In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

so pretty much able to pull figures out of the air.

Except that the councils talk, and BDUK act as an umbrella. There has to be some consistency.

Where private subsidy is being offered the BDUK process isn't threatened in any way.

Until procurement has begun there is nothing binding on Openreach.

I disagree on both counts. The fact that the BDUK process is broken down to umpteen separate council decisions, all going at their own pace, all requires consistency from BT so that they can keep winning the bids. If early bids show signs of a lack of a consistent approach, a lack of trust builds up, and they'll stand much less chance of winning the later bids. Once the first county has gone through the "invitation to tender" phase, the stage is largely set for the rest of the bids.

For the sake of the big picture, I can see that BT will have to stick firmly to the criteria they are using, with little flexibility. And unfortunately, because of the scale of the big picture (both commercial and BDUK), the smaller projects fall victim to this lack of flexibility.

OK - BDUK doesn't entirely threaten locations where private subsidy is available. But it does get in the way between the early "open market review" phase and the later "design stage sign-off".

Openreach closed the door on private funding to us months ago.

Who are "us"?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If you look at it logically the demand on a Cabinet in a VM area is going to be considerable less than in a non VM area.
...
even if FTTC takes 10% of the VM customers
...
Typical FTTC take up is about 20%

You are assuming that VM are giving an acceptable service, and that FTTC will take fewer of the VM customers than of the non-VM customers. Is that strictly known to be the case?

When I moved I had the choice of VM or FTTC, and very firmly chose FTTC - because of what I know can happen with VM. It wouldn't surprise me to see a fair proportion of the VM subscribers turning out to be disgruntled, and jumping at the opportunity.

It also makes an assumption that while VM passes 40% of the properties, those properties all choose VM as a phone/broadband supplier. I'm not sure that's the case either. People with Sky satellite subscriptions are probably more likely to stick with their phone & broadband through Openreach's copper, and are good targets for FTTC.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I have to say I think BT are been incredibly pety when your neighbour is getting the service, suurely the cost wouldnt be that bad when your neighbour can get it already.

As for the maths, BT probably see it as more viable to try and steal customers of VM because those customers currently pay BT nothing whilst people like you on a soggy 1mbit service pay BT and already give them revenue. BT know you have nowhere else to go.

Try to steal customers from VM cable is exactly their monoplistic mentality
They not only will green light areas that have a VM cable before other areas that don't they will also make sure that they enable those FFTC cabs in those areas first, as they have done here, Their greedy very greedy, perhaps it shouldn't be run soley for the benefit of its shareholders

I believe the idea that 200 connection is required is the old commercial criteria. The newer phases in mature areas appear to ignore this criteria. The power costs will be an issue.

Yeah that sound daft. But think about it.

The costs at the start of the program were higher so you do the areas where you get the best bang for your buck. As you move though the program you can justify doing smaller areas because you cost per cab is reduced.. In my area this now includes cabs which only have 20-30 properties or are industrial areas (warehouses etc).

You can disagree but this is happening!

Regards,


Gareth

THere is no way they will be doing cabinets with just 20 or 30 subscribers. It would make no economic sense. I doubt that BT even have cabinet that small.

Cae to name the exchange and cabinet number(s) that have been enabled with only 20 lines?

Virgin added 56,900 to its cable service in the quarter
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5510-virgin-media...

BT added 160,000 to Infinity
TalkTalk added 22,000 over the last six months

And we know Openreach added 190,000 new FTTC/P connections in last quarter.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5531-second-quart...

The picture is pretty complex, particularly as the VM performance varies from area to area

Disagree all you wish, we had a price from BT for 2 cabinets, when we pursued the matter we were blanked. This was before any BDUK procurement had taken place.

A consultation with the local council finds that they will have no specific numbers for the costs by cabinet nor even exchange area due to commercial confidentiality.

So in short nothing had been signed, nothing had been presented, no RFP or even RFQ had been made, the only indication was that the area in question was potentially a part of that region's BDUK bid and suddenly Openreach jump from dealing with private finance on a per-cabinet basis to the public purse and a regional level of granularity.

Convenient, isn't it?

Incidentally you contradict yourself by initially claiming you disagree with my comment that there's nothing binding on Openreach until procurement essentially saying that it's purely a commercial Openreach decision that they do not wish to continue to entertain private finance.

Likewise you don't give any kind of indication why private subsidy would threaten the BDUK process. If that were the case Openreach wouldn't be deploying anything on a commercial basis while BDUK procurements - they are.

BDUK isn't an umbrella beyond being a project name and Whitehall quango; each council is given a set amount of money to be spent as they see fit. There is absolutely nothing preventing a council from demanding cabinet level numbers from any bidder to ensure value for money.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

In theroy BT should be declaring their cost to BDUK but as we can see from Starbucks and Amazon etc there are all sorts of ways to manipulate your costs etc and the councils would not understand it. so would not be able to tell the true costs

It would probably better to reverse engineer it and for BDUK to cost it on that basis.

Already done.

Check the link at the end of the post.

In reply to a post by garethr:

I believe the idea that 200 connection is required is the old commercial criteria. The newer phases in mature areas appear to ignore this criteria. The power costs will be an issue.

The major issue is proximity to existing fibre network. There is no way cabinets covering 20-30 premises will be upgraded without an external party picking up some of the costs which is probably what has happened in the instances you mention.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Debatable as to whether it makes economic sense but BT do tend to be keener to rollout in VM areas than non VM areas

From one angle makes perfect sense. Each subscriber FTTC pulls back from VM is paying line rental and FTTC charges. Existing Openreach customers only pay an additional FTTC charge.