You'd rather gift money to a multibillion pound corporation than a local altnet? I'm the other way around - especially in the case of BT Group plc

The "local altnets" are mostly owned or bankrolled by large infrastructure investment funds. That's where the profits, if any, will end up.

I'm now in that position, but the differential cost was massive. Trooli are doing our village and they've just dug up my front garden / driveway to install new ducting to get to the pavement. Our telephone lines are underground and look to be directly buried / there's no existing ducting to re-use. That will be true for almost everyone in my street I think. Cost to me, £780. Yes, that's not for the average consumer I suppose. I just don't see Openreach doing new ducting for everyone on the street anytime soon? Previously I paid £250 just for a survey for FTTPoD. That quote was £11k or something (but will have included all the associated works from the node).

At that reasonable level I'd certainly consider it. If you spread that over a 2 year contract it's an extra £32.50 per month, and if the service isn't great, you could write it off. It's an order of magnitude cheaper than FTTPoD.

When Openreach eventually come around to do FTTP, they could decide to install poles - which may upset some residents!

In reply to a post by hunnymonster:

You'd rather gift money to a multibillion pound corporation than a local altnet? I'm the other way around - especially in the case of BT Group plc

I think you using the word 'gift' sets the theme of your post, those financial backers of some of the altnets are not local to anyone here in the UK.

In reply to a post by Deft:

Trooli are doing our village and they've just dug up my front garden / driveway to install new ducting to get to the pavement. Our telephone lines are underground and look to be directly buried / there's no existing ducting to re-use. That will be true for almost everyone in my street I think. Cost to me, £780. Yes, that's not for the average consumer I suppose. I just don't see Openreach doing new ducting for everyone on the street anytime soon?

Hi, just trying to understand your scenario, so you are getting Trooli installed, are you doing this as a collective with all your neighbours and each are paying £780 towards the over cost of getting it to your village or is the £780 purely for digging up your front garden?

Just my front garden. Trooli swallow a bit of the total front garden dig cost too. Looks like they've done all the other fibre stuff around our high street and some side roads. Our village is a weird mix of telephone polls and underground, mostly because there are newer roads from the 60s which seem to have been done underground. I'm in a semi-detached so I guess my neighbour could re-use my ducting for free. I didn't speak to them about it but I'll let them know once it's all running.

In reply to a post by Deft:

Just my front garden. Trooli swallow a bit of the total front garden dig cost too. Looks like they've done all the other fibre stuff around our high street and some side roads. Our village is a weird mix of telephone polls and underground, mostly because there are newer roads from the 60s which seem to have been done underground. I'm in a semi-detached so I guess my neighbour could re-use my ducting for free. I didn't speak to them about it but I'll let them know once it's all running.

Thanks so much for your reply, I think when Openreach get round to doing your property they will leave a Toby box at your boundary, should at any point someone in your property order FTTP they will arrange for civils to come around and get some form of ducting between the Toby box and your property front wall at no cost to you unless you have an extremely large driveway.

Edited by deleted (Fri 09-Sep-22 16:13:00)

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. I just can't imagine they'll be bothered to duct 20-30 front gardens of varying aggravation. I also guess most people aren't so bothered about FTTP that orders will be flooding in on principal, even in 2025-2026, but I could be wrong.

In reply to a post by hunnymonster:

You'd rather gift money to a multibillion pound corporation than a local altnet? I'm the other way around - especially in the case of BT Group plc

I'm with Virgin Media at the moment and I have no choice of service over the connection, its the VM ISP or disconnect. I would gladly pay for a higher level of quality service, but there is no option on this infrastructure. (The openreach FTTC slowed down due to crosstalk where upload was too slow for my usage).