reply to a post by jjrobb:

Also, what status is your property on the Thinkbroadband Project Gigabit status map?

Is it Yellow (no commercial plans) or Blue (under review)?

Grey dots have a fibre service.


https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=...

I second this and was going to type the same myself. Anyways check your gigabit status before doing anything.

In reply to a post by Robduke:

I am thinking about getting FTTPod, quote is 15K plus VAT, which is a huge amount to spend.

I have checked with an accountant and i cannot claim tax back on this on a self assessment , which is a real shame.

Our house is an a group of 3, which are 0.5miles away from the nearest other house and about 0.7miles away from the nearest house with FTTP.

Our current connection is awful at best its 20mb down and 1-2 up.

I have tried
4G and 5G (with antennas), no good.
Two broadband connections - not a lot of benefit
Starlink - amazing initially, then was so hit and miss i cancelled it.

So I either wait or get FTTPod…

My guess is that if i don't get FTTPod, our house will never get it.

Does anyone know if some houses will never get it?
Is there any new tech coming out that will make FTTP unnecessary?

If I look at the 18K over a 10year period, its slightly more palatable, but it will be frustrating as hell if i find in 18 months a new type of of broadband comes out that means I didn't need it!


Any ideas?

I did it but 7 years ago, when costs were far more reasonable (it’s all relative with FoD) and there was some subsidy capability which I leveraged. I’ve had all this time to amortise the costs, so it’s been OK from a commercial perspective and I ran it all through my business at the time.

Honestly with the rate and state of the OR build, there’s no way I’d recommend doing it in 2025. The absolutely mammoth costs are there to discourage not encourage.

Curious as to the issues you had with Starlink? There seem to be so much out there from people saying that it was transformative for them.

If they are in the south east then StarLink stopped new sales for a time because they were over subscribed and I think they still warn that it is a congested area.

Thanks everyone for all the responses.

My property has a yellow dot on the map. Postcode is CH665PN.

So i assume unlikely for a while if ever?

You are in the "for a while " category.

Freedom fibre won the contract for lot 17, but since has pulled out of the contract. That means there is little to no data mapping for your area.

keep an eye on the labs page and also here > https://www.gov.uk/guidance/project-gigabit-network-...

its not what you want to hear but you have wait, i've been in a similar situation when fttp was halted in new forest and that lead to a short 18 month delay. So i know (like many) how crushing it feels to hear bad news

Once you know what the gov is going to do with cheshire and your area (lots of yellow i see) i'd then see what OR are going to do and what options are available .. If you inquire now (pester) it would probably be met with a negative or neutral reply.

atm, theres (still) OR, alt nets, gigabit contract and also community lead efforts (which is hard to do )


Also keep an eye on roadwork sites

In reply to a post by ian72:

Curious as to the issues you had with Starlink? There seem to be so much out there from people saying that it was transformative for them.

If they are in the south east then StarLink stopped new sales for a time because they were over subscribed and I think they still warn that it is a congested area.

I hear the big boss has been too busy of late to worry about coughing up for a bit more backhaul.

Post deleted by Robduke

78K! Wow maybe they need to dig the road up?

Firstly I would be paying someone who is decent to install a proper Starlink setup for you and ensuring it is orientated correctly and there are no line of sight issues. Starlink is getting better and better all the time so if it was a while ago there should be more capacity. It won't be over capacity where you are; the capacity issues I've only seen in the south east.

Secondly, you have a vodafone/o2 mast close to you which has LTE800+2100. I would be mounting an external antenna pointed at that mast as a starting point, near the Premier Inn on Chester Road. It's 500m or so away from your postcode.

I wolund't go with FTTPoD personally. I'd spend a few hundred quid getting proper starlink/4G/5G mounts instead. I suspect Openreach will cover you eventually - or one of the govt supported schemes will cover you (eventually).

I don’t know if 3 houses constitute a community but you could try a Community Funded Project
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fibre-comm...

theres a large section of yellow to the east of the op.

But i'd honestly wait till lot 17 is re-awarded. As i said previously its not what anyone in the OP would want to hear.


Locally to me, East Boldre residents did a cfp with the local council being involved and being very active. They only ended getting up getting fttp about 4 to 6 months sooner than my local area...

So from my own experience wait for the contract to be re-awarded, then start canvassing.

In reply to a post by Robduke:

So I either wait or get FTTPod…

For another option, I suggest you get some quotes for a leased line. If you're lucky and you're close to an existing leased line node, you may not have any excess construction costs, or they will be amortised over the contract. If you end up paying (say) £300+VAT per month, then that's £10,800 over 3 years.

That's less in total than FTTPoD, it doesn't have to be paid up-front, and there is a clear incentive to install quickly because they don't start getting paid until the service is live. And of course you get a top-notch service, typically 1G/1G with static IPs (you can perhaps save a few quid and get 100M/100M)

The downside is that after 3 years, you have nothing to show for it: if native FTTP hasn't arrived by then, then you're continuing to pay these high charges. Beware also that the contracts tend to be a bit sneaky, e.g. some will auto-renew for a whole year if you haven't given notice of termination 90 days *before* the end of the current contract period. Check carefully what you sign.

So how does this compare to FTTPoD? Well, I had FTTPoD installed around the same time as Pheasant. I placed the order in March 2018, paid everything up front once the survey was done, but the installation wasn't completed until September 2019. There were various engineering difficulties, culminating in 164m of new duct having to be laid in a minor road. 5 days of roadworks, and all at Openreach's expense since they'd accepted the contract.

Now, for me, it's been great. Like Pheasant, I benefited from the earlier reasonable pricing, a government voucher, and being able to write it off as a business expense. And it was in place in time for Covid. My exchange area is now in OR FTTP plans, but I see no sign of construction. I'll have had at least 6 years benefit from it.

