Openreach, do they still refuse to talk to Joe Public? If so

It is now official i live in the slowest part of London for broadband 0.5mbits for some folks.
I'm ok right now and have Relish which gives me what i need speed wise, but a new development is going up and will KILL my speed to almost nothing so maybe looking to move back to normal adsl2, is there anyway i can chase up Openreach (OR) to either pull their finger out or make a guess when we will get some kind of modern world comms, i last looked at my local map and nothing is planned so looking at well over 12 months if i understand it right.

Any help or advice would be welcome, please don't mention local MP he is too busy filling his pockets with bundles of cash or being seen on TV at every oppertunity but failing to do jack for his area.

All1

If it's a busy enough area and you think you could drill up enough interest, then there's the option of the communite funded partnerships.

Are you currently served by a cabinet or is your line direct to the exchange?

Or partnerships with others, or encourage virgin media expansion etc

Or email clive selley or gavin patterson direct.

Or give the forum more information, it maybe that there are improvements you can make to your current service to make it more useable ?

Why is a new estate going to 'KILL' your speeds ?

A postcode might provide more clues.

Is your line really that many kilometres from the exchange ?

Relish use 4g wireless so if a new block is built in line of sight it may affect the signal.
Rotherhithe / Bermondsey have a well known history or poor broadband . The London Extenaion Project is addressing some of that.

Ah OK, thank you for the detail witchunt.

A community project would be extremely hard to organise in SE16 (the affected area). All riverside and docks are EO lines. Openreach have rearranged most of the inland of Rotherhithe peninsula, and some of inland areas missing are in scope. Riverside and docks are not.

The area is geographically a narrow strip of land 2-3 miles long. All local cabling is aluminium instead of copper. To get decent speeds, a cabinet must be installed relatively close to properties. G.Fast seems to be working with 350m of copper, which translates to 100-150m of aluminium.

This makes a community project candidate target only a small plot of land. Hyperoptic is very active in the area, and every block of flats with over 30 flats can get Hyperoptic for free if there is enough interest. Most of them have already done so. If someone living in a townhouse or small block of flats somehow managed to raise interest, every large building in the area would just go hyperoptic, as it does not cost them a penny in installation fees. A small community project would become even smaller as those not able to get Hyperoptic are scattered around the strip of land. The affected properties are not in gated developments with a management company structure but townhouses all around. It is difficult to imagine where a cabinet could be placed so that a community project would have even 50 "candidates" participating.

Then there is the problem of being in London. 75% of Rotherhithe residents are tenants. Not many of them would be willing to chip in to a community project that finishes in 18 months when they already live elsewhere. Buy to let landlords are not too keen on financing this, as it does not affect their income in any way. Riverside properties in London sell with or without fibre internet, and rental property market is soaring as well.

A community project that cost £30k would really struggle to find even 20 contributors. And when the cost starts to go from a couple of hundred pounds to thousands, more will drop off because they cannot afford it.

If a gap funding model is expected or required, OR or council needs to come up with a better way of sorting this. Many of those affected probably would chip in 200-300 pounds to solve the problem, but with the traditional community project / cabinet rearrangement model it will not be enough in this area due to geography, strong Hyperoptic presence and aluminium cabling. Or then someone else than OR needs to do this. Cabling townhouses is complicated for Hyperoptic as well. I understand some projects in the area have failed as their cables would have needed to cross someone else's property externally, and they did not get permission to do so.

The area is a mess for many different reasons. This is probably why OR have stopped their cabinet rearrangement process to the "easy" parts of the peninsula and Virgin is actively looking elsewhere. Hyperoptic can solve the problem at least to some, but I cannot imagine what could be the solution for all. OR is not willing to do it without someone paying them to do it. Gap funding model from residents is impossible to arrange. Council does not have money and spending it on this would raise questions whether this is a priority compared to healthcare.

USO might eventually bring in some government money as the affected properties are all hovering just above 2Mbps, and there is no way these lines will ever support 10Mbps without a rearrangement. Relish might eventually get permission to set up a mast there, but it would not be good fod 4k prime time TV streaming. I gave Relish a go and got decent speeds between 2am and 9am, but 6pm to midnight it was slower than my ADSL, which is really slow.

Which means the wait continues for a couple of years at least until USO money becomes available in one form or another.

OR, like all the other businesses you have mentioned are primarily shareholder and profit driven businesses.

If an area is too costly to meet their ROI strategy, then why should the fork out? It's no different than asking you to pay £1000 into a bank and get £10 back every year, but you're never able to access your original £1000.

I did not say they should.

I only explained why very little is happening in the area, and why none of the currently available methods (waiting for OR or Virgin to invest, community projects, public money) seem to work there. This area needs a different approach - or a decision to just leave it as it is and forget the whole thing. Some people will complain but people always complain about something and it is easy to ignore.

For example gap funding from residents. The current model does not work as money needs to be committed now and when the project is complete, quite a many either do not live there anymore or at least hope to live elsewhere. It is different in rural areas where people hope to live in the same place for generations to come. It is also easier in large developments where a community naturally exists, and a majority decision can generate the gap funding collected in service charges. For townhouses occupied by tenants this just does not work.

If there was a way of removing the lead time through a fund that would pay the investment, and those taking up a faster service when it is available would need to pay a £200 one off initial installation cost per property to help this fund eventually recover the money, more people would chip in as they would get a faster connection in days instead of months or years. A tenant would be much happier to pay this than for a future upgrade. This of course is not doable for many reasons, it is just an example where an obstacle of an existing model would be mitigated.

There is also something seriously wrong with the pricing model set by Ofcom. How I understand it, Openreach will get exactly the same amount of money for my 2Mbps capable EO line and a rearranged FTTC line. There will never be a business case to invest. Instead, they should be allowed (or forced) to price lines based on what the line is capable of. The current price would probably be the FTTC baseline as it covers the vast majority of their lines. If a long, aluminium EO line capable of very little would net them only 5% of a FTTC capable line, they would have a motivation to invest into these areas suddenly generating a loss to return them to black.

Council seems to be at least attempting something. I understand they would be interested in tapping into government FTTP money if there is any, and USO money if that ever becomes available. I hope we at least will soon have an understanding what sort of money are we talking about, and are there other obstacles.

https://www.completetenders.com/london-internet-serv...

H