In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Not usual on a single premises order. Just the build charges.

The BT connection charge of £495 is standard - I've seen it in lots of previous posted FTTPoD quotes. I haven't seen the Cerberus commissioning charge before though.

Not with Cerberus for oD unless something changed recently.

Evening all, ,
I paid £300 for a n FTTPoD survey 5th August. I went down this route because im fed up with the reliability of my FTTC. I get 80mbps down,, which is fine, no real issues with bandwidth, but jesus am i fed up of disconnects. Zen are blaming REIN for the disconnects so i cant even be bothered discussing it. Anyway, that sent me down the fibre route, no electrical interference there.

Got my build costs back as below from Amvia anyways. I figure this cost at leasts gives me a sustainable monthly fee after my intial year for what I expect will be a solid connection.

Would be keen to hear how people find Amvia for reliability? Service?
Is their managed router any good? Id happily manage my own, but they dont give a discount if you dont take it anyway. Probs throw a Palo Alto or Fortigate in as i unerstand its just a gigabit ethernet presentation.
Does FTTP disconnect ever?

MATERIALS TOTAL
Labour £4,879.00
Stores £3,240.00
Contract Labour £0.00
Civils £750.00
Civils Stores -
Tree Cutting -
Connection Charge £495.00
Total Charges (excl. VAT) £ 9,364.00
PP Deduction £ (900.00)
Survey Fee £ (250.00)
Total Charges Payable (excl. VAT) £ 8,214.0


Like i say, thoughts appreciated.

Touch wood no real disconnects in 15 months, even after a local lightning strike back fed through structured cabling, literally fried two network switches, smoked the router the ONT actually survived, albeit its Ethernet port was severely [censored] and simply wouldn’t connect/negotiate beyond 100 Mbit/sec. A new ONT arrived the next day, problem sorted and the service did still work whilst everything else got nuked by the strike!

Speed re-grade was fudged up by BTW this last June, it took 3 and a bit weeks to action instead of 24 hours, but no outage otherwise.

So on the whole extremely reliable. My worst fear is a local tree branch takes out the overheads, as I’m 30+ pole spans from the ag. node.

I like the sound of that level of reliability.

My route is underground to the main road from the house, and as such as i presume fully underground to the agg node and beyond from there.

I’ve almost got my head round the costs, just looking to hear that the service will match my expectations i guess! Who’s your isp?

In reply to a post by n3work3d:

Would be keen to hear how people find Amvia for reliability? Service?

Amvia resell the Cerberus FTTPoD installation, although I don't know if they use Cerberus' IP transit or provide their own.

I'm on Cerberus (direct) and it has been rock solid for me over the last 12 months. It stays up continuously, definitely for weeks at a time at least - however I've just had a regrade which bounced the PPPoE session so I can't tell you how long it was up before then.

Presentation is ethernet with PPPoE. I use baby jumbo frames (1508 MTU) so that after the 8 bytes of PPPoE header, I still get a standard 1500 MTU. They didn't supply a router.

It's surprising that your FTTC is getting a full 80Mbps and yet frequently disconnecting. I presume you tried an analogue phone on the test socket, and weren't hearing any crackle?

Out of interest, what was your desktop quote prior to survey? Always interested to see how they compare.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Yeah, the FTTC line “should” be solid right, speeds are great, but as a network engineer, it scares the balls out of me when it drops right as im about reload a core switch somewhere! I need that reliability for the work i do. Its been [censored] for the 2 years ive lived here. Openreach have fixed two ‘faults’ during this time, re-wired the external entry, and something down the wire somewhere, and weve checked everything! Yeah, the line is clean. Now Zen are blaming REIN, and ive been down that road in work and it aint pretty.

Interesting about Amvia, ill ask the questions about their network, what they’re reselling.

Didn’t do a desktop quote, i was actually planning on a leased line before i spoke to Amvia about FTTPoD!

Final quote for 6 premises:

Labour £8,804.00

Contract Labour £0.00

Civils £750.00

Stores £3,704.00


Total Build Charge £13,258.00



Pre Order Connection Charge

Number of orders 6

BT Connection Charge £495.00

Cerberus Commissioning Charge £500.00


Total Connection Charge £5,970.00


Deduction(Survey) £-250.00

Deduction(Premises passed) £-4,850.00


Total Charge £14,128.00

This is against a desktop quote of £6400 for one property (all prices exclude VAT). I think they have miscalculated the premises passed deduction; they have listed 13 addresses, 6 of which are in the order but have still given £50 x 13 in addition to £700 x 6.

We are not going ahead. As I mentioned earlier, the BT and Cerberus connection charges which come to £1000 per address had not previously been mentioned and I cannot find any reference to them on the Cerberus website.

Does FTTP disconnect ever?

FTTP doesn't drop the connection, I've had my FTTPoD almost 10 months now and the ONT has been powered constantly and you just forget its there. That's not to say there haven't been drops, there has been a few but they've always happened around 2 or 3 in the morning at the ISP level as part of maintenance.

Of course a faulty FTTP connection could cause random drops, but given the nature of fibre it generally works or it doesn't and drop outs would be taken more seriously than resyncs and noise on VDSL, which is just part and parcel of xDSL.

As others have said Amvia are a reseller for Cerberus and Cerberus have been absolutely reliable, no speed issues or latency problems so far and their support have been really good when I've had things I've needed to check or do.

What I would say is this. The build process can be very frustrating, in my case FTTP could have been in and operational in a few weeks, but between each bit of work weeks and months go by with nothing happening, yet they have your cash. A blockage that was cleared in 60 minutes added about 5 weeks delay (the sub contractor who turned up to unblock it said they were only notified to do the job a week before, so 4 weeks were lost at Openreach doing the paper work) then weeks waiting for OpenReach to come back and pull the final bit of fibre through, then they are here 10 minutes and say it is still blocked and delays of weeks continue, only to find it wasn't blocked after all! This was all at the end of a cul-de-sac so it wasn't as though road closures or traffic control was an excuse.

In my case it took around 8 months after placing the order, but longer waits are common, so assume 12 months to get it, and that puts you 12 months closer to maybe getting FTTP for free as part of Openreach's network upgrade. So it is gamble, you might be waiting another 4, 5 or 10 years for FTTP for free, but it might arrive for everyone else 12 months after having your on demand completed, which would be annoying!

A leased line would be up and running quicker, would have better SLAs, and over a 3 year contract will cost something close to the same cost for FTTP on Demand without the upfront investment. FTTP on Demand at £8K only starts becoming cheaper after the first 3 years or so. Could you have native FTTP in 3 years? If only we had crystal ball

As a network engineer I come across the perils of Openreach on a regular basis, currently working at a company doing SDWAN, and they're putting 2 x BTnet leaased lines in about 20 sites... I know what im getting myself into if i proceed with the order.

You're right on the gamble, i could do this and it becomes native at some point anyway. Is there any way of finding this out? The other thought i had is that, me placing the order maybe brings forward any plans to bring native fttp to the area? Is that a thing?

Virgin Media actually dug across where my street (a small cul-de-sac) connects to the main road, but because I have a different postcode to the main street, they wont come up my driveway which is only a 100metres maybe, openreach have underground ducts right up to my house from the main road so I assumed VM could use these as part of that ofcom initiative where they have to share them? Ive pestered VM numerous occasions to look into this for me, but alas, no positive outcome.

I did price up the leased line, and yeah, over 3 years there aint much in it. I like the idea of a sustainable monthly cost with FTTP as I couldn't afford a leased line indefinitely.

Cerberus