FTTPoD - 5 years on!

While reading a thread on here recently, I was reminded that it's been over 5 years since placing my FTTPoD order with Cerberus. (My original username now shows as "deleted", I think because it was registered to my old Demon address which no longer exists - I'm still sore at Vodafone for that, I'd had it for 18 years and they nuked it.)

Anyway - I was one of the lucky ones with pricing, being quoted a five figure sum but ending up with something around £3,600. It was a gamble, but I took it...

...and five and a half years later, having had my connection live for the past 4, it's as good as ever. The 300Mbps connection was upgraded to 900Mbps, and I've switched to native FTTP (as I'm well outside the contract period - this halved the monthly fee!)

I've had several spam flyers in the letterbox over the past year, mostly from Sky, informing me that it's great news - I can get full fibre! I suspect my neighbours have had the same, and indeed Openreach have hooked up a pole in the neighbouring street - it still feeds off the CBT installed on the pole over the road. Talking of which, that pole is now very busy, with most of the 12 ports now in use. At the time of ordering I was given a discount based on 7 properties passed, but a quick check shows more than that are now connected!

The only thing that's gone wrong was recently, when I finally ditched the FTTC backup line which I'd kept - it was with Merula. They removed it a couple of weeks ago and it seems while fiddling around my FTTP connection was damaged - as the dreaded LOS light lit up on the fibre ONT. Cerberus were a bit puzzled and this was where it went wonky: I booked a day off work, then sat indoors only to find the engineer had been sent to a different county! Another day of leave booked and this time the engineer came (apologising for being 15 minutes late) and amongst other things I now have a new CSP outside. He said he'd never seen fibre run directly through the wall and terminated the way mine was... it was so old! It's only four years old, and it seems Openreach have been recruiting lots of new engineers in recent years.

The upshot is that my copper line is now disconnected entirely (which has knocked out the seldom-used landline), but I've received an email from BT saying that as I no longer have broadband I can have £14 a month off my bill. I think I'll take the money off rather than having a working copper line...

All in all, it's been well worth it. It was a gamble to pay so much with no firm date for "proper" FTTP in mind, but it turns out I won the gamble - just recently Openreach's rollout data has gone from 2024 to "by 2026", with "no firm date" set. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath waiting, and at the very worst I'll have had 5 years of something I'd otherwise not been able to have.

(And as for the neighbours - I don't think most realise just how lucky they are!)

Dare I ask what your old username was back then ?

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

Still none the wiser 🤷‍♂️

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

I think it's now (if it wasn't before) soooooo incredibly eye wateringly expensive that most folks don't bother. That and the commercial rollout is steaming along at pace.

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 01-Oct-23 20:51:31)

Hi Retron Mk1 or is that Mk2...I do remember your posts 😎👍 Welcome back!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I thought it was obvious that it was "retron"! Welcome back.

I'm in a similar boat to you: FTTPoD ordered over 5 years ago, up and running for four - delivered September 2019. That was rather good timing for covid.

If people are still getting surveys for FTTPoD, they're not reporting it on this forum. I haven't updated the spreadsheet for ages.

I think it's now (if it wasn't before) soooooo incredibly eye wateringly expensive that most folks don't bother. That and the commercial rollout is steaming along at pace.

Quite - I was quoted well into 6 figures.

Luckily another full fibre provider is now building - and OR are also building my exchange out - so it may well be a case of waiting for buses...

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

I was quoted well into 6 figures.

So over £100,000? bloody hell!!!!

I had a blank desktop quote - which was funny..

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

I was quoted well into 6 figures.

So over £100,000? bloody hell!!!!

Closer to £150K than 100!