You have to pay them £300 before they will fill in the amount on the blank cheque

Inflation: £325+VAT nowadays

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Canonbury, London. A month or two ago I noticed on the BT wholesale checker that FTTPoD had suddenly become available for our property. We have only ever had available an EO copper service from Openreach and a pretty pathetic sub 20 Mbps ADSL2 service. We were not in any of their FTTP build plans until at least 2025...

So for shiz and giggles, on 8 November I went through Cerberus for a desktop quote for FTTPoD, not expecting to hear back for another month or so and probably with an astronomic build figure. But I thought nothing ventured etc.

Separately Hyperoptic had notified us, possibly around 6 months ago, that they were now 'available' and so I had arranged for them to put in a service. They were here on the 12th doing a pre-install site survey / recc'y. When they had the footway chamber open, there had been an Openreach CBT installed, possibly some time in the last few months. Apparently CBTs had been installed in chambers along the entire street, according to the Hyper guys who had been trying to pull their fibre in.

A week or so later, on the 20th I had noticed an article and related thread over at ISPreview that our area was spelled as as one the London areas currently in FTTP build, as noted in their Dec 2024 UK FTTP Broadband Build Plan.

Interestingly on the same day I received back that desktop FTTPoD quote from Cerberus - and predictably it was, staggering, at a mere £9,900 - but even more intriguingly the premises passed figure was a very high 24. Now of course I knew from first hand evidence and their own published plan, that they ALREADY have built here anyway! So something perhaps is not quite right / healthy in Openreach database-land me thought.

Anyway a few more searches on the BT Wholesale Checker, revealed that there was definitely no native FTTP available at our address (yet anyway!). However a few surrounding searches revealed that our neighbours two house away, actually *did* have FTTP available to order.

OK too much - there was definitely an OR database delay / muddle up going on here. So dutifully filled out the Availability Checker form yesterday. Having received the standard 'thanks for your enquiry' email, I did not expect *any* real reply for at least a few weeks...

Imagine my surprise when an email arrived just after 1pm today, Christams Day, with the following update from Fibre Customer Service at Openreach:

"Hello Sean,

Thanks for your recent enquiry.

I have looked into this, and the fibre network has been built in your area but there is an error in our records which is preventing you from placing an order. I’m now in the process of correcting this for you.

I need to associate your address to the nearby fibre equipment. It will take us about a week to complete this and you should then be able to place an order. I will update you as soon as our systems reflect this.

I’ve got all of your details, so shouldn’t need anything else before coming back to you. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Kind regards

Divya Divya
Fibre enquiries
Infrastructure solutions customer service
Openreach

Web: openreach.co.uk"

Some six hours later and we now have Openreach FTTP available to order, according to the BT Checker!

So there you have it. An unexpected Christmas pressie from Opnreach 😂

Merry Christmas to all 🎄🎅

lucky you

Edited by adslmax (Fri 27-Dec-24 21:44:13)

In reply to a post by burble:

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

Not at all. It was aimed at the OP after reading this.

A month or two ago I noticed on the BT wholesale checker that FTTPoD had suddenly become available for our property.

I meant that this is the first thing that struck my mind how the BT wholesale checker would suddenly show FTTPoD for his property when I've always noticed this showing up in all postcodes over the years.

I've gone through dozens of postcodes and all of them will show FTTPoD as available. Indeed the MDU factor won't apply for you as you live in a village. But the checker is generic and doesn't distinguish between an address that is a house or a residential block so it will throw as available.

This is important for other viewers to know as some might mistakenly believe that they can pay the FTTPoD quote thinking they'll get the service even when they don't live in an individual house. Housing authority may still refuse the wayleave despite giving permission for other altnets.

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 😂

Imagine if you had paid £9900 for FTTPoD and then a week or a month later you get the very same email telling you that you can now order FTTP? Instead of being happy, you'll end up being very much depressed that you've lost all that money!

Then you'll be trying to get the refund of this arguing that it isn't fair that you lost all that money when it came so shortly after paying this amount.

That's the point of this FTTPoD thing being pretty much irrelevant for the vast majority of people. Over the years I've had people tell me to sell my flat in Central London and buy a house somewhere in Kingston Upon Thames, etc etc. With some saying it was not commercially viable. Well, I knew that was nonsense as I knew the whole problem was with my authority not granting the wayleave as every other property nearby had FTTP.

Even if theoretically I could get FTTPoD by paying that hefty sum, It would be a major injustice and a personal defeat! If due to some lousy management I had to shell out £9900 to get FTTPoD. I'd rather spend a fraction of that amount and take the authority to court, that would be more justifiable.

Nevertheless, waiting patiently meant it was only a matter of time for getting FTTP available by one of the altnets. Whether in the long term they'll be stable or not is another matter. The worst case scenario is that they'll be bought out by the bigger fish.

FTTC probably did not become available for you as EO Line was too expensive to upgrade especially as you've said the MDU doesn't apply for you making the upgrade more expensive for Openreach. In my case I've had to wait for over 6 years since 2013 for it to finally be available in Oct 2019. Plus we had major problems with connection drop-outs under ADSL. 2-5 times a day something that was a problem regardless of what ISP I signed up to. But I would still not pay for FTTPoD even if it was possible because I think that wouldn't have been fair anyway.

