Any pressure I can use to get fibre?

The area where we are has been blitzed by G.Network but for some reason I can't found out they left out a small part of our road. Frustratingly the network ends just 2 doors away in one direction and 5 doors in the other.
I managed to talk to an engineer and he took our details and said he'd see if they could run a cable to our house but needless to say we've heard nothing.

Now we do have Virgin DOCSIS but it's expensive, with very slow upload, and I really want fibre various reasons (work and leisure).

Is there anything I can do to get G.Network to complete the street, or is Openreach fibre on the horizon - currently we just have a decades old landline. I guess at some point Virgin will go full fibre but it will be costly and there's no date.

We are in London N1 on the Kingsland Green exchange.

Have you spoken to G.Network formally rather than via one of their engineers?

They may be able to give you a quote for the extra cost if its outside their per property threshold.

Are the properties that have G.Network outside the door showing as ones where you can order service? I ask because over in N5 there's quite a lot of roads that have had their tobys installed and the ducts in the ground for coming up to two years now while the website says "register your interest".

Assuming it is an MDU. Is the management of your building the same as the others nearby or different?
Because then the obstacle is the wayleave agreement. If management for the others are different that means they were granted the permission to install their service but yours hasn't.

Also, unfortunately since you've got Virgin Media DOCSIS because it is gigabit capable the authority isn't obliged to grant permission for FTTP. I know this is unfair. The March 2021 wayleave legislation in parliament only addresses gigabit capable availability and doesn't priorities full fibre as long as it is achieving gigabit speeds.

Like in my case we don't have Virgin Media but wayleave was agreed for Community Fibre. Only 2 or 3 buildings exceptionally have Virgin Media like (Carter House, Barnett House) under my management EastendHomes the rest don't. This might be because this permission was granted while they were formerly under the council management before their takeover.

Getting multiple FTTP overbuilds is at the discretion of the housing estate management and there's nothing we can do currently to force them if they are not interested.

What you can do is find out the housing estate manager or technical services manager of your building and speak to them in person. If there are any leaseholders meetings, attend those. But you have to get to speak to the right people otherwise they'll just keep making excuses that you have to speak to their more senior colleagues.

Also speak to your neighbours and try to involve them as well. You can also check the Hyperoptic, Community Fibre websites and enter your postcode there to see if a wayleave permission has been granted. You'll find out by seeing if it shows Work progress 2/3. If it says "Before we connect we'll need permission from the Freeholder or Property Manager" then it means permission hasn't been granted yet. It may give a good idea what your management are like.

Of-course in my case my management were determined to not give permission to Hyperoptic but to another provider. It may be that yours might give permission to another provider instead of G.Network but again they may still ignore due to you having VM.

Ours is a semi-detached house. No apartment blocks nearby.
Virgin gig service isn't synchronous so I can't see how it qualifies as FTTP but there you go.

G.Network did extend the network to next but one neighbour. I spoke to the site surveyor/engineer before they did this and he took my details. We went on holiday and I can see they've dug a small under-pavement duct to the neighbour. To get it to us would mean about another 10 metres.

I've tried before but got nowhere through their sales channels.

The engineer I met said they have no plans to do our bit of the road and there are a number of such dead areas but they have done our next but one neighbour but they are very near the network end point, and he'd 'see what he could do' for us, Crickets.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

Ours is a semi-detached house. No apartment blocks nearby.
Virgin gig service isn't synchronous so I can't see how it qualifies as FTTP but there you go.

That might be the reason why they have tried to skip your house. Individual houses are more expensive to upgrade. It may be that G.Network and many of the other Altnets target big block of flats because they are more economical to upgrade and get a larger number of subscribers for lesser effort.

Even though Virgin gig doesn't qualify as FTTP but because it is able to deliver gigabit download speeds that's why under the current legislation it qualifies as gigabit available. This legislation doesn't priorities gigabit upload speeds.

Even Openreach FTTP isn't synchronous due to GPON limitation. G.Network is also not symmetrical in their lower tier packages. Only the Gigafast Extra package gives you 900+ download and upload.

To tell you frankly G.Network is not the best Altnet provider unless it is the only one that is looking to build in your area. They are worse than Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, Openreach, etc. Just read the Google and Trustpilot reviews and compare for yourself.

Community Fibre and Hyperoptic give you symmetrical speeds on all tier packages for almost half the price unlike G.Network. It sounds like G.Network themselves are reluctant to upgrade your house even though they may have done it for the others. You could try to speak to all the other major providers (representatives) and not just focus on G.Network. The more providers you speak to the better the chances there are of someone showing interest.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

That might be the reason why they have tried to skip your house. Individual houses are more expensive to upgrade. It may be that G.Network and many of the other Altnets target big block of flats because they are more economical to upgrade and get a larger number of subscribers for lesser effort.

You need to read the posts you are replying to.

Ours is a semi-detached house. No apartment blocks nearby.

They have covered his whole street but have stopped 2 doors away on 1 side and 5 doors short on the other side. No apartments blocks nearby.

I'm not going guess they haven't covered the majority of a street of semi detached houses then decided they are skipping these particular houses because they aren't apartments.

G.Network and Community Fibre have covered large areas of SDU's (the opposite of MDU's).
Hyperoptic are known to target/focus on MDU's.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

Virgin gig service isn't synchronous so I can't see how it qualifies as FTTP but there you go.

It's hard to unpick that comment!

1. I think you mean symmetric, not synchronous.

2. Many FTTP services are not symmetric. In particular, Openreach's FTTP service is highly asymmetric, with a maximum 1.8Gbps down and 120Mbps up (or max 220Mbps up for a very expensive business service). But it's still FTTP. The definition of FTTP is whether a fibre comes all the way to your premise - the clue is in the name.

