In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Back in Feb 2017 when FluidOne were the only ISP selling FoD, they were taking around 10 orders each month (they told me this).

Before the pricing change, I got a quote from FluidOne. Their monthly service fee was £320+VAT on a 3-year contract, i.e. £11,520+VAT on top of the build charges. That was enough to put me off.

The Cerberus cost was £165+VAT for 3 years - about half of FluidOne - which I imagine lead to higher demand.

I'm curious as to why you'd choose to fully pay up the whole contract up front.
Do they have clauses in their contract that would allow them to raise prices mid-contract or something?

If I can please intervene here and cast some light on this. (We're a Cerberus reseller, so will have a better understanding of their T&Cs than most).

Let's start with the £39k bit - that is the maximum which BT Wholesale / Openreach will estimate for Excess Construction Charges (ECCs), and probably has little bearing on the work which really needs to be done on the ground.

A properly costed and binding quote can only be achieved by requesting a formal BT Survey, and the details returned from this can be cross checked and validated by the reseller to ensure they match the work needed on the ground.

Unlike what was previously the norm for Leased Lines, these surveys are not free - and the charge is £250 plus VAT from Cerberus. The actual wholesale charge by BT is £245.14 - so Cerberus round up by £4.86 (wow!!!) and get a few quid to cover their admin costs.

BT could not be expected to do free surveys considering the relative cost of an FTTPoD line compared to a much higher revenue Leased Line (BT Staff do have to get paid as well!).

The Install Cost (also known as the ECCs) will be quoted by BT - and at that stage, the client will have 30 days to accept the quote and proceed - otherwise the quote will lapse.

That actual install cost payable will be based only on the costs advised by the BT Surveyor - not the original desktop survey (which has no commercial validity whatsoever).

This final cost quoted by BT will have taken into account ECCs to run the fibre, the install charge from BT and will have deducted the rebate due for 'Premises Passed' and for the original survey charge. (note to all: "Premises Passed" is a poor description - it actually means premises which will be enabled for connection from the Passive Optical Network Connection installed network - and the fibre could pass a thousand premises on route which will not be able to benefit from connection)

No one is sure yet exactly how multi premise 'linked installs' will work, or if the standard survey process will apply (i.e. one survey costs for all premises). Cerberus are still talking to BT to get clarity on this and other aspects of liked install contracts.

I do agree that the Cerberus T&C wording is a bit vague in areas, and when we reviewed the T&Cs as part of becoming a reseller, we picked up on several areas of text for improvement (including this), and advised the Cerberus sales team and directors of these. We've had confirmation that they will be changed in next version - but there is little point in them rushing out a point change immediately when we expect to still see substantially more detail emerge from BT which will need to be reflected in the documents over the coming weeks.

It's easy to be critical of Cerberus or indeed any of the FTTPoD suppliers or reseller, but they are having to deal with a lot of change at the BT end right now.

Also, please remember that FTTPoD to date has been a niche product, with quite a small BT Team involved behind the scenes. They are under intense pressure to deploy a labour intensive desktop survey system and work out how to handle linked installs with limited resources (compared to the mainstream broadband teams).

As I've mentioned in other posts - best we all just wait a few more weeks and let the dust properly settle.

If anyone needs more information or has any other questions, please post or PM me.

Right, time for my dinner...

Basically, I lost my Job in December and so I was thinking of cancelling all together and most likely losing out on the install cost. However I decided to stick with it and got a new contract in January. I decided that I might as well pay it all off now so that I don't have to worry about it at all. Now I don't need to worry about internet bill for 2 years and 9 months

There is nothing in the contract that states price can change without prior notice and agreement (pretty standard).

I am not sure how many people took the offer, everyone was skeptical, I think I might actually be the first FTTPoD customer (maybe GenuineCerberus - can confirm ).

I know Mamba ordered around the same time.

This may be one of those questions that show my total lack of understanding on all of this.

But Openreach have shown they clearly do not really want to do the groundwork for FTTPod and are trying to do all they can to discourage its take up.

This means Cerberus have a nightmare situation on getting this setup and people are paying crazy amounts when they do.

But and this is my question. From what I understand there are two ISPs who are prepared to do the groundwork and install FTTP cabling on demand. One is Openreach and the other is Virgin Media.

Couldn't Cerberus, as opposed to trying to deal with Openreach who from all the news coming out do not want to know, instead try and secure somekind of deal with Virgin Media so customers in effect pay virgin to get their cable installed to their property and you get Virgin cable internet paid through Cerebrus as a reseller like they are doing with BT wholesale.

Edited by Anth (Wed 14-Mar-18 19:52:25)

Virgin don't have a wholesale service, nor do they offer an on demand install service. So I think that idea is out on both counts.

Thanks for explanation. Good luck with new contract and keep enjoying that FTTPoD worry free.

Cerberus sell products over the OpenReach network.
This is a very niche product, not aimed at mass market.

Virgin have no On Demand product. If they aren't in your area, tough luck. You can't pay them to run their Fibre to you.

Virgin also don't Wholesale their network like OpenReach do. Cerberus can't sell Virgin products, or anything over the Virgin network.

Unlike what was previously the norm for Leased Lines, these surveys are not free - and the charge is £250 plus VAT from Cerberus. The actual wholesale charge by BT is £245.14 - so Cerberus round up by £4.86 (wow!!!) and get a few quid to cover their admin costs.

Has the norm also changed for leased lines? My client has just had the Openreach survey done through BT but BT's pricing is not competitive at all. Most of the quotes from other ISPs are coming in £200/month cheaper with zero set-up costs for 50Mbps. Just wondered if BT will try to charge my client if they go with somebody else?