In reply to a post by j0hn83:

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.

Or conversely the ISP decided to charge an extra surcharge, simply to take advantage of customers in Market A exchanges, even though their actual cost from BT Wholesale was near enough the same.

Nah that would never happen

Does Ofcom actually check this? After all this whole Market malarky is just an Ofcom competition construct based on hypothetical analysis...

What happens now that Ofcom have completed and will shortly publish in full their WBA review where roughly 10% of exchanges that are Market A shrink to the roughly 1% - has anything actually changed in reality the day they announce it??

I hope my £1140+VAT proposed surcharge disappears rather quickly.

Nah that would never happen

one thing these FTTPoD threads has shown is that all the stuff about consumers not willing to "pay for broadband" is becoming a bit of a myth and its more about "CPs not willing to pay openreach".

When someone considers 3k a bargain for good quality broadband.

its a lot of money, but I expect the people paying it out are reasonably affluent, either on a good salary or have a fair chunk of cash sitting around, also if they own the property there is probably considerations of the affect on the property value as well.

Would I pay it if I had moderate FTTC speeds of say 30/5? and interleaving. If I owned my property and had a lot of disposable income (20k+ a year after living costs) quite possibly yes.
On the flip side if I had 80/20 fast path, living in rented property, had disposable income of barely 1k a year it wouldnt even be considered and seen as an insane waste of money.

So for different people the value can be seen very differently.

The major niggle for me regardless of situation would be that I am effectively paying for the assets and handing over ownership to openreach.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I hope my £1140+VAT proposed surcharge disappears rather quickly.

Why don't you also get a quote from FluidOne? AFAIK they don't have an exchange surcharge.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The major niggle for me regardless of situation would be that I am effectively paying for the assets and handing over ownership to openreach.

If Openreach passed ownership of fibre to the end user then maintenance, repair and eventual replacement of the fibre would also be the end user's responsibility. Would you be happy to pay such costs? I certainly wouldn't....

For example, my FTTPoD line experienced a total Loss of Service (LOS) for a few days last year d/t some numpty messing up my line profile at the exchange yet Openreach did not charge me a penny when initially trying to troubleshoot (fibre break was the initial suspicion) by sending an Engineer out in the pouring rain who inspected the PON at various points for 4 miles all the way to the exchange.

I would own assets which would possibly be purchased of me at a later date, leased from me, would the costs exceed the value of the assets?, also assets can be used to secure credit at more favourable terms as well.

Pros and cons, I am not saying I would refuse on these grounds just it would niggle me. I just feel if openreach own the assets then it has to be subsidised to a degree to factor in they own the assets. Maybe it is already subsidised and the actual cost to openreach is higher than what people are been quoted, but these quoted costs are already way higher than what other telco's spend on rolling out fibre.

It is a bit like buying a house but then not owning it, how would you feel about that?

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 18-Jul-18 16:04:14)

Or it's a bit like paying to get electricity lines, water pipes and gas pipes routed to a new build house.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Why don't you also get a quote from FluidOne? AFAIK they don't have an exchange surcharge.

My understanding is that only one FTTPoD quote for a particular premises can be raised/worked on at a time via OpenReach. You cannot have two or more simultaneous quotes raised for the same service via different ISPs, they lock it out.

Therefore I would need to "conclude" my quote with Cerberus. However as I have now undertaken to pay for the survey (£250+VAT) to to get a final install charge I would no doubt lose this fee and have to pay it over again should I decide not to proceed.

I very much doubt it, but if anyone knows if the final build charge is somehow "portable" (between ISPs) or OpenReach will honour the confirmed build charge, if going ahead via a different ISP then the quote was originally raised through, then please do let me know.

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 18-Jul-18 16:36:27)

I don't think build costs are transferable between CPs for obvious reasons. However I don't see why you can't have multiple quotes. Probably worth giving FluidOne a call and if they can confirm 100% they don't have a surcharge for your exchange area then you could potentially save > £800 pa even if you were to lose the £250 survey fee by cancelling your Cerberus order. I think Fluidone's monthly service charges are ~ £100 but you would need to check with them.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I just feel if openreach own the assets then it has to be subsidised to a degree to factor in they own the assets.

But the asset (usually) is just a piece of fibre cable and isn't worth a huge amount in itself so can't really be compared to owning a house. A large chunk of installation costs for FTTPoD will consist of the labour costs in laying the fibre (ie civil works).

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

[....] these quoted costs are already way higher than what other telco's spend on rolling out fibre.

Excluding leased lines, the likes of Cityfibre, Virgin Media, Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, B4RN et al do not offer a FTTP On Demand service to the general public so we cannot compare FTTPoD costs with other FTTP operators. If you mean in a commercial FTTP deployment, then I believe Openreach quote roughly £500 per premise passed in a mass FTTP deployment, similar to what other FTTP operators have quoted in the past. In a nutshell, cost of FTTP to one property is expensive but deployed to 1000's of homes at once brings down the cost massively.