Hi Andrew,

I read one of your posts from a few weeks back which mentioned the 1440 premises.

That got me thinking with regards to the Oakamoor exchange and I didn't think there would be more than one agg node. It would be money better spent elsewhere.

Is there a limit to the number of FTTC cabs on a node? I think there are 6 cabs plus the EO not yet built.

My £10600 quote is 1980m distance as the duct and poles run

With a huge figure of £39,000 it doesn't just weed people out - it permanently gets rid of them.

Thanks so much for the helpful response - I'm not a OR network expert by any means, so just looking at this in a very general way. The knowledge on this board is outstanding, so defer to greater knowledge.

Knowledge for us consumers = proper power.

The veil of mysteries about how the nation's key infrastructure is being built out and delivered (particularly where heavily subbed by central government) is a fascinating topic.

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.

Yes totally true, but the devil is in the detail as we're seeing here with high FTTPod quotes to end users, the extra quarter of a mile above my 1 mile suggestion costs on most plausible basis at a gross cost of more than £10k each to deliver.

Can it really be right in the long-run that initially the assumption is that 1,400 ish premises per Ag node will incur that cost to extend the network out (on current pricing)?

Wouldn't it have been better to anticipate that while extending the fibre network to each DSLAM, that using new hardware and remote distribution points it would make sense to use an architecture that was easily expandable?

The general point is that for every Ag node in non commercial areas there appears on the figures you quote to be around 4.5 cabinets at the moment. Each Ag node therefore has 4 or more links making their way deeper to end-user's premises, all of which has been incentivised by central government subsidy.

Having gone to all the trouble of clearing or building ducts to deliver "Fibre to the cabinet" - the question of how to get fibre to the last mile doesn't appeared to have been considered in any depth from a tax-payer's perspective.

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.

I'm sure you're right, but in the spring budget the Chancellor has allocated £200m to be used to roll out full-fibre including the imminent £3,000 voucher scheme.

When you aggregate the £1.1m BT has received and assume that the £530m claw-back in that sum will probably largely be spent expanding OR's network & add onto that the £200m (which at £3k per premise = max 67k premises) - that's plausibly very close to having put £1.5bn into the OR network.

As people are clearly finding in this thread with ECC estimates, the £3,000 DCMS voucher will be swallowed entirely by OR bringing fibre effectively to the same or shorter distance to the shiny green cabinets a second time.

I'm personally not convinced that is a win for the treasury where they have already paid for network extension once. To the untrained eye this just looks like the government paying for the same thing twice in their procurement.

It's a given I'm a neophyte in understanding OR's fibre architecture, but the common sense approach as a lay-person is that the fibre itself is cheap whereas the civils to deliver it is expensive.

The civils have already been done to the cabinet once, so planning for each BDUK cabinet to have a chamber to provide for deeper network access seems like a no-brainer.

At least we know now that FTTP is maturing to the point that FTTC builds are a little limited in ambition (but as mentioned a very clever interim solution) then the clawback spend & voucher spend should be done first in such a way to make FTTP deliverable deeper into the network, rather than allowing OR's network to be grow randomly to serve first movers (at full cost).

I do accept that I may be simplifying what's going on, but then again it is clear that many on here have made the assumption that a DSLAM or FTTC cabinet would also be a logical point to start the point of measuring how you take Fibre deeper into the network. It is after all sold as 'Fibre to the Cabinet'.

Anecdotally I was told by one of the ISP's offering the new FTTPod pricing that they had nearly 400 people asking for quotes in total since the new scheme came into force. My guess is that a few thousand installs in the next year or so under the current regime is the most plausible take-up.

It will definitely change up again soon, when the inefficiency of OR's FTTPod offering becomes clear & there's no real alternative currently available.

So all of these quotes are before paying the £250? Has anyone paid the £250 and got a quote?

Just to chip in, here's my quote from Cerberus

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Estimated Build Cost: £8800.00 ex VAT
The build charge includes the estimate for the work and materials required to deliver the service. It also includes the connection charge.

Number of premises passed for FTTP: 8
The build estimate includes a reduction for the number of premises passed as these would be able to obtain FTTP as a consequence of your build. Customers at these premises may submit a linked FTTPoD order to share the construction costs. You will receive a discount of £700.00 ex VAT from this figure for each linked order that is served by your build. Linked orders may be submitted to Cerberus Networks at the customer�s own risk. If one order is cancelled this will cancel all the linked orders so you must find a way for all parties to work together to share any costs.

Please note that this is an estimated price based on network records. There are a number of factors that may affect the final costs. These would be only confirmed by a full survey once you place an order for the service.
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FluidOne won't provide an estimate and my local supplier Spectrum (Cardiff) don't know their pricing yet although they have suggested the Welsh Government Ultrafast Connectivity
Voucher Scheme of £3k could help but it's to a residential not business although I do work from home a lot. I think the voucher scheme will be tough to get under these circumstances.

Worth noting I was previously in Band A under the old pricing.

Unsure if to just do they survey and see if it comes back any cheaper, I've asked Cerberus if in their experience the estimates have been way out but they are unwilling to comment at all

On the old scheme I was banded as H. It would cost approx 6-7K for the install and around £200 a month for 3 years (that quote was a few years ago when it first became available on the checker)
With this pricing whats the point in spending £250 for a quote as its just not feasible for me. I would be willing to pay around 3k install if I was only paying around £60 a month for full fibre.
I get around 16Mb down and 1Mb up on FTTC

Edited by deleted (Fri 09-Mar-18 18:15:31)

Why is treasury paying twice?

FoD is paying for the extension to your premise from the existing and paid for aggregation node. If a BDUK contract wanted to they could have specified and paid for FTTP construction beyond the aggregation node e.g. to the first splitter but what point would that have served?

Each order is going to be different for FoD, so until we actually see itemised quotes everyone is guessing based on the presumptions that BT is over charging.

Reality is that FoD takes a good number of hours and labour and it is this element that makes the civils behind a widespread FTTP roll-out expensive.

I'll be blunt, the low monthly cost meant plenty of people got so excited they missed the cautions about the cost and yes blowing or pulling/pushing depending on deployment method to get fibre 2km from an existing location is not going to be cheap. If it was cheap then you'd have other infrastructure operators biting your hand off to charge you half the same amount.

A lot of the problem is people forget how much it costs to employ people to things, and the extra costs of say working on a chamber in a road, i.e. not like one CityFibre contractor did of place 1 yellow cone and open chamber on a road.

FoD is very much for those who don't need the full SLA of a leased line and high monthly costs, but can accept a very high cost in my view. Or home owners at that point of spending £10k-£20k to move home for better broadband and see this as a way of not going through that hassle.

OK, assuming that the BT line follows the kerbline of the street to the FTTC cabinet, then my line is ~350m (plotted using https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/), and 240m as the crow flies.

I typically get just shy of 70Mbit down, and 18Mbit up. Recent speedtest for example:

,

I think these speeds fit with that distance.

We are at the far end of the estate. With the 1400(?) premises number mentioned elsewhere for aggregation nodes, my guess is that it is located where there are multiple cabinets nearer the entrance to the estate. This is more like 1.25km away by road (1km as the crow flies). It is a 1980's estate so no telegraph poles. Everything should be in ducts. I guess OR aren't confident the ducts are clear, hence the £39K.

The 5 properties passed still makes no sense however. Even from the local cabinet there are more properties than that!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

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

It's a way of building the network more than a new product. FoD2 at 1000/220 is available.