There's another residential building near us owned by same management EastendHomes, Cityscape Apartments and they also don't have FTTC! It was originally planned and then it was cancelled. No amount of persuasion was going to help convince authority to grant permission for FTTP. It was only a few years later when New UK Law Passed to Spread Gigabit Broadband into Big Buildings Friday, Mar 5th, 2021. That was the turning point. Now we have Community Fibre and VM Nexfibre and I believe it is only a matter of time when Openreach FTTP will also come. What seemed like an almost impossible thing to get has now become spontaneous.

There was never any serious risk of me splashing out £9K for FoD here. Hence my "So for shiz and giggles..." opener in the second paragraph of my OP. In some ways I was actually surprised that they returned a desktop quote, with a figure attached.

As said, this is not my first rodeo with FoD. Having gone through the quite torturous process in Suffolk near enough 6 years ago. I pretty well know the scores on the doors, timescale, costs / payback. There is no logical way it would make sense here, now. Please make no mistake I'm not that naive.

Perhaps I genuinely missed that FTTPoD was in fact listed on my address entry in the wholesale checker, or indeed became so some point, as a global change or otherwise. We've never had FTTC and historically FTTPoD was never on the record - shame I didn't screen shot it. Anyhow that's beside the point.

Quite probably the only reason I discovered this all was due to a Hyperoptic biz install I had booked in, since that was advertised as available. Thus the "holy cow there are Openreach CBTs in chambers all along the street" moment when those lads were trying to pull their fibre in. Who knew? Well clearly not me. Probably not many/any of the neighbours and we certainly wouldn't have known from the Wholesale or Openreach checker records. Meanwhile it's still (or was) possible to get FoD quotes (and technically accept them...though they'll doubtless get rejected after you've paid your non-refundable deposit). I think that was the key point I was trying to get over.

Anyway good luck in your endeavours getting FTTP. Peace and goodwill for the New Year ✌️🕊️

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Quite probably the only reason I discovered this all was due to a Hyperoptic biz install I had booked in, since that was advertised as available. Thus the "holy cow there are Openreach CBTs in chambers all along the street" moment when those lads were trying to pull their fibre in. Who knew? Well clearly not me. Probably not many/any of the neighbours and we certainly wouldn't have known from the Wholesale or Openreach checker records.

As I've posted before, notification of availability seems very poor in some cases.
When our FTTP infrastructure was installed the only people informed where BT customers, One household near us only knew about 2 years after.
In fact going back to FTTC, a sticker on the cabinet saying "Superfast available here" isn't much use when the cabinet is quite some distance from people who might not even go past it, as is the case with our cabinet.

That was a nice surprise it gives you another option should you ever want to take it up

In reply to a post by burble:

As I've posted before, notification of availability seems very poor in some cases.
When our FTTP infrastructure was installed the only people informed where BT customers, One household near us only knew about 2 years after.

Ours, was weird, a few who had contacted OR, found out about a week later than I knew that we were gonna get FTTP. OR basically phoned me to explain the change of dates had been approved and now a new network build would be done. But if we hadn't had the mass of OR vans i think most wouldn't have known fibre was in the village.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I meant that this is the first thing that struck my mind how the BT wholesale checker would suddenly show FTTPoD for his property when I've always noticed this showing up in all postcodes over the years.

I've gone through dozens of postcodes and all of them will show FTTPoD as available. Indeed the MDU factor won't apply for you as you live in a village. But the checker is generic and doesn't distinguish between an address that is a house or a residential block so it will throw as available.

This is important for other viewers to know as some might mistakenly believe that they can pay the FTTPoD quote thinking they'll get the service even when they don't live in an individual house. Housing authority may still refuse the wayleave despite giving permission for other altnets.

Historically, FTTPoD has not been available for:

1. Properties not served by an FTTC cabinet
2. Properties which are MDUs

Rule (1) was intended to exclude properties where the FTTP network was nowhere nearby, but in practice it also excluded EO lines. It appears this is why the property in question did not show FTTPoD available.

This rule was relaxed in March 2022 - announced Nov 2021, reference here.

However, just as when FTTPoD was increased from 300/50 to 1000/120 before that, Openreach didn't go round all the properties in their database and correct them. The record is only updated later on, when they happen to be updating all the properties in a given area for some other reason.

This is why people have observed FTTPoD changing from 330/50 to 1000/120 a few days before FTTP becomes available: database updates in their area are underway.

In this particular case, it appears the database record was recently touched for some reason, causing FTTPoD to change from "unavailable" to "available". But in practice, FTTPoD could have been ordered since 19th Mar 2022.

Case (2), no FTTPoD for MDUs, still applies AFAIK - for the reasons you state about wayleaves etc. If the checker shows it as available, then it will be rejected either at desktop survey or field survey.

Edited by candlerb (Sat 28-Dec-24 13:29:18)

Wonder if there's something intentional about OR sending these sort of emails on Christmas Day? Here was the one that I received: https://i.imgur.com/jmvAiL1.png - 9am Christmas Day!

(And yes, 4 years later, they've still not come up our street...)