In reply to a post by candlerb:

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.

...

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!

What you say makes sense.

It would be better, for your group of 14 homes, for one person to order FTTPoD, and the others to just wait for an FTTP service. The cheaper 13 could then agree to subsidise the 14th whose order triggered the work. This would be the cheapest way for 14 to act collectively and share the burden...

... But only if you know who the 14 are.

Question to those in the £39000 club:

If you don't know the approx distance to your nearest fibre aggregation node (ie you don't have a quote under the old pricing), do you at least know how far you are from your FTTC cab? Because if you are 1000s of metres away from your FTTC cabinet then its fair to say your agg node will also be 1000m+ away as FTTC cabs are usually not too far away from an agg node (generally speaking). So £39k may not be an unreasonable amount after all but to be sure you should obtain a quote from a different provider eg Fluidone.

An alternative would be if people already have FTTC then what speeds are they currently seeing - that would give some indication on distance from cab.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

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).

That's an interesting article. What happened to FoD2?

The article talks about G.fast in chambers or on poles, with the G.fast node also carrying a splitter for use with FoD. I gather from this forum that such plans for G.fast have been abandoned, maybe because of the difficulty of powering them.

(It would of course be heaven: not only would many more people get top G.fast speeds on copper, but if they wanted genuine fibre they'd only have to pay for a short length of fibre to the nearby splitter).

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

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.

So is the expected architecture that the primary splitters will reside in the PCP, or have their uplinks going via the PCP? Or is the topology of the fibre network going to be completely independent of the PCPs?

It makes me wonder why they didn't just put a splitter or two in each PCP in the first place, at the same time as connecting up the VDSL equipment.

Looking at the architecture diagram, I see secondary splitters uplinked into primary splitters which connect via the aggregation node back to the OLT.

It would be nice if OR would at least invest in installing the primary splitters, wherever they choose to locate them - it would make the cost of FTTPoD go down, and hence drive the takeup.

I think that if they made the connection charge for fibre something like £750 per property in areas served by a primary splitter, the demand would go way up, and the cost of the secondary splitter DPs to service them would soon be covered.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

It would be better, for your group of 14 homes, for one person to order FTTPoD, and the others to just wait for an FTTP service. The cheaper 13 could then agree to subsidise the 14th whose order triggered the work. This would be the cheapest way for 14 to act collectively and share the burden...

... But only if you know who the 14 are.

I live right at the end of a cul-de-sac. There are 25 properties, and the ducts clearly follow the pavement around the lollipop shape. So I'm pretty sure it will be all the properties on one side of the street, or the other - just not which

Perhaps for a little more money, I could get OR to activate the whole street...

In reply to a post by ian72:

An alternative would be if people already have FTTC then what speeds are they currently seeing - that would give some indication on distance from cab.

True, a rough distance to FTTC cab can be worked out from current FTTC stats. However bear in mind that FTTPoD is also available to those who are (or can be) connected to a FTTC cabinet but are too far (>3km?) to receive a usable FTTC service. In which case £10000's is perhaps not unreasonable to bring fibre to their doorstep.

Edited by deleted (Fri 09-Mar-18 14:43:10)

If someone is too far to get FTTC presently then that in itself gives us valuable information. With an install charge of £39K you would think they would be too far to get FTTC but the ag node could be a lot further away as has been said earlier. It may be that the desktop survey is wrong but if that is the case we will probably never know as few people are going to go ahead to pay for the full survey with such a high estimate.

Yes the topology of the fibre network is completely independent of the PCP. There's no fibre equipment (like splitters) kept in PCP's. They are usually in the chambers in the ground (sometimes right in front of the cabinets), or on telegraph poles.

I believe that architecture is now old. Certainly going forward for FTTP Openreach intend using the following, and I would imagine that they would adopt these elsewhere:

COF250 - 12 fibre SST (Standard Single Tube) oval cross sectional area (8mm x 4mm) with strength members to allow rodding. This is also the factory terminated tail cable on the CBTs (Connectorised Block Terminals).

COF215 - a small 36 fibre, 7mm dia. round cable originally designed as an Ultra Light Weight aerial cable, but can be used direct in duct with no additional sub-duct, or in 10/14mm sub-ducts. This will be used between aggregation nodes and splitter nodes, also between splitter nodes and intermediate joints both overhead and underground.

A single family of joint enclosures in small (12 tray), medium (24 tray), large (48 tray) and extra large (80 tray) replace the current enclosures, and what I've seen implies that there will only be a single level of split (1:32) downstream of the aggregation node, so a maximum of 32 clients sharing 2.5Gbps down / 1.25Gbps up.

In reply to a post by kingbiscit:

Yep, definitely bit suspicious us all getting the same quote!

Don't you think £39k is just their way of weeding out the tyre-kickers with minimal effort on their part. If people are serious, they will pay the £250 to get a proper quote.