In reply to a post by Bill100:

Regarding the estimate and final quote, surely there should be some expectation that the two are close?

If the final quote turns out to be significantly higher than the estimate, then the poor punter will be paying £250 if he cancels which would be rather unfair...

You would hope so, but it's not guaranteed.

Presumably the purpose of the desk survey system is to make cost estimates which are more accurate and fairer than the coarse banding before - especially for people where most of the fibre work has already been done, e.g. by a nearby FTTPoD install. Under the old system they would still be paying full whack based on the distance to the fibre aggregation node.

I guess the £245 covers the cost of detailed planning, sending people out to physically audit the proposed path, poking rods through ducts etc, to check if the expected delivery path will work.

Hopefully either OR or the service providers themselves will keep track of what proportion of orders end up sticking within the initial estimate. We'll just have to wait and see.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Speaking personally: I'm 500m radially from my VDSL cabinet, about 800m copper length, which means I get about 35M down / 5M up on VDSL; I guessed I would be in band C or D. However, I am actually in band G. That makes it clear that the aggregation node is not the cabinet.

Thank you for bringing in the new information.

I guess the information we all seek is the position of the aggregation nodes. Is there any way this info can come out? Because at the moment it would be like ordering FTTC and not knowing where the cabinet is.

@baby_frogmella

Also you�re mistaken if you think the new pricing structure = cheaper ownership of FTTPoD. The overall costs are expected to remain the same (for lone installs at least) which means higher install costs in order to compensate for the lower monthly costs and shorter min term.

Yes I can agree with that, especially if the sales focus remains selling to business customers so they would take the full burden of the reduced contract, so in that sense its status quo.

It will be interesting what happens when BT Business release their own business focused FOD packages.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

I guess the information we all seek is the position of the aggregation nodes. Is there any way this info can come out?

I did ask the FluidOne guy, and he said that the system didn't give out the location of the aggregation node - only which band I was in.

When I get my free estimate I'll post whether it includes any information like that, or if it's just a monetary figure.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

FYI, I spoke to FluidOne a few weeks ago and learned some things which may be relevant here.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I suggest they simply made an educated guess on the distance based on the BT Wholesale FTTC estimates for the property and assumed some rule of thumb additional distance.

No. The property banding came from him entering my phone number/postcode into an OpenReach or BTW system; it's not estimated by the service provider, and it's not related to FTTC.

He said that under the old (banded) model, the instant price quote was generally the price the customer ended up paying. He knew of only one case where Excess Construction Charges (ECC) had been levied, and that was on a Band G property - 1500m to 2000m radially from the nearest aggregation node.

That makes sense. Access to an OR system is normal. But given that a pure postcode can be several hundred metres long, mine is, that option could have been suspect.

Under the new model, there's no instant quote at all. You can get a free non-binding estimate, which is a "desk survey" made by someone looking at OR looking at a GIS map, and this is supposed to take 2 weeks.

Like this example? Maybe the ISPs could give a ballpark figure from that themselves. Assuming aggregation points are shown.

Thank you for bringing in the new information.

(ahem) Not new at all

oops.. I missed that post!

Any chance of sneaking a peek at the node map?

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Any chance of sneaking a peek at the node map?

As it has been stated many times before, the location map of aggregation nodes is not available to the general public.

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Feb-18 15:55:21)

Hey Guys - Just been off a call from Cerberus:

The have informed me a build charge of £14,800, based on the new pricing,
they have also stated that my build would pass 9 other properties, if we can all order together they could look at charging each property £1,800,

However the way the desktop survey is done it dosent follow a logical path to our address, still waiting for confirmation of which properties are grouped together in this survey, the guy's at Cerberus stated it could be few properties on the side and front of my property that could potently be grouped together,

of course if all the neighbors can agree on this build i would gladly pay £1,800 but i find it baffling they want to charge so much,

Distance to the cabinet from my property is less than 100 meters, the aggregation node is only a few feet away from there - seems the build charge is taking a huge upfront cost

Did they specify exactly where the aggregation node was ?

I am still waiting for their full details to come through, not sure if my calculations will make any difference to their desktop survey,

Cerberus have also stated anyone that has made a request should start receiving their desktop plans from next week - based on the new pricing,

To be honest i was much hoping for this to be a lot cheaper