Hi, My area has been accepted under the scheme here in NI. We needed to raise a set amount using the vouchers and the only commitment is you take up a service with one of the BTw suppliers within 3 months of the service going live and the contract is for 12 months. After that you could cease the line if you wanted to!
Regarding speed there are residents stuck in cotracts with suppliers that don't yet offer FTTP (Sky being one) I am informed that they can move over to the FTTP line but will only receive the top speed on offer ie 80/20 until they offer FTTP
This may be different to the voucher scheme in the rest of the UK.
Work has already started and hope to be live by July.

With my FTTPoD connection I got 330/30, as that was the only speed option available. But it was still eligible for gigabit voucher, as FTTP is "gigabit capable".

The only concrete requirement was that the speed I got was at least 30M and also at least twice the current speed I was able to get.

The current wording says:

"4.1 All connections supported by vouchers must fulfil BOTH of the following characteristics:

4.1.1 be capable of delivering broadband connectivity to your premises at or above
1Gbps upload or download using any technology at the time of delivery of the
connection without the need for future hardware upgrades or modification
(excluding CPE – it is not mandatory to deploy 1Gbps capable CPE from the outset
if this is not required to deliver service); and

4.1.2 deliver a minimum of 30Mbit/s to your premises. The upgraded broadband service
must deliver a "step change" in service which is at least a doubling of speeds
compared to the service currently being consumed by you.

4.2 Any existing connection already capable of 1Gbps or above in either direction is NOT eligible
to benefit from a voucher under the Scheme. Any Premise that is capable of receiving a
speed of >100Mb/s (as determined by us) is NOT eligible to benefit from a voucher under
the Scheme, whether or not that connection is currently in use."

IANAL, but if you have 30M today, and end up with 80M on FTTP, it seems pretty clear that meets the requirements.

Please see here for a copy of the email that I and my neighbours received from the government, in regards to the vouchers

The link to the T+Cs still works

Thought I would add my own personal experience with attempting a CFP in a 10 year old housing development in Canterbury. After attempting a FTTPoD order but being hit with a £18,000 desktop quote from Cerberus Networks.

The development is a mix of terrace properties and apartment blocks with 187 residencies. The estate currently has FTTC, though not all of the development can get 80/20, all Openreach infrastructure is new(ish) underground ducts. Through discussion with Openreach it was made clear there were no plans for commercial FTTP roll-out in Canterbury for at least the next 2 years.

Therefore, I started a CFP in January and sent out emails, leaflets, Facebook group, a website and face-to-face discussions. Our development also has a management company which was started by the residents I worked with.

Initial interest was, to be frank, dismal. I thought this may be due to having FTTC present. However, on more than one occasion speaking with residence I discovered they were still on ADSL and complained about the poor speed, but were unaware that they could, at the least, upgrade to FTTC.

We only managed to attract 40 sign-ups to our CFP. and submitted it on the 1st of Feb. Openreach were willing to provide two draft quotations, but I only received these at the end of March after many follow up emails:

1.) All 187 residency (homes and apartment blocks) at £403.27 per property for a total of £75,412.00
2.) 132 residency (homes only) at £407.13 per property for a total of £53,741.00

We also have 5 businesses which registered interested and therefore had hoped to be eligible for at least 50 resident vouchers and 5 business vouchers. Openreach had previously stated they would submit the GBVS applications for us. Exactly as mentioned in the link PianSomB posted above. However, today I was informed by Openreach that the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme has been discontinued:

In reference to Openreach:

I have checked your postcodes in your project and unfortunately it appears your project isn’t available for any voucher scheme. The non-rural GBVS scheme was withdrawn in February and your postcodes aren’t in the classification for the rural scheme.

At this point I've scheduled to have a phone call with Openreach tomorrow to try see where we can go from here. Though the obvious outcome is to cancel the CFP, as whilst a number of residents are more than happy to pay the £400 to get FTTP and were enthusiastic about the CFP, they are the minority. (i.e. all the residents who worked at home regularly.)

What is more frustrating is that our development has one access road, which all Openreach infrastructure (FTTC and ADSL) enters the estate from. A new 18 property housing project is being built off this access road and will have native FTTP once construction is complete in September. In talking with Openreach, while new fibre will be brought into our development's access road, this would have no impact on the existing developments access to FTTP via a CFP. Our CFP would apparently require separate fibre to be brought in addition, which seems odd as one day Openreach will bring FTTP as part of the commercial roll-out to our development and would then be paying labour twice over .

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-May-20 00:20:21)

Yes, I read about the cancellation of the voucher scheme yesterday

I'd suggest that you keep at it. In my own case, having gone through the pain of organising neighbours, getting the quote, organising the vouchers and signing the contract, in the end Openreach cancelled our CFP contract and installed us at zero cost. Maybe you should try again with your neighbours and see who is prepared to go ahead at an increased cost.

FTTH really has made things so much easier during the lockdown, and it will increasingly be seen as a property-value enhancing benefit, I think.

We've not cancelled the order yet and I'm hoping to find a way forward. Most of the residents who registered their interest in our CFP don't mind the upfront cost and understand the value-add to their property and improved broadband.

However, it still leaves a shortfall of around 140 of the residents. My hope with a CFP was that even if we did not go through with it, it would put our neighbourhood on Openreach's radar and just maybe expedite us getting FTTP via fibre first. With that said commercial FTTP roll out in Kent, in general, is virtually non-existent outside of new-build developments.

I'm going to try and push Openreach to see if we did go ahead with the whole development (187 properties) would there be scope to slightly reduce the per-property cost.

In reply to a post by PianSomB:

FTTH really has made things so much easier during the lockdown

The lockdown has definitively emphasised the importance of high-speed broadband and for many who are now working from home, I think the limitations of FTTC are becoming apparent. At least with FTTP, it accommodates both users who only need basic internet up to super users who need much higher speeds and as a technology is at least some-what future proof. But the economic hit of the lockdown makes attempting a CFP that much harder

so gap is 7,500 ypou all get less that 4 meg and no interest -

that should have been a absolute easy one to do

that's almost at the very bottom of the Gap funded scale if the 7,500 is correct

the gap will have been based on the 187 - so that will be the gap required