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.

In reply to a post by philjohn:

Zen also offer BT GEA FTTP packages

Yep. See my reply to MrSafffon a couple of minutes ago.

Thank you all for your input which is very helpful. So the way I understand it, if I have FTTC available now, when the FTTP product becomes available I can choose whether to remain with FTTC and my current ISP or I can switch to FTTP where the choice of ISP is currently limited. However I can keep my 'copper and aluminium' telephone service alongside FTTP, although that would incur an additional charge.

Does that sound correct?

The Plusnet �trial� would probably be the cheapest option, once up and running they will allow you to cancel your line rental in lieu of an extra £2.50 charge per month.

They only offer 40/10 and 80/20 options, same as FTTC and you also have to be an existing customer to join the �trial� (it�s been running 6 or 7 years!). If you cancel the line rental you obviously wont have a phone service but can use a VoIP service instead. You could migrate your FTTC to them now and then have them migrate you to FTTP when it�s available to order.

If you use BT retail I think they give you the option of either maintaining the copper line for the phone or you can use �Fibre Voice Acces� - you plug your phones into the fibre termination device. Either way you still have to pay the line rental part.

Basically
FTTC - Offered by many ISP's
FTTP - Limited ISP's
if you are with BT you can easily upgrade to FTTP from FTTC
if you are with another isp it depends on if they offer FTTP,

Try reading this and see if it helps.
FTTP Info-SFC

In reply to a post by Fumbledore:

Thank you all for your input which is very helpful. So the way I understand it, if I have FTTC available now, when the FTTP product becomes available I can choose whether to remain with FTTC and my current ISP or I can switch to FTTP where the choice of ISP is currently limited. However I can keep my 'copper and aluminium' telephone service alongside FTTP, although that would incur an additional charge.

Does that sound correct?

Nearly correct, depending on exactly what you mean about keeping the landline phone service. The short answer is "yes", but there is likely to be no additional charge. However if your have both line and FTTC with the same ISP at the moment and move to a different one for FTTP, then keeping your line rental with the current one might end up with some increase in the overall cost.

Then there are the Plusnet and VOIP options that have been explained by others.

Simples. !Not!

What post code would that be ?

Thank you all yet again. Great to get so much feedback. Yes I am with PlusNet which is why I was interested in their FTTP trial as that would be my simplest route although not exploiting the full potential of a FTTP connection. I do not doubt for a minute whichever route I go along there will be a charge made, but so be it. The idea of two phone lines incorporated with the Fibre line sounds very elegant - if I went for BT would I be able to port my existing number to them for one of the lines? Does the second line have to have another number and if so does that increase the cost of the telephone service via FVA?
Interestingly, another resident down our street, is with Sky for their broadband etc, and enquired as to whether they would be able to stay with them for FTTP service. Although their website says they do not offer FTTP service I notice they have set one up in York called Ultra Fast Optic (UFO) so it looks as though the larger ISPs are probably going to be offering a product or waiting to install their own fibre networks such as TalkTalk.
Thanks again for the input.

UFO in York is a joint Sky and TalkTalk venture independent of Openreach FTTx. (It may use some Openreach dark fibre on a normal commercial basis for data transport but that's a different thing entirely. Equally, it may not).

Sky and Talk Talk both still stubbornly and hypocritically refuse to provision on Openreach FTTP.

This must be increasingly costing them lost customers who happen to move to one of the growing number of new OR FTTP only estates.

The core network for York is CityFibre network so unlikely to involve any Openreach dark fibre at all.

I was referring to connections from York to elsewhere.

They purchased the KCom network outside of Hull and if using Openreach fibre then they need to update https://www.cityfibre.com/network/

As no mention of leasing core network links