In reply to a post by brisy:

Adding another datapoint here:

My desktop survey (terraced house in north London) was £11,100.00 ex VAT, and the confirmed build charge was pretty significantly lower at £8,667.00 ex VAT.

One question I have is, this is for 300mb FTTP with Cerberus. Is there possibility for upgrade to gigabit later down the line (by switching ISP), or is there some hardware limitation that caps the fiber installation at 300mb?

Your line is just like native FTTP after it is installed with a 12 month contract locking you in at 300/30 but the line itself is capable of 1000/220, so after the first 12 months you can take any service offered by any ISP for any speeds up to the maximum. I think Cerberus allow you to take a faster speed now initially on FTTP on Demand although of course that is more money per month, but means you don't have to wait 12 months to get something faster.

In reply to a post by brisy:

One question I have is, this is for 300mb FTTP with Cerberus. Is there possibility for upgrade to gigabit later down the line (by switching ISP), or is there some hardware limitation that caps the fiber installation at 300mb?

The only limitation would be if you are connected to an ECI OLT at the exchange, which only applies to about 5% of FTTP lines and would limit you to 300. Otherwise you can go up to 1000/115 or even 1000/220 (expensive), either by regrading with Cerberus or by switching ISP, after 12 months.

Cerberus FTTPoD now offers a choice of four initial speeds, including 300/30 for £90 per month and 450/75 for £115 per month (+VAT).

For me, 300/50 is the sweet spot, but unfortunately still not available as an initial speed. I've just regraded to this after completing my initial 12 months, which means the price has dropped to £55 per month. It would have been £80 per month for 450/75.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The only limitation would be if you are connected to an ECI OLT at the exchange, which only applies to about 5% of FTTP lines and would limit you to 300. Otherwise you can go up to 1000/115 or even 1000/220 (expensive), either by regrading with Cerberus or by switching ISP, after 12 months.

Is the theoretical limit of current Openreach FTTP infrastructure 1000Mb, or is there scope in the future to have 10Gb packages on the current equipment/infrastructure?

(Obviously not the ECI equipment as you've mentioned, hoping this isn't my situation).

In reply to a post by steveham:

Is the theoretical limit of current Openreach FTTP infrastructure 1000Mb, or is there scope in the future to have 10Gb packages on the current equipment/infrastructure?

(Obviously not the ECI equipment as you've mentioned, hoping this isn't my situation).

FTTP itself, the actual fibre isn't really the bottleneck, it is what is connected each end, and new technology and improvements means speeds can be increased. Currently Openreach use GPON, this is a shared network with your connection shared between all those enabled as part of your order, and typically in normal deployments between around 30 to 32 properties, but FTTP on demand will not usually enable that many. GPON supports 2.5Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up which is shared amongst everyone connected. Cleary if you have 32 people all with 1Gbps connections and all on line at the same time maxing those connections out no one will receive anywhere near that, but typically connections are not all maxing out at the same time.

The next upgrade is XG-PON which supports 10Gbit/s down and 2.5Gbit/s up, this is likely to be deployed in order to provide more capacity if 2.5/1.2 is not enough for a group of properties and there are problems with local congestion, rather than providing individuals with faster speeds, except perhaps for providing faster upload speeds for businesses. Also don't forget that most networks and Ethernet connections are still 1Gbit/s, so providing faster than 1Gbit/s is currently not a priority for residential use as most people could not take advantage of it.

I thing 1Gbit/s is going to be plenty for some time for most people.

Edited by E300 (Fri 18-Sep-20 16:56:54)

It should (hopefully) be quite a bit less than 5%, and shrinking everyday.

The last figure i read was less than 50,000 lines.

An Openreach spokesman said: "Only a tiny proportion of our FTTP footprint, covering less than 50,000 premises, is limited to 330Mbps download speeds – and we're constantly working on ways to upgrade and extend our network.

Going by OpenReach's current coverage figures it should be under 1.7%.

That's assuming OpenReach haven't swapped any ECI PON's reducing that figure, or on the flip side of that no further lines have been provisioned on ECI OLT's

In reply to a post by E300:

The next upgrade is XG-PON which supports 10Gbit/s down and 2.5Gbit/s up, this is likely to be deployed in order to provide more capacity if 2.5/1.2 is not enough for a group of properties and there are problems with local congestion, rather than providing individuals with faster speeds, except perhaps for providing faster upload speeds for businesses.

OpenReach appear to have skipped XG-PON completely and are currently trialling XGS-PON.
That's 10Gb/s down, 10Gb/s up.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

OpenReach appear to have skipped XG-PON completely and are currently trialling XGS-PON.
That's 10Gb/s down, 10Gb/s up.

That makes more sense to skip to XGS-PON, although I bet we still don't end up with symmetrical speeds being sold to us! Even with GPON there is no reason the upload speeds need to be as low as they are compared to the download, they could easily be half the download speed.

although I bet we still don't end up with symmetrical speeds being sold to us!

They're trialling 1000/1000 on XGS-PON

They will sell it, just expect a heavy premium on such services to protect their leased line revenue.
I don't expect 1gig symmetrical on residential services anytime soon

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

although I bet we still don't end up with symmetrical speeds being sold to us!

They're trialling 1000/1000 on XGS-PON

They will sell it, just expect a heavy premium on such services to protect their leased line revenue.
I don't expect 1gig symmetrical on residential services anytime soon

And yet Hyperoptic gives me 1Gbps symmetrical for £60/month:

https://ibb.co/3NKKQwC

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by E300:

The next upgrade is XG-PON which supports 10Gbit/s down and 2.5Gbit/s up, this is likely to be deployed in order to provide more capacity if 2.5/1.2 is not enough for a group of properties and there are problems with local congestion, rather than providing individuals with faster speeds, except perhaps for providing faster upload speeds for businesses.

OpenReach appear to have skipped XG-PON completely and are currently trialling XGS-PON.
That's 10Gb/s down, 10Gb/s up.

GPON and XGS-PON can operate simultaneously over the same fibre so any upgrades *could* be more ad-hoc / granular.

Indeed there was talk (pre COVID-19), perhaps wildly optimistically, from my CP that we could see symmetric plans emerge this year. Been totally shelved though...