3. There are three types of network that Virgin have in different areas. There's the original cable TV network (coax cable with DOCSIS); a fibre cable TV network (RFoG, i.e. fibre carrying DOCSIS); and a fibre XGS-PON data network. All are gigabit capable. The first doesn't quality as FTTP because it's an incoming copper cable. The second isn't symmetric, but is is FTTP. The third is FTTP *and* you can buy symmetric services (but you pay an additional premium)

Indeed. G.Network spent about 18 months digging up all the streets here which are mainly terraced/semi houses although some are divided into 2 or 3 flats. They didn't pass 7 houses in our road including ours - just stopped short going south and didn't join with the junction the other side where the other road is done.
Very frustrating and it makes a mockery of a 'universal' area build out.

Yes I meant symmetric. I'm a telecoms specialist so should know that...

When I last checked I think G.Network was offering symmetric home broadband but I can see they don't now.

The Virgin service is the original coax - we can upgrade to its gig package for £75 a month but it's a 10:1 asymmetric service and while it's got more reliable there are still a fair few short network outages. The G.Net gig service is only £35 a month and is 3:1.

Reason for wanting good upload speeds is or was my work, which has involved huge media files. Took 3 hours on deadline to upload last time. Also two teenage sons who do gaming and have complained about the current package (250/25 on a good day).

So if we eventually get Openreach FTTP and Virgin stays the same we won't be able to get more than 120Mbps up which at this stage of the 21 century in central London is poor. Unless I pay for a business service.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

Ours is a semi-detached house. No apartment blocks nearby.
Virgin gig service isn't synchronous so I can't see how it qualifies as FTTP but there you go.

FTTP means Fibre to the Premises
Nothing whatsoever about speed/symmetric nature thereof

Yes I meant symmetric and I believe G.Network did first offer that for its home FTTP.

From what I can see now it's only the altnets that will offer up speeds faster than say 120Mbps on home packages. I'm not sure about the Virgin services other than the original coax, which we have.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

From what I can see now it's only the altnets that will offer up speeds faster than say 120Mbps on home packages. I'm not sure about the Virgin services other than the original coax, which we have.

We can all hope that Virgin's Project Mustang (to replace the coax with FTTP by 2030) will then give us access to the symmetric services currently only in nexfibre areas. (for additional cost).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by stamford13:

From what I can see now it's only the altnets that will offer up speeds faster than say 120Mbps on home packages. I'm not sure about the Virgin services other than the original coax, which we have.

We can all hope that Virgin's Project Mustang (to replace the coax with FTTP by 2030) will then give us access to the symmetric services currently only in nexfibre areas. (for additional cost).

Virgin is twice the price of the altnets and considering they already have the passive infrastructure it seems to me that they could be a lot faster in replacing coax. I suspect that in areas such as mine not many have switched to G.Network from Virgin so they don't have pressure.

On a wider note the regulatory failure to not enforce a single passive infrastructure and to duplicate digging up the streets is ridiculous.

I have seen a contractor working for Openreach putting in under-pavement fibre in ducts at the top end of our road but we only have poles and back garden lines at my end of the road. We do have Virgin ducts and most of the road has G.Network running under the carriageway.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

G.Network and Community Fibre have covered large areas of SDU's (the opposite of MDU's).
Hyperoptic are known to target/focus on MDU's.

Note that Hyperoptic is FTTB (fibre to the basement) and delivers service to the individual flats in what was always a daft idea using Cat5e. Consequently, they are limited to a maximum of 2.5Gbps unless they replace the Cat5e.

Hyperoptic have deployed FTTP to a lot of homes

An update:
Had a letter from Hyperoptic saying they can provide service at our address and their online checker confirms this. But they are not listed on broadband check sites for us.
I called them and they can't tell me how they can get to us - as far as know they have no fibre in our street.
I guess the only way to find out is to place an order but I really do think they are up to something here and it's not about connecting us. What I don't know.

You could well have fibre in your street, running in underground ducts, that you don't know about. If they've taken the trouble to write to you, then very likely they can deliver.

So go ahead and order it!

The worst that could happen is that they will send a surveyor out, decide they can't connect you, and cancel the order.

Don't worry about what unspecified "broadband check sites" say. They ultimately scrape data from the providers, and are often behind when new properties become available to order. The truth, from the horse's mouth so to speak, is from Hyperoptic themselves.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You could well have fibre in your street, running in underground ducts, that you don't know about. If they've taken the trouble to write to you, then very likely they can deliver.

So go ahead and order it!

The worst that could happen is that they will send a surveyor out, decide they can't connect you, and cancel the order.

Don't worry about what unspecified "broadband check sites" say. They ultimately scrape data from the providers, and are often behind when new properties become available to order. The truth, from the horse's mouth so to speak, is from Hyperoptic themselves.

The fibre I know about is G.Network, which has missed out my house and a few others, and Community Fibre, which is at one end of the street but not in the street.
I'm baffled by Hyperoptic making this claim but as you say there's only one way to find out.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Don't worry about what unspecified "broadband check sites" say. They ultimately scrape data from the providers, and are often behind when new properties become available to order. The truth, from the horse's mouth so to speak, is from Hyperoptic themselves.

Bare in mind that even a providers own databases can be as reliable as the Horizon system. GoFibre have told me my address is RFS, it's not. The distribution box on my pole is still hanging from a cable tie after ~8 months for example. There was also still a blue draw cord sticking out at the bottom of the pole that will serve my pole (which had been installed 11 months previous) and a blue draw rope between them, though they have since replaced that after I queried them and they sent an engineer out to check.