This topic

Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

richarde90 — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 04:24:03 GMT

Hello,

Pardon the wall of text, I have a bit of a nightmare set-up at the minute and would love to move into the current era.

I work from home full-time currently and live in a semi-rural market town in Nottinghamshire. The town has mostly appalling broadband speeds due to FTTC cabinets serving properties a substantial distance away. Apart from some random spot-upgraded properties which had nearby telephone poles upgraded making them eligible for FULL fibre to the home connectivity, the premise is these properties didn't meet a minimum speed requirement. I lived at one of these addresses which got upgraded but recently moved to another property with the same sub-par speeds (which didn't get upgraded... makes sense).

I now pay for 18-26Mbps down not too much less than what almost everyone I know pays for 5-50x the speed. Also because this is unreliable at best and not good for having a house with streaming, downloading, conference calls and call-out responsibilities going on, I've had to get an unlimited 4G sim and an external antenna. Which isn't massively stable but tops out at around 4x the speed of my static, cabinet connection. I'm constantly switching back and forth, I have no issues on my main