In reply to a post by ChemistDude:

So something strange happened today. Lots of Openreach vans showed up!
https://i.imgur.com/4d0jKvRl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/nWpKHhQl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/H6XdJ1nl.jpg

Just to let you know, your direct imgur links aren't working, when clicked on they take you to a page without the .jpg extension and report an error. If you add .jpg to the end of the url in the browser address bar manually they work fine.

Strange, the work fine for me (on iphone).

In reply to a post by flilot:

In reply to a post by ChemistDude:

So something strange happened today. Lots of Openreach vans showed up!
https://i.imgur.com/4d0jKvRl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/nWpKHhQl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/H6XdJ1nl.jpg

Just to let you know, your direct imgur links aren't working, when clicked on they take you to a page without the .jpg extension and report an error. If you add .jpg to the end of the url in the browser address bar manually they work fine.

Looks like they haven't been added to the post via the 'Link' option, just been pasted to the body of text which I suspect is causing this issue.

Cheers, I've re-added them using the 'Link' option.

In reply to a post by ChemistDude:

Cheers, I've re-added them using the 'Link' option.

Sorry but not fixed, I had to add the .jpg suffix to see yer snaps.

Well the survey took place last week, much quicker than I expected, I'm still awaiting the fixed quotation price. Cerberus have updated their messages to me and one of them states...

"Excess construction charge band supplied value 0 is not within the OR derived charge band value 5"

Does anyone know what the above means, I'm assuming from that message its going to be serious amounts of money required to get FoD?

What are the potential reasons for a desktop quote to come back as

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges

Number of premises passed for FTTP: Unknown (Subject to survey)

Which seems to be a bit odd to me. I can literally look out the window and calculate the latter. There are 11 lines off the pole including mine. Are Openreaches records so abysmal they don't have that information?

Then there is the distance to the aggregation node. Now the whole reason I put on for a desktop survey was I have a pretty good idea where that is. That is about a month ago I was walking along the street and there was an Openreach van parked up and a man busy winching the tops off a CW No.3 Silent Night type manhole cover. My interest peaked I decided to walk past on the way back and, well there was what looks (to me at leas based on a Google image search) like an aggregation node. As the crow flies the potential aggregation node is 103m (from Google maps) from my telegraph pole. Which is nice and short

The pole is at the bottom of my garden (well technically next doors as it is their side of the fence line. One can see the existing copper cables come down the pole, go over the wall in the grounds of the church and into the ground. If you pick the right satellite image from Google earth you can see a vegetation stress line in the grass coming from the pole which is highly indicative of trenching in the past and would suggest a fairly direct route to the aggregation node to me. Though I have no idea as to whether that is ducted or direct bury.

All kind of annoying, I guess I should not complain too much as I get something very close to a full 80/20 on my FTTC. Just work have said fulltime "agile" (aka mainly working from home) is to become an option and what with the village getting g.Fast (too far away to benefit) I don't see native FTTP arriving anytime soon and with it potentially being quite close if the desktop quote and been remotely reasonable (say under £10k) I would have gone ahead with a full survey, There was a bit of a hoo-ha last year when some 5 sparsely placed properties south of the village where quoted £22.7k for full fibre, ISPreview covered it.

At the moment I am not going to go ahead with the full survey till I have it in writing I can mostly work from home when the current situation is over.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

What are the potential reasons for a desktop quote to come back as

Estimated Build Cost: Unable to offer an estimate using desk survey tools. Onsite survey required to confirm charges

Number of premises passed for FTTP: Unknown (Subject to survey)

Which seems to be a bit odd to me. I can literally look out the window and calculate the latter. There are 11 lines off the pole including mine. Are Openreaches records so abysmal they don't have that information?

Quite possibly - I have no idea how old your house is but generally, overhead wires were the retrofit technology of their day and mean that the houses were built before the copper phone network. That was likely 60 years ago by the GPO and since then, it's been BT then Openreach. In the GPO days, there wasn't much underground plant and record keeping wasn't as rigorous. The network will have been extended and modified with potentially underground (direct or ducted) as well as overhead.

What you can see from your window is what Openreach will gather on the survey.

Even if you are close to the aggregation node and there is ducting in place, the likely *minimum* cost for FTTPoD is in the ballpark of £4,000+VAT. You can see the range of post-survey costs which forum users have reported here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QFkK1sLBFQjl...

Only a few got under £4,000, and these were early quotes from 2018. I'd set your expectations at £8,000, and if it's less than that you will be pleasantly surprised.

If you would be happy to spend that amount of money to get FTTPoD, then risking £250 is a relatively small gamble.

As for why "unable to offer an estimate": I would expect that due to poor records, they can't tell without a survey whether the existing path is ducted or direct buried.

Well for those that are interested to know I've now received my fixed FTTPoD quotation:-

Desktop Survey £15,500 + vat

Actual Quote £11,882 (+£2376.40 vat) makes a total to pay of £14,258.40

I gambled that the quote would have been less than £10k in total but sadly this hasn't paid off.

Notes
The node is thought to be approximately 1000m away.
Desktop survey in January 2019 was £14,100 + vat (hence my budget for this year)
A total of 12 premises passed.