It's worth doing, if only to rule out any database anomalies / NAD associations updates that may have failed to be made.

Get them to choose "I cannot get fibre but my neighbours can" in the tell us what your fibre enquiry is about drop-down list.

The thing is though, as far as I could remember I have always seen the checker show https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/...

Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range (Mbps) Availability Date FTTP Install Process
FTTP on Demand 330 50 -- Available

I have not come across a single postcode that wouldn't show FTTP on Demand as available unless it had native FTTP available already. Like in the case where FTTP is available it will show Multi Dwelling Unit Residential.

However, the checker will always show FTTPoD even if the premises is MDU. This means that you can't simply pay the FTTPoD quote and expect to get the service installed in your postcode address because the building management will still refuse to grant wayleave even if you've spent £9K. The building management doesn't care, as they aren't getting that slice of money.

You won't get this special favourtism and the checker showing it as available is useless unless you are living in an individual house.

Secondly, now that most places in London already have either 1 or 2 of several Altnets available from Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, G.Network and now Virgin Media nexfibre no one is going to bother to pay for FTTPoD, it's just not rational and doesn't make much sense.

FTTPoD was originally designed for people who had no hopes of getting any FTTP whether it be from the Altnets or from Openreach. People fork out this money when they see there's no hope of FTTP coming any time soon particularly in rural and remote areas.

I think most people will simply naturally wait for Openreach FTTP and if it's not coming any time soon but have Altnets available then they are ready to forget about Openreach FTTP altogether for the foreseeable future.

We now have Virgin Media nexfibre available since 18th of December not far from Christmas. Management for whatever reason decided to give wayleave for VM via nexfibre after having Community Fibre available. But no Openreach FTTP plan. This took 8 months for it to arrive here after the letter in April of this year. Interestingly, Community Fibre first showed up as live as of 03/12/2022 2 years ago. So both Virgin Media and Community Fibre went live for me in December.

At some stage native Openreach FTTP is bound to be available whether it be another few more years down the line. It makes sense that Openreach won't want to lose customers to the Altnets. The more Altnets that are getting available within a premise the more Openreach will feel concerned about this and it is very likely that Openreach themselves will try to rollout their service without any of us trying to beg them to do so.

I know a few postcodes around here that don't have any Openreach FTTC available and are only on EO Line. I was in the very same position myself until October 2019 when FTTC finally came. But with Altnets coming around I believe Openreach are more likely to upgrade those areas to FTTP. It is amazing what competition can do!

Cheers. None of that really applies to me. Certainly none of the MDU stuff.

Altnets are very much a mixed bag. Both in terms of coverage and long term business evolutionary stability. Community Fibre have been in network build pause for a long while now. They are not actively building and will only extend from their existing coverage for a business connection, which I've separately written about here. Hyper likewise are pretty fussy.

I'm pretty au fait with FoD, so it was never a realistic option here. Elsewhere in another date and time. Yes, as evidenced above. Now, in this place. Definitely no.

FTTC has never come to this little pocket of N1. Not sure why.

It used to be that FTTPoD was only available to properties which were already in FTTC coverage (therefore excluding EO lines) but they changed that a couple of years ago IIRC. But clearly they didn't go round updating the availability checker.

Incidentally, in the long run, Openreach will surely need a process to find properties like yours which have FTTP built but not able to order - otherwise there will be an area where they would like to switch copper off, but according to the database there are some properties which prevent this happening.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I have not come across a single postcode that wouldn't show FTTP on Demand as available unless it had native FTTP available already. Like in the case where FTTP is available it will show Multi Dwelling Unit Residential.

If that's in answer to my post, it's maybe my bad wording, they are listed as able to order FTTPoD, but not WBC FTTP, and as I posted they are closer to a CBT than our other property which is able to order WBC FTTP, and to my uneducated eye it looks a much easier install for them.
Due to the way the fibre was installed it comes past most of the houses in the village, along the same ducts as copper, to our end of village, all of those house are FTTPoD

Don’t worry it was a reply to my OP. Your neighbours situation could be a NAD association issue like ours recently. It’s worth getting them to follow up as noted.

There is some delicious irony in getting an email for a £9900 FTTPoD build quote and precisely a week later getting this email telling you can order FTTP now 😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Don’t worry it was a reply to my OP. Your neighbours situation could be a NAD association issue like ours recently. It’s worth getting them to follow up as noted.

There is some delicious irony in getting an email for a £9900 FTTPoD build quote and precisely a week later getting this email telling you can order FTTP now 😂

At least your desktop quote had an amount, Cerberus gave me a blank one 😂

But the bigger Q is, will you be getting OR light!!!!? 😂

Yes it was a completely accidental “discovery” (obv. not a clue to see from above ground).

I have no idea if this was just dumb luck in this respect, or how widespread or for how long these sorts of NAD association and build anomalies go unnoticed. Presumably they would have caught the error eventually…would however be quite interesting to know how they sweep the database or run QA, especially following fibre builds in an area.

Probably a question for @kitcat if he can answer publicly.

I would imagine they maintain databases of where they've built to and service takeup and a postcode-sized difference between built and service takeup would get noticed. Individual premises probably not, but that's where ISPs are meant to add value and you have to hope that someone operating at A&As level would be able to do a quick check of adjacent properties rather than only selling what the computer says is available.

Oh yeah blank = write any amount you wish. Like a blank cheque. £50 ought to cover it! 😅