In reply to a post by haydnwalker:

I'm not convinced that CityFibres network is going to be available to residential areas either (lots of central Doncaster has had access to CityFibres dark fibre for a while. now)

Cityfibre will cover both residential & business premises in Doncaster, making use of their dark fibre where necessary. For obvious reasons not every single home & business will be covered, they usually aim for around 80% coverage in each of their Gigabit cities.

Thanks for the Info Highland76 - I stand corrected

Hi All

Just an update, I have spoken to the Openreach contact and had a really good long chat, he was very helpful and we have been through several options to making this more feasible.

One of the main ideas now is to expand the original footprint and get an estimate based on the potentially the whole village as there are large areas of it that are fed by pole which would mean potentially a lot lower cost per premise.

If all the village are eligable for vouchers then it could bring the average cost down for areas like mine and hopefully more feasible.

We did also discuss the "demand led" type schemes, this may also kick in if we decided to try and enable the whole village as a project rather than just a small part of it.

Anyway, I will keep people posted on progress. I am glad to say it was a very helpful call with Openreach and they seemed to be helping as much as possible,

Thanks

T69

Great news. Would be interested to hear about your progress.

May I ask how long it took for Openreach to come back to you with an initial estimate? Think I read to allow 3 or more weeks. I'm just eager to get more details to share with neighbours (3 out of 10 addresses confirmed solid interest so far!).

Hi Slimj

Just short of 3 weeks for them to email me back.

Its not showing on my portal though but they have opened that up again so I can expand the footprint further.

I know someone mentioned before about adding in houses before you have confirmation of if they are interested to get an ideal of the quote for the work. The guy from OR said there was no problem with this at all and if can give you an idea of the cost before you start with the hard work door knocking.

So, thats what I am doing now, going through getting the address list for the whole village and dropping the lot in and then emailing him for a revised quote to be produced to see if its feasible.

Will keep you posted.

Thanks

In reply to a post by tikka69:

Just short of 3 weeks for them to email me back.

I know someone mentioned before about adding in houses before you have confirmation of if they are interested to get an ideal of the quote for the work. The guy from OR said there was no problem with this at all and if can give you an idea of the cost before you start with the hard work door knocking.

Thanks. It's been 3 weeks now for me, so assume I will hear further details very shortly!

I added the 10 address in for my area before speaking with the neighbours - I dropped letters in with everyone after submitting the data to Openreach. I've had positive responses from 5 addresses now (plus my direct neighbour, who doesn't have internet who I will persuade nicely in order to get the the extra voucher if required!) and they are pleased that someone has taken the initiative, once I have the ball park figures then I can speak to each house.

I had a desktop quote for FTTPoD of around £15k and I'm at the furthest point out of the 10 addresses, it's likely we'd need 2 or 3 CBTs to cover the 10 addresses, but joint boxes are already in the right places from a previous cable run from June 2019 so could probably be used - ducts should also be clear. Hoping the ballpark costs are 'reasonable' based on the above and that £35k in vouchers covers it all!

In reply to a post by slimj:

(plus my direct neighbour, who doesn't have internet who I will persuade nicely in order to get the the extra voucher if required!)

I presume that also means you'll pay for 12 months of FTTP service for them? By taking out the voucher, they are contractually required to take service.

The cheapest option I know is Aquiss. Their service has a 12-month contract, which will cost a total of £360 (40/2) or £408 (80/20).

Vouchers generally require a "step change" doubling of speed, so the 40M option only works if the previously available speed was less than 20M.

(EDIT: if they currently have a BT phone line, then you could pay the difference between their current service and BT Fibre 1 or 2. However that would require a 24 month contract, so could work out just as expensive. Also in 2 years time they may find it difficult to "downgrade" back to a standard PSTN service).

Edited by candlerb (Mon 02-Nov-20 10:36:21)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I presume that also means you'll pay for 12 months of FTTP service for them? By taking out the voucher, they are contractually required to take service.

Correct. And this is something I will discuss with them if the need arises (hoping it won't be required).

The 6 address fed from our pole are all on around 20Mbps/1Mbps (if lucky), so a 40 or 80Mbps package will suffice for all of us. Depending on pricing at the time, I'd probably opt for 80Mbps (or perhaps 160Mbps) as I don't really have much need for anything faster at the current time.

Hi,

Just an update from my side, I went ahead and have now added in the entire village of Auckley, excluding some streets up near the airport as to be honest that would just be too much to deal with.

There are now over 700 premises showing in the portal which are fed from 2 cabinets at present, the plan is then once I get the initial estimate back ( assuming its not millions ! ) is to then stir up interest via the local village facebook group and tell people all about it, in as simple terms as possible and if enough interest is shown maybe turn this into a demand led scheme with Openreach.

Large parts of the village are fed by pole so I am hoping the cost per premise will come down if a lot and offset the parts that are currently DIG and will need ducting, etc. The only issue might be convincing the people who are near the cabinets who get 70mb+ at present to upgrade to a 150mb fttp service.

From what I can tell all of the area is eligable for rural vouchers so I will keep people posted on how it goes !!

On a related note, I submitted a CFP quote request and 12 weeks later I've not heard a peep back from CFP. I've read about several people getting good prompt responses from CFP but it isnt always the case it appears.