They'd be silly not to follow up areas where they are paying other providers to clear their ducts out and install their own services, knowing the ducts are all open and ready to go.

What's incorrect about it?
They are following behind Alt-Nets up and down the country.

What his post said was that an Altnet presence would prompt Openreach to build there too …. and this is patently not true. Two local areas near here have heavy Altnet roll outs, one has two, the other three … and I still don’t see some hastened roll out by Openreach. It’s just a convenient theory.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Openreach will often build FTTP when they sense a threat of competition.

This is incorrect.

What's incorrect about it?
They are following behind Alt-Nets up and down the country.

It would be negligent of them not to target areas where rivals are building their network.

An area is far more likely to be selected for FTTP by Openreach if an Alt-Net picks that particular area.

It is both right and wrong.

At a national level one would expect Openreach to respond to competition which would result in them tending to build where other networks are gaining market share.

At a specific property level it means nothing, Openreach will not care whether or not they have competition at a specific property.

I know there has been claims made previously including from a regular poster in Hereford, the gap there between Zzoomm and Openreach going live wasn't very long so unless Openreach have a crack team of Ninja Warriors ready to fast track every area where altnets are rolling out nationwide I can't see how they can get it done so quickly as a simple CFP or FTTPoD takes 18 months.

Edited by deleted (Thu 23-Feb-23 21:39:24)

It also works the other way.

We've had Openreach FTTP in my area for almost 2 years now, admittedly we are an island in a sea of copper, and two Altnets have recently built up to the end of my road.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

It’s just a convenient theory.

Of course its all guesswork, every network operator is commercial and their rollout plans are confidential to certain staff.

Its fun to speculate that OR want to maintain their income, perhaps focusing on areas where there is little Virgin Media or AltNet activity today, or where there is a lot of AltNet activity (with no VM)... but might deprioritise areas where they've lost business to VM in the last 15/20 years.

Who knows?!

Who knows?!

Exactly.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

What's incorrect about it?
They are following behind Alt-Nets up and down the country.

What his post said was that an Altnet presence would prompt Openreach to build there too …. and this is patently not true. Two local areas near here have heavy Altnet roll outs, one has two, the other three … and I still don’t see some hastened roll out by Openreach. It’s just a convenient theory.

I didn't say it would definitely happen just because of an Altnet presence but there's a good chance if the area had a massive turnover of customers then Openreach will naturally want to take action.

It cannot be viewed as black and white of-course. If an Altnet is available to only a handful of few houses in a village or town that won't prompt Openreach to build there too.

Also I believe that Openreach will assess the situation based on how many customers have joined the Altnet.

You mention those heavy altnet roll outs, what are they and what are their prices? If these Altnets are too expensive, more expensive than what FTTC has to offer and there aren't that many customer take-up then Openreach may ignore the area.

It all depends on the situation. I look at many residential buildings here in Central London where I live where 90+% of all the flats within the building have signed up to Hyperoptic.
How I know this? Well I just look at a particular postcode and look up at a random address and I see "It looks like we’re already there" "Hyperoptic is already up and running at that address."

Of-course Community Fibre and other altnets don't give me that information. I do not know how many have taken up Community Fibre yet in my building since it went live in December. However, I can see my FTTC connection crosstalk seemed to have been relieved in the last month and my connection speed has returned back to 80Mbps! Not sure if this is a coincidence, but I've been a customer with BT for 7 months and my router connection sync previously was at 75Mbps on average.

I'd like to think that customers in my area have joined Community Fibre and my cabinet has less congestion/crosstalk.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

What's incorrect about it?
They are following behind Alt-Nets up and down the country.

What his post said was that an Altnet presence would prompt Openreach to build there too …. and this is patently not true.

It isn't what he says at all.

Openreach will often build FTTP when they sense a threat of competition.

The key word being often

If you're arguing that Openreach never react to competition and don't ever modify/bring forward plans in an area due to an Alt-Net rollout then I don't know what to say to you.

Nobody said they always do, or definitely will, follow an Alt-Nets plans but without a doubt in many areas they do exactly that.
They would be negligent not to do so.

Point taken …

my gripe was with the posters implication that Openreach would hasten to roll out where Altnet’s had already begun …. this isn’t the case, but would make for a good story if it were true.

The fact is, Altnet’s and Openreach, Virgin, uncle Tom Cobbly and all, are all rolling out wherever they see fit … this overlaps in some places, and not others. They are all beholden to shareholders, and all keen to make a profit. There will be a surfeit in some areas, and an absence in others.