I don't know about installing BT's standard ducting, which is something like 2" buried around 0.5m depth.

Mole ploughing however would cost something like £30 a meter at commercial rate (including wayleaves) assuming rural open land without substantial remedial works.

JFDI costs are realistically around £9/m - less if like B4RN you can get landowners to minimise wayleaves and chip-in with help.

My guess is that fresh OR ducting would be a far higher cost than £30/m (but it has the merits of being totally future-proof) but clearing existing duct and pulling connectorised fibre would inevitably be cheaper than that.

If poles exist to the property, then stringing pre-made fibre (or ducting overhead) using those poles would be cheaper still.

My guess is that OR could light a passive network connection somewhere starting a floor of £20 per meter (only a wild guess). Depends if you count the pension deficit in the mix...

Running 2" ducts to premises seems a little old-school in the 21st century for the 'last mile'. Blowing fibre via very small micro-ducting (say 7mm overhead or direct buried - larger if a large number of premises are passed) should give the comfort of almost infinite future-proofing, as Fibre capacity in due course should allow terabits of data per second (depending on media blown).

In the US utility poles in major cities look like spaghetti junction. I wonder how many people in UK cities, towns and villages want overhead blight to spoil their now pretty clear skyward views.

Inevitably keeping future-proofing and standards of planning is expensive.

I'm 100% not defending OR - but providing a DSLAM to bring FTTC nearer to premises is WAY, WAY cheaper than sorting the last mile with new fibre.

For all the critique of their strategy thus far - up to 80Mbps will cover almost any conceivable household use for the next 5-7 years. If you really need more, then you have to be doing something incredibly esoteric with your connection when 20Mbps or so provides for UHD/4k streaming.

By any account that's a massive win for the UK.

All except for the last few percent covered with a tech that allows for streaming to devices still a couple of years from being anything other than fringe consumer product. I'd say we should be genuinely proud that we've managed to get this done as a nation. Not every nation has done this as well as we have in short-order.

I do think there does have to be some really fierce criticism of the way that BDUK effectively paid for FTTC cabinets without insisting that each cabinet had to have a new ag-node next to each subsidy driven cabinet. This is particularly unfair on those of us who are too remote to get any kind of VDSL or ADSL.

There's a real [censored] moment of revelation, when you realise that billions have been incurred by the treasury and for the sake of perhaps 5% of that - the 95%+ of people who have access to 24Mbps from FTTC could have had a AG node delivered to at most within 1 mile of their premises.

OR presumably saved a couple of thousand pounds per cabinet by not extending the fibre in a future-proof way.

How much easier would it be now were there an ag-node pair at the foot of each fancy new green cabinet?

I really think this is fundamentally what the claw-back should at least try to achieve at a minimum. It seems risible that almost all FTTPod orders have to provide for several Km of fibre extra, so overbuilding pretty much what was done to provide fibre links to DSLAMs already on the route.

Just my random thoughts. My huge sympathies to the £39k brigade. The remoteness of your premises from the AG node probably means there's some JFDI solution which needs lateral thought and people power to deliver.

100% worth lobbying your local authority delivering BDUK - they may well be able to effectively pay for an Ag node to be brought closer to you through the claw-back in due-course. The numbers of premises who are in white areas for BDUK are more than 10's of thousands for each BDUK authority - so those who shout loudest are going to get prioritised.

Nothing to do with the exchange, it�s the aggregation node it is priced from.

Hi Zarjaz,


I was just being vague, as in this particular location it happens to be quite near the exchange. The head end is at a larger exchange a few miles away. The exchange it's self, only serves around 1200 premises.

Thanks for your many helpful reply's to questions on the forum. I always find them informative. Keep up the good work.

I was band H (about 6Km) with a £10-£11k install cost under the old pricing, £15.8k under the new pricing. So with the 1 year contract the total install cost for three years has gone down (very slightly).

Given an aggregation node is expected to serve 1440 premises once everyone on FTTP then if exchange covers 1,200 it sort of makes sense.

There is no cap set by Openreach, so the £39,000 is coincidence or a result of provider add-ons

In reply to a post by F9B54DA3BB3C:

I was band H (about 6Km) with a £10-£11k install cost under the old pricing, £15.8k under the new pricing. So with the 1 year contract the total install cost for three years has gone down (very slightly).

Band H was 2000 - 2999m I believe.

