BT Street Survey

Today BT Openreach surveyors were in the road surveying in advance of a projected broadband upgrade in the road (current speeds in the order of 3mps or 7mps on FTTC). They said that the cables are deep and it would cause a lot of disruption in the road. If they use FTTC then why would that cause disruption?

Edited by Fumbledore (Mon 19-Feb-18 21:43:49)

Might not be planning FTTP

And even if FTTC then need to locate the VDSL2 cabinet, its power and get the fibre to it.

If ducting is present and not blocked then should not involve extensive road works, but that is one thing the surveys are there to check i.e. is ducting where they think it is form the paper records

Thank you Andrew. My interest stems from the fact that we are already connected to an FTTC enabled cabinet (Crowthorne 19) and so I am guessing they are trying a different method to get faster broadband to us because of the distance from the existing cabinet our properties. What options would they have?

Either an infill cabinet located nearer or FTTP

The BT surveyors were back again today and confirmed that the plan is to install FTTP which on the surface sounds great, However I am hoping that someone could answer a couple of ensuing questions?

1) Apart from Business ISPs, is the only option for domestic users of FTTP BT Infinity?
2) Will the current low performance FTTC that we receive continue to be available concurrently with FTTP?
3) If my current ISP was not BT, would it be possible to keep the current telephone ISP supplier on copper as my telephone service supplier whilst using BT for the broadband via FTTP?

While I realise that the plan is in its early stages and it will some time before any of this bears fruit in which time the policies and offering of other ISPs may well change, I look forward to any help you can offer.

1) There are something like four. AAISP, Cerberus and Hyperoptic IIRC. Perhaps Spectrum. Someone posted on Tuesday or Wednesday an Openreach link that showed the list, and also a link to the business ones with a few more.

Plusnet also have a trial running open to existing customers. If interested then don't try phoning. Register on the Community forums and have a look around. There should be a few threads about how to get on it from outside like yourself.

2) There are a number of cabinet areas where end users can choose either. Only time will tell, but I don't see people being forced to move to an ISP providing FTTP from FTTC on one that doesn't. The place to check is this site, which I expect currently shows VDSL2 and perhaps FTTPoD. (You can probably ignore FTTPoD, it costs thousands).

3) You imply you are with some other CP (Communications Provider) than BT for your phone. I don't think, (but am not sure), there is anything to stop you keeping your existing phone line supplier if you move to an FTTP broadband supplier for the broadband.

Hyperoptic DO NOT SELL Openreach GEA-FTTP

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/packages/fttp-broadband packages filtered to show Openreach GEA-FTTP sellers

Where Openreach FTTP is rolled out in addition to FTTC you have the option to upgrade

i.e. if you do nothing nothing will change and if you move to the area you get a choice of ordering FTTC or FTTP depending on what your retailers wants to sell to you

Zen also offer BT GEA FTTP packages

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Hyperoptic DO NOT SELL Openreach GEA-FTTP

Too true. My apologies to all in the thread.

I was thinking in fact of Fluidone . In particular, the Openreach Superfast lists of FTTP and FTTPoD suppliers for both domestic and business.