In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

The question is, are Cerberus being charged extra by BT Wholesale for certain FTTP/FTTPoD lines? If not, then it seems like a unfair surcharge and one that Ofcom may take an interest in.

In essence yes, The effect essentially is that Wholesale are not allowed to provide us competitive pricing in Market A.
The cost overhead is significant.

As was mentioned above, the BMCR draft is out which will greatly reduce the size of Market A and in the case of GEA, use the head-end exchange's market instead. (There are still some head-ends in market A, so this wont go away for everyone).

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statement...

Edited by Blmcg (Sun 15-Jul-18 12:56:04)

Sorry for the delayed reply. I wasn't given the details of the fibre routing but my cabinet is about 1.5 km away so a guess would be that I would fall into band G. With the confirmed build cost of £4,050.00 + VAT it would seem in my case I'll be saving around £2,000 compared with the old pricing scheme.

In reply to a post by Clavius:

my cabinet is about 1.5 km away so a guess would be that I would fall into band G.

FTTP goes back to a fibre aggregation node, not a cabinet, so if you didn't get a quote under the old system then you won't know what band you're in.

In my case, I'm 480m radially from my serving FTTC cabinet, about 900m along the road route, but under the old pricing scheme I was in band G (1500m-2000m radial to fibre aggregation node).

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

Why do many people actually go through the FTTPoD install cost when you have FTTC ? Surely that couple grand is not worth it when you could get FTTC speeds with no install cost.

My FTTC speed is 3-4mbps so really pretty rubbish and barely good enough to stream iPlayer - certainly not if 2 people are online. That said the FTTPoD price came back as £39000 so I didn't bother with the full survey - no way I can afford even half that. Only 4 properties passed which will be us, the church and a couple of bungalows. No way I can persuade any of them to to join in.

Hopefully in a year or so we will have a Gigaclear option which will be more affordable - just in time for us to be moved on to another house.

In reply to a post by Retron:

It's actually around 10% of exchanges, including mine.

The email I had from Cerberus with the final quote mentioned it thus:

"I have checked the original order placed in March. This shows that you are connected to an Ofcom market A exchange. This means that the service rental is subject to a surcharge. Ofcom has released their draft consultation on markets and this states that the number of market A exchanges will reduce from arounf 9.7% of exchanges to around 0.7% of exchanges. The result will be that, should you go ahead with this order, that the rental price charged will be the market B pricing � i.e. not subject to the additional surcharge. The final statement will be released within 3 weeks, after which a date will be announced for implementing these changes."

However, they immediately contradicted themselves by charging me a Market A surcharge on the "prepay the first quarter" invoice. I'm assuming that's because, as yet, the exchange is still Market A. I'd hope for a refund if it changes before my connection goes live!

Thank you. It appears we are in the "lucky" 10% of exchanges graded as Market A!!

As said hopefully this surcharge will cease completely after Ofcom implement their findings from the latest 2017/2018 WBA review as linked above. It would be desperately unlucky to be tied to an exchange that is in the 0.7% that still remain as Market A.

For me it's a matter of wait and see what the final build cost comes back at. If it is indeed favourable, then the next question may be one of timing - as in exactly when will Ofcom officially regrade (hopefully vast majority of) Market A exchanges to Market B and how does this play into the timing of my agreement with Cerberus should I decide to go ahead.

I certainly wouldn't want to be contractually tied into paying another £1140+VAT for the next 12 months for the sake of a few weeks of poor timing, should it come down to that.

Maybe I better read those Cerberus T&Cs....

Just looking at latest BT Wholesale Prices (effective 1 June 2018) for FTTPoD.

Rental pricing for FTTPoD appears identical for either Market A or Market B....

https://www.btwholesale.com/assets/documents/Service...

Am I missing something or being thick? I thought the Market A Surcharge was to cover additional costs that BT imposed on the ISP for customers served from an exchange in Market A.

If not then what exactly is this Market A Surcharge for?

In reply to a post by Anth:

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

Why do many people actually go through the FTTPoD install cost when you have FTTC ? Surely that couple grand is not worth it when you could get FTTC speeds with no install cost.

Why do people pay £12,000 to £15,000 for a new car that loses a third of its value the second you drive it off the forecourt when you can buy a good second hand car for a £1000 from any dealer in your region and get good enough performance.

If you do not see value in something it does not mean others do not.

I want the low latency and incredible speeds as I live in a household that everyone streams netflix simultaniously.

That is the key. You don't need a stable 10Mbit/sec connection for more than one device. Think about it, how long would it take you to expend all available storage? And if you're on a "limited" package, how much would you actually pay per month? I'm still on ADSL2+ because of the price difference between an equal usage service. It wouldn't be simply the advertised price for the maxed-out stream, it would be the price of the cheapest FTTC plus the massive cost of going over 30GB per month. I really don't understand why people fail to calculate this. 30GB per month is equivalent to a limit imposed a decade ago, and you'll only run into it much more quickly.

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Jul-18 18:41:19)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Just looking at latest BT Wholesale Prices (effective 1 June 2018) for FTTPoD.

Rental pricing for FTTPoD appears identical for either Market A or Market B....

https://www.btwholesale.com/assets/documents/Service...

Am I missing something or being thick? I thought the Market A Surcharge was to cover additional costs that BT imposed on the ISP for customers served from an exchange in Market A.

If not then what exactly is this Market A Surcharge for?

WBC Bandwidth, that price is just a tail, doesn't cover the main cost which is the bandwidth.
Small piece of the puzzle.

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange...

Most packages are unlimited, I certainly haven't needed to worry about how much data we download for years. If regularly going over your allowed limit, then you'd upgrade to a bigger or unlimited package.

As for storage, streaming doesn't use any but can eat through data.

I would tend to agree.

It really would not surprise me though if BT OpenReach/Wholesale charged the ISP FTTP(od) rental based on the local PSTN exchange Market A rating, not the parent/fibre head-end exchange Market rating.

If that is the case it's pretty shocking considering the local exchange isn't used in the slightest for these products.