People seem to be happy with what they have got.

On Sunday, I went for a walk to a retail park for B&M and Food Warehouse, I do it a couple of times a month, anyway I walk down a couple of streets and I have a peak just to be nosey home many people have FTTP. While there are certainly more people that do have FTTP than there used to be, they don't seem to be rushing. Sure, I can't see all places due to them having high hedges, but there are still a lot that don't have a splice box on their houses, these are terraced houses, so would not be on the side and certainly not on the back of the house
Even when I walk to Lidls/Morrisons, I pass three different streets and go the opposite way on my street and still don't see a great amount of splice boxes.
I know i am sad, but it is something to do while walking

Next year, Hereford will become a stop sell area for FTTC, so people will have little choice, but as yet, it seems as if people are not bothered about FTTP.

I can see their point, if it works then why change.

what you will see, when an area has fttp, those who are out of contract will typically jump straight to fttp. Then you have to wait for those come to re-contracting and then you will see another chunk go over. Then you get the stragglers and refusniks

Its around 3 years since my street was FTTP enabled and all by one property has now got FTTP installed. Most signed up immediately and the rest within the first 2 years when their contracts expired.

You've made a lot of assumptions to get to a point where all these houses that don't have FTTP are therefore inhabited by people that agree with your opinions on upgrading, that you've posted multiple times before.

The lack of a splice point outside someone's house only means they aren't connected to an FTTP network, unless you're going to start knocking on doors you can't know the reasons why that might be. Some options could be:

• They are in contract with their current provider
• They are out of contract with their provider and missed the notification and are too busy to have checked
• Their existing provider offered them a re-contract price to keep the current service and they don't know enough about connectivity to ask to move to FTTP
• The only internet-connected device in the house is a smartphone
• They have a bundle deal with Virgin Media in an HFC area and keep renewing it
• Their landlord provides the internet service and they have no say in it

etc.

Yes, you are correct, that there could be a number of reasons, it is over two years since TFFP have been up and running around here, both Zzoomm and Openreach, so I would have thought a few more would have gone for FTTP in those two years.

I do chat to a fair few people online and what ever and the majority of them have no interest in updating to FTTP as they see no need.

Yes you are right, some people may use mobile to get them on the net, I have said this before., that not everyone requires a fixed broadband service and is one of the problems that pushing Freely onto people will have.

I should have, maybe put, maybe people are happy with what they have

No Virgin around here.

You may be right about landlords, but around here, they are either Herefordshire housing, so no internet supplied and while there are some private renting I expect, 2 houses up from me for a start, not sure if a landlord would supply broadband. I know the ones up the road from me had to ask their landlord if they could have Zzoomm installed. But yes, different landlords do different things.

I just thought with the amount of houses that more people would have had FTTP. As Taras posted, no doubt that will change, certainly once stop sell happens.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Nexfibre comes here next year, which i must admit, I did not see happening.

I thought two networks in this city was more than enough, and did not have a large enough population for three networks.

There will be a range of reasons why people will have or not have FTTP, from desperate to have it due to lousy connection (us), through perfectly happy with the speed they have (several people I know), to not using t'internet, (BiL).
For anyone wanting to retain 'landline' I would advise to hold off, several providers are having problems with porting numbers and/or getting DV working properly.

That feel when you know who started the thread by the topic on the home page.

The uptake figures for FTTP are pretty well known. It's discussed by BT in Openreach figures and can work out approximately how altnets are doing from those results too. Take up is in the 35-40% range. Virgin Media have a similar number on their cable network. Some altnets report that range in their mature builds too.

My home is terraced and served by a pole, as is my neighbours.

My FTTP was installed by openreach and has a splice box on the external wall at ground level.

My neighbour was installed by an Openreach contractor and they just fed the drop wire directly through the wall and so any splice is internal.

There was, a couple of years ago, installs where the fibre went directly in, and a connector was fitted straight on that (they were pants) but no splice required.

People have different reasons for not switching particularly tenants! Tenants are worried to be tied in a contract with an Altnet because in case they had to leave that home and the next home they are moving to does not supply the same Altnet they will have to continue paying bills for the old provider.

Openreach is a peace of mind for them as they can freely move knowing the provider is universally available everywhere.

Of-course that's not my headache as we are permanent residents. My reasons for not switching yet are different.

1. Concerns over CGNAT with Community Fibre that I don't have a problem with BT. I am still reviewing whether port forwarding will be an issue and that has been one of the hindrance for remaining on FTTC. I'm worried that certain games might not work online.

2. The Linksys Velop router that Community Fibre supplies only comes with 3 Ethernet LAN ports instead of 4. I'm testing my new TV satellite receiver that has WiFi built in as my old Technomate TM-5402 does not support WiFi but only LAN.

3. Hassle of joining and still trying to decide where we want to install the ONT because we are contemplating whether to install it in the living room or only in the room next to the main master bedroom. This will require re-arranging our LAN cables from living room to the rest of the computers should it be installed there.

With BT generally happy with the service but recently has dropped to 68Mbps from the 78-80Mbps and upload from 20Mbps to 17Mbps. So, while I have been happy for the most part of the last 3 years I'm a little less happy now since January BT Smart Hub 2 router firmware upgrade my speed has remained lower than ever before. Have not moaned about this as I know Community Fibre is here and soon Virgin Media Nexfibre and I can switch at any time without bothering to troubleshoot the existing FTTC service.

Nevertheless people do leave and switch to FTTP and neighbours usually hide their emotions and will only say "hello, nice to see you" but deep inside many people have problems that they don't share.

BT group has lost over 200 thousand customers https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/01/bt-gro... Openreach lost 377k broadband lines in their previous half year results (H1 FY25) to Sept 2024.
If the Altnets were simply rolling out but didn't have an impact on customer loss for Openreach, Openreach wouldn't have been trying to ramp up their FTTP build.

I noticed that there is one human psychology is when you don't have something yet, you badly want it! But the moment you get it you don't have the same urge to have it. This applies for FTTP as well. If you don't have it available in the first place you will want it more but when it becomes available the excitement diminishes.

Edited by BLaZiNgSPEED (Wed 09-Apr-25 03:46:03)