In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by LordVader:

But will I be able to order 500mb/1gb fibre from other providers after when it's swaps to native FTTP

It swaps to native FTTP as soon as it goes live.

You could order 1Gb as a 2nd service from another provider immediately after your fibre goes live.

After your minimum 12 months with Cerberus you can migrate to any FTTP provider that is available to your address, at any speed that is available.

Ok thanks for clearing that up. Its 4 properties including mine, them lucky sods will get my expensive FTTP free if they want it.

I have asked them if they was happy with there 30/35mb broadband and all 3 houses couldn't even tell me what speed there modem is connected at! So cant seem them upgrading to FTTP anyway

If you do migrate away from Cerberus after 12 months and you move to a CP that doesn’t use BT Wholesale for the backhaul etc (for example TalkTalk or TalkTalk Biz) then Cerberus may try charging you an FTTP cease fee of £30+VAT. Check your agreement with them, but mine had no provision for them to charge this and they credited it when challenged.

I wouldn't hold out hope for speedy progress from OR...

They are absolutely useless.
Since I paid my £10K in January, they spent 4 months planning. Some minor civils work was supposed to happen in May, didn't get done. Absolutely no explanation given despite Cerberus asking for updates/clarification weekly. It was then finally rebooked for 2 weeks ago and unsurprisingly again didn't happen. Have got a completely unintelligible response from OR, with no updated date in sight:

"Latest detail that High Level Escalation are aware of is that the Traffic Management was booked for 13/07 - 15/07. Contractor portal does not show any delays or further notes. Regional Jeopardy Rep has added separate note mentioning 25/07. It is not clear from note if this is the actual task completion date or if the Traffic Management was delayed.
He has just been on a conference call with Openreach FOD lead and your order was discussed. Patch Lead is to investigate further and provide accurate update on progress of this task."

God knows how many levels of escalation there are in OR, it seems to go to a higher level escalation team each week.

I know this isn't unusual but find it quite shocking that that a service being sold to the public costing in the order of tens of thousands of pounds is allowed to run in this way. Decent communication at least would solve many of the problems. It's far more frustrating to be told something is going to happen and then it doesn't (accepted issues occur, but an explanation would be nice!).

I've written to OR (through cerberus) to complain about their poor communication. Unsurprisingly haven't got a response...

Rant over!

Should have gone for Starlink...

Unfortunately that’s par for the course. Our FoD order took almost 11 months to get installed. That was three years ago in a rural location that was almost exclusively overhead feed from the Ag Node, but small pockets of ducting on the run. Other folks have had FoD installs that take over a year to get done. There’s not much that can be done I’m afraid. It will take as long as it will take.

Just to concur with others ours took about 9 months after giving the go ahead. The run was all underground with a couple of blockages. Overall with good organisation and willingness to get it done quickly ours could have all be done in a few weeks, blockages were cleared in a few hours as I saw the contractors do it, but it took about 3 months before they were out doing it! I asked the contractors about it and they said their lead time was a week or less from being booked and no issues getting permission from the council, could be same day as residential road with no through traffic and all pavement digs.

What you find is there are weeks and weeks where nothing happens, then a flurry of activity, you think you are getting somewhere, then another month or two with nothing happening. Updates from Cerberus never made much sense and when they did it was usually a couple of weeks out of date.

Nothing you do or complain about will likely make much difference to the speed things get done, it's done when it's done.

Aware that this is not unusual for a FOD deployment, it just seems extraordinary that it is just so disorganised and poorly communicated, and this is just the way it is.

If I paid any other company £10K+ for a project (and yes, this is pocket change in OR's world), I'd at least expect some sort of a plan from them.

Well at least Clive Selley got a CBE, they must be doing something right somewhere...

In reply to a post by bcsalt:

it just seems extraordinary that it is just so disorganised and poorly communicated

From the outside it certainly seems that way but I don't think its limited to just FTTPoD as a lot of BDUK rollouts seem to suffer in the same way from what I've seen. On the flip side the speed at which they do Fibre First locations seems to be at the other end of the spectrum in my opinion.

In reply to a post by E300:

Updates from Cerberus never made much sense and when they did it was usually a couple of weeks out of date.

Nothing you do or complain about will likely make much difference to the speed things get done, it's done when it's done.

I looked back at some of the updates I got from Cerberus, they were so coded as to be practically indecipherable. There was one towards the end of the build where it became obvious there was exchange work to do:

“ All external build has now been completed. We are currrently dealing with an issue with the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) mapping before this can be sent to commissioning.”

After spitting my coffee out, I replied the Cerberus chap what on earth “optical character recognition” had to do with the my FTTP order…he went back to Openreach and clarified a week or so later it was actually Optical Consolidation Rack! Thankfully the comedy was all done not too long after that.

Our order was blocked for nearly three months pending the replacement of a 'D' pole, which serves two of the households on the joint order. Despite OR's contractor missing a couple of planned dates, OR took over the task themselves under direct labour, and the pole was replaced two weeks ago. It was really quite encouraging to see they lined the fibre people up to be present on the day, so they could mount the CBT onto the new pole at the same time, taking advantage of the cherry-picker being there. They also took care of the remaining jointing on the day.

According to the latest updates received through Cerberus, it's now just pending submission of light loss level testing, and then an audit. Really hoping we're nearing the finishing line.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I looked back at some of the updates I got from Cerberus, they were so coded as to be practically indecipherable. There was one towards the end of the build where it became obvious there was exchange work to do:

“ All external build has now been completed. We are currrently dealing with an issue with the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) mapping before this can be sent to commissioning.”

After spitting my coffee out, I replied the Cerberus chap what on earth “optical character recognition” had to do with the my FTTP order…he went back to Openreach and clarified a week or so later it was actually Optical Consolidation Rack! Thankfully the comedy was all done not too long after that.

That is hilarious but as you say confusing.

A question. does the desk quote, flag up any forthcoming work to install fttp in your street ?