Doesn't that suggest those with £39k quotes are bands I, J or even K distances.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by F9B54DA3BB3C:

I was band H (about 6Km) with a £10-£11k install cost under the old pricing, £15.8k under the new pricing. So with the 1 year contract the total install cost for three years has gone down (very slightly).

Band H was 2000 - 2999m I believe.

Doesn't that suggest those with £39k quotes are bands I, J or even K distances.

Indeed it is. Serves me right for taking the distance I was told in the quote at face value rather than checking against the openreach list!

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

the way that BDUK effectively paid for FTTC cabinets without insisting that each cabinet had to have a new ag-node next to each subsidy driven cabinet.

They could have insisted, but it would have been more expensive. And, in a fixed-budget project, that means fewer premises passed.

That's hard to justify when the commercial rollout didn't put an AgNode at the foot of every PCP. Why would you need to when they are dimensioned differently? (AgNode ~ 1400 premises, PCP average 300 premises).

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

This is particularly unfair on those of us who are too remote to get any kind of VDSL or ADSL.

That means you haven't had any subsidy spent on you yet, while the projects are still ongoing.

We'd expect that half of the remaining premises will get SF coverage still, before the USO kicks in.

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

There's a real [censored] moment of revelation, when you realise that billions have been incurred by the treasury

Really?

BT's accounts say they have received a total of £1.1bn so far (running at ~£60m per quarter at present), but have earmarked £530m for return to the local authorities.

Other suppliers will be taking in money, but nowhere near as much as BT has accumulated since 2013. It really isn't billions.

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

the 95%+ of people who have access to 24Mbps from FTTC could have had a AG node delivered to at most within 1 mile of their premises.

The original price list for FTTPoD says this:

In reference to www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDeta...:

96% of premises are expected to be within 2km of the nearest NGA Aggregation Node

Not far off your target.

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

OR presumably saved a couple of thousand pounds per cabinet by not extending the fibre in a future-proof way.

I guess it depends what is needed to be "future proof".

The most recent architecture diagram (visible in this blog) shows that the intention is to deploy BFT tubing between the AgNode and each splitter, and that one tube would carry an 8-fibre unit to feed the splitter node (4 for a fully-utilised node, with 4 spare, I imagine).

The current architecture for FTTC uses the same 7-tube BFT between AgNode and PCP. Each cabinet would use 1 tube, with a 4-fibre unit blown. The BFT could end up with 1 tube used of 7, but may also serve more than 1 cabinet (with "tube intercept joints" being used to extract a single tube in the footway chamber).

So, at the foot of the fancy new green cabinet, there may be up to 6 empty tubes, waiting for future fibre to be blown.

With each cabinet upgraded by BDUK tending to average 150-200 subscribers, it is likely that this could be covered by just 2 splitter nodes (128 subs each, but likely aiming at max 100), so needing just 2 tubes.

As FTTPoD gets deployed more, then future splitters may need extra BFT to be pulled between the AgNode and the cabinet's area - especially if the original one served multiple cabinets.

In reply to a post by robert_fl:

I really think this is fundamentally what the claw-back should at least try to achieve at a minimum. It seems risible that almost all FTTPod orders have to provide for several Km of fibre extra, so overbuilding pretty much what was done to provide fibre links to DSLAMs already on the route.

It could be done, at cost. Including the cost that BT ends up with a suboptimal network in the future (too many AgNodes, needing too much splicing). But remember that things aren't as straightforward as overbuilding "extra fibre" when empty BFT is being put in place.

My pricing went up by about £4K+VAT over the 3 year term.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that under the old system only my property would be activated. Under the new system, 14 properties (including mine) would get FTTP. So I could consider it to be an expensive gift to the neighbours Or perhaps more accurately, an expensive gift to Openreach, who get to keep in perpetuity the infrastructure I'd have paid for.

I would *really* like to use the linked installs to share the cost with a neighbour or two.

The problem is that with Cerberus at least, it makes no sense financially: the neighbours who join in would have to pay £594 (inc VAT) setup *and* £120 per month for 12 months to Cerberus, whereas they'd pay something like £60 per month for BT Infinity 4 - and probably get £175 cashback too.

That difference is way more than the £700+VAT per PON discount for linked orders.

However if we don't link the orders, there's no guarantee that the properties who want it, get it. I know that 14 properties will be activated, but not which ones!

Maybe when BT Retail offer a fibre on demand product the finances will make more sense?