It may be faster, it may be slower, but it’s safe to say you will learn the meaning of patience.

A lot depends on the state of the infrastructure, be that ducts, poles (or both!), between your premises and the node. Much of which (the known unknowns in the words of Donald Rumsfeld) unfortunately won’t be known until they begin.

Good luck!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

To give you some context and expectations; my original survey was ordered on 9 July (2018) was carried out on 4 September and final quote came through on 24 September. Service was finally all built and handed over on 10 June 2019.

My survey was ordered on 10 March 2018, it took place on 31st May 2018, final pricing received 26th June 2018, and went live 30th August 2019 - 17.5 months in total. However, hopefully that's a "worst case" scenario.

Thought I'd update on progress.

Firstly the good: the survey was really quick, and it happened within a week of me placing the order. I spoke with the surveyor the nearest node was less than 300m away, in a straight ducted line on the same road as me. I have a smallish flower bed between the road and the house where the current phone line is buried which may need some duct (around 5m), but other than that, all nice and simple apparently....

Now the bad: the quote came back at:

Labour £4,654.00
Contract Labour £0.00
Civils £1,780.00
Stores £3,370.00
BT Connection Charge £495.00
Deduction £-865.00
Field Survey charge paid £-250.00

Total £9,184.00 + VAT

Grand Total £11,020.80 (incl. VAT)

This was versus a desktop quote of £5,100 + VAT.

I know others had already said not to read much into the desktop quote, but I do think that is quite bonkers, particularly based on the simplicity of the install. From what the surveyor said we're not talking new poles, digging up roads, traffic management or anything like that which other posters have had in their installs.

I'm going to try and challenge the quote and see where that gets me, but I don't hold out much hope. £11k could pay for a lot of a different connectivity option. The main problem I face though is a full/waiting list FTTC cabinet (cabinet 12 Tulse Hill if anyone may have any insights on expansion plans), and no VM / altnet. Leased line could be an option to bridge a gap until something else comes along, but it's not a long term option, and less flexible.

What to do....

£11K buys a lot of gig EAD leased line service (as long as they cover ECCs) for the next 3 years!

Others have previously said on this board that there has been a noticeably hike in the price from FTTPoD surveys, I suspect that this is another one to add to that pile. There seems to be no correlation between what the Surveyor sees/tells you and the quote you are sent, I suspect something is going on behind the scenes that is causing all quotes to be high.

It sounds like a "we don't want your business" type of quote. Win win for Openreach. I presume they want to focus on rolling out the masses and not have the hassle or risk of FTTPoD anymore.

On linebroker, 200 on a 1gig bearer is £289 (excl. VAT) / month from Virgin on a 3 year contract. Add the VAT in, that is £12,484.80 over the 3 years.

For Cerberus, the 110/20 FTTPoD with VAT is £1,080 for the first year, then £576/yr on native FTTP for years 2 and 3 (assuming the same price for the 3 years).

That means £11,020.80 + £1,080 + £576 + £576 = £13,252.80

So £768 cheaper to get a leased line, but still spending the painful 10-11k from the FTTPoD quote, just spread over the 3 years.

Not really a slam dunk, just a different way of spending the same imo, but without native FTTP at the end.

I think you're right, it's very frustrating though. The process of desktop quote vs survey is totally unrelated then. IMO the purpose of a survey is *meant* to check whether there is something unexpected that couldn't have been seen from the desktop/record check that will make the original quote unviable. If openreach do want to disuade orders, I don't understand why they don't just increase the desktop quotes - £250 surveys aren't a money spinner...

Thanks for the feedback: spreadsheet updated. I've also separated out 2019 into its own summary section.

There are only 14 quotes from 2020 onwards, but of those, the median change from desktop to final price is 108.9%. That is, your final quote is now more likely to be higher than desktop, rather than less.

Meanwhile, the inter-quartile range for final quotes was £8,646 to £11,464 - a pretty narrow range.

After Openreach changed the pricing model in 2018, getting rid of distance bands and keeping prices reasonable at first to avoid complaints, they are now free to charge whatever they like.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 25-Mar-21 12:45:12)

It was a bit of a throw away remark....however it’s not complete nonsense.

The business case really depends when native FTTP could be delivered (with zero excess construction costs). So another way of looking at it is the stop gap price for service, until native FTTP is ready for delivery at which point the ECC are effectively zero for FTTP.

In the meantime a LL could deliver an SLA backed, non-contented, symmetric service that is 100% dedicated - usually with superior latency. There’s currently very small uplift from partial to full access bandwidth (the full size of the bearer) leased lines. I think BTNet for example are currently offering 1Gb for the price of 100M circuit. Then there is the provisioning time, which those of us that have experience FTTPoD know to be long and arduous.

Of course if ECC for leased line are equally horrific (you’re in the sticks) then back to square one.