Would I recommend it to anyone today? No: it seems like an extraordinarily bad gamble. You could pay your £15K(*)+VAT up front today, and you might not have any service for a year or more - and in the mean time an altnet might come along, or even native Openreach FTTP (although you'd never be sure if Openreach would have deployed it at that time *without* your FTTPoD order kicking things off)

The current Openreach plans are 25 million by end 2026, and "aspiration" for 30 million by 2030. That's around 95% coverage. You'd have to be quite unlucky to be left out by then, if there's already FTTP less than a mile away. In any case, by then I reckon Openreach will be quietly weighing up the operational benefits of being able to *completely* decommission their copper network, whilst going cap-in-hand to government to pay for it.

A stop-gap solution will give you service more quickly and much more cheaply - maybe Starlink, maybe a leased line. Also, 4G/5G coverage in your area could improve over the next few years. (**)

(*) Presumably what you have now is a "desktop quote". There is a chance that once the order is placed and the physical survey is done, they might find it's easier than expected and the price falls. But equally, it might not - in which case, if you cancel the order at that point, you've lost a non-refundable £300. Or it might even go up.

(**) Maybe it could work today with the right equipment. You said "external antennas", but if you had long cables from the antenna to the router - by which I mean more than a couple of metres - these will cause huge signal losses. A weatherproof 4G/5G router, with directional antenna and CAT5e cable back into the house, might work much better.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 19-Jun-25 16:24:28)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

So how does this compare to FTTPoD? Well, I had FTTPoD installed around the same time as Pheasant. I placed the order in March 2018, paid everything up front once the survey was done, but the installation wasn't completed until September 2019. There were various engineering difficulties, culminating in 164m of new duct having to be laid in a minor road. 5 days of roadworks, and all at Openreach's expense since they'd accepted the contract.

Now, for me, it's been great. Like Pheasant, I benefited from the earlier reasonable pricing, a government voucher, and being able to write it off as a business expense. And it was in place in time for Covid. My exchange area is now in OR FTTP plans, but I see no sign of construction. I'll have had at least 6 years benefit from it.

I think also the amount of chasing you probably had to do and many moons of "why did i......"

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Would I recommend it to anyone today? No: it seems like an extraordinarily bad gamble. You could pay your £15K(*)+VAT up front today, and you might not have any service for a year or more - and in the mean time an altnet might come along, or even native Openreach FTTP (although you'd never be sure if Openreach would have deployed it at that time *without* your FTTPoD order kicking things off)

(**) Maybe it could work today with the right equipment. You said "external antennas", but if you had long cables from the antenna to the router - by which I mean more than a couple of metres - these will cause huge signal losses. A weatherproof 4G/5G router, with directional antenna and CAT5e cable back into the house, might work much better.

voda, three have good 4g signal and potential 5g ......EE is very patchy for 4g and 5g

three 5g is northerly for the op and voda 5g easterly

The biggest problem for the op is trees(lots of trees)........ the trees can be resolved by an outside aerial (pole based) and modem.

This would be alot cheaper and along with flexibility of change provider.

In reply to a post by Robduke:

I am thinking about getting FTTPod, quote is 15K plus VAT, which is a huge amount to spend.

I have checked with an accountant and i cannot claim tax back on this on a self assessment , which is a real shame.

Our house is an a group of 3, which are 0.5miles away from the nearest other house and about 0.7miles away from the nearest house with FTTP.

Our current connection is awful at best its 20mb down and 1-2 up.

I have tried
4G and 5G (with antennas), no good.
Two broadband connections - not a lot of benefit
Starlink - amazing initially, then was so hit and miss i cancelled it.

So I either wait or get FTTPod…

My guess is that if i don't get FTTPod, our house will never get it.

Does anyone know if some houses will never get it?
Is there any new tech coming out that will make FTTP unnecessary?

If I look at the 18K over a 10year period, its slightly more palatable, but it will be frustrating as hell if i find in 18 months a new type of of broadband comes out that means I didn't need it!


Any ideas?

Move house where FTTP is available!

Amazing, thanks everyone for all the ideas, and really useful info.

I think I will try Starlink and the 4G /5G option again. I have a professional Starlink install and an external 4G/5G antenna, but I can’t remember if I tried the Vodafone network. A sim should arrive today. And mr Musk unfortunately is going to get some of my money again.

I may also try internet bonding. Pep link / pepwave looks interesting (expensive though)

I do like the idea of a leased line, can anyone recommend a good provider ? I suspect 100mb would be fine if it’s dedicated , but the 1GB it very tempting !

With regard to moving house, certainly an option but a hell of a lot cheaper just to pay the 18K 😂😂. Plus trying to get that one past the wife may be challenging!

Also the 18k was after the full paid survey , it did come down a little from the estimate.

Edited by Robduke (Fri 20-Jun-25 07:12:39)

In reply to a post by Robduke:

Amazing, thanks everyone for all the ideas, and really useful info.

I think I will try Starlink and the 4G /5G option again. I have a professional Starlink install and an external 4G/5G antenna, but I can’t remember if I tried the Vodafone network. A sim should arrive today. And mr Musk unfortunately is going to get some of my money again.

I think you really want to avoid musk.net ........ Don't blame ya. What antenna have you got and router? We are asking that because it matters ALOT.

Starlink Offers its UK Home Ultrafast Satellite Broadband Kit for FREE

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/06/starli...

As someone else mentioned you need to have the 4G/5G router very close to the antenna. If you have a very long (being more than a couple of metres max) of cable between the antenna and the router then you will get really bad signal loss from that.