Got odd email this morning from cerberus network manager as he now removed AUP policy of 750GB for FTTPoD, FTTP and FTTC. All now come with totally UNLIMITED and will offer me FTTPoD for £1200 sudject to survey and 36 monthly of £165 inc vat.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Got odd email this morning from cerberus network manager as he now removed AUP policy of 750GB for FTTPoD, FTTP and FTTC. All now come with totally UNLIMITED and will offer me FTTPoD for £1200 sudject to survey and 36 monthly of £165 inc vat.

They could go tits up if even a handful of users took up their offer at that price and began using TBs of data per month on a 330 Mbps FTTPoD service. Personally, I wouldn't feel very comfortable handing over £1000s to a company who change their pricing & t&c's more frequently than a hooker's knickers go up & down.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Sep-17 12:26:21)

I don't think their margin is all that small. It seems similar to other providers native FTTP levels e.g. Zen.

What is the recourse if they go belly up after your fibre is installed? Could you then order native FTTP from another provider? What exactly would OR do about such a situation? I suppose they would still want their full fttpod wholesale amount.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Sep-17 13:35:00)

In reply to a post by mumba:

FluidOne mentioned to me today that they insist on a Juniper router being installed, in order for them to offer their FTTPoD service.

They said it costs around £800.

Is this the case for any of you who are already customers of theirs? Is such an expensive router really necessary?

Would an existing router like a draytek vigor 2860 not cope fine with 330mbs or even 1 gigabit?

Not really they are rated for 300Mbps, and you would be paying for a VDSL modem that would never be used. On the other hand a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X 5-Port for £80 or the EdgeRouter Pro 6 port with SFP for £360 (VAT inc in both) would do the job. Better still throw in a suitable ONT SFP and you could in theory junk the Openreach provided ONT too. You don't get any WiFi but the Juniper solution does not have that either.

I have just been looking at the new EdgeRouter Infinity at work to replace our ER Pro's. Eight 10Gbps SFP+ ports for under £1.5K. Don't get me wrong Juniper is nice kit, just there are cheaper but still very good options out there. I have been very pleased with the EdgeRouter Pros at work over the last 3 years. My only complaint is that they come with C5 clover leaf power sockets which requires buying C5 to C14 leads to actually be able to use them in the racks as so little kit uses C5 sockets you don't normally carry a stock of them. Where as C13 to C14 leads I have coming out my ears.

In reply to a post by Bill100:

What is the recourse if they go belly up after your fibre is installed? Could you then order native FTTP from another provider? What exactly would OR do about such a situation? I suppose they would still want their full fttpod wholesale amount.

I think in such a scenario you would be free to move to another provider offering native FTTP (the BT/OR dsl checker updates FTTPoD service to native FTTP after service goes live) and Openreach would have to write off the loss of the FTTPoD installation costs. Openreach cannot bill the end user as the customers contract is with the ISP and not with Openreach. So from the end users point of view, perhaps its not such a bad thing after all if the isp goes belly up

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

throw in a suitable ONT SFP and you could in theory junk the Openreach provided ONT too. You don't get any WiFi but the Juniper solution does not have that either.

Whilst it may be technically possible, Openreach will not allow the use of a non-Openreach branded/supplied ONT on their FTTP service. Unlike xDSL services, the serial number of the hardware (ONT) is linked to your FTTP service - the Openreach Engineer scans the barcode on the ONT to activate it.

So I guess the problem comes if the isp offers a poor service themselves or gets bought out by someone who then offers poor service.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Got odd email this morning from cerberus network manager as he now removed AUP policy of 750GB for FTTPoD, FTTP and FTTC. All now come with totally UNLIMITED and will offer me FTTPoD for £1200 sudject to survey and 36 monthly of £165 inc vat.

Doubt it. They are unlikely to have unbundled your exchange leaving BT Wholesale as the likely carrier. BT Wholesale charge £140 + VAT = £168 / month rental for FTTPoD.

They can't quote a 36 month term to a private individual and I'm a bit lost as to why they'd quote including VAT. That would be extremely unwise.

Does this BT wholesale price include unlimited data consumption ?

If it does then it sounds quite good. They would be offering the monthly amount at cost.

In my case their installation cost was around 1500 more than Fluidata, perhaps that's their business model.

I am an account manager for Cerberus Networks, and I've been following the various forum threads regarding FTTP services. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about our services.

Cerberus has never had a 750GB fair usage policy for any broadband service let alone FTTP or FTTP on Demand. There is also no minimum throughput of 12Mbps for FTTP services.

The pricing on our website is correct. All prices quoted exclude VAT.

FTTPoD services have a minimum term of 36 months, as supplied by BT Openreach. OFCOM do not allow the sale of broadband services with this minimum term to consumers. FTTPoD is therefore primarily a business service at this time.

Cerberus will take credit card payments the same as any other provider. Ongoing rental is normally taken via direct debit as it is convenient for all parties.

Cerberus was founded as an IT services provider and business ISP in 2006 and mainly works within the industry to supply broadband services through a wholesale channel. Although, on the whole, Cerberus doesn't sell services to residential customers, we do have residential clients who use services for business purposes and are happy to discuss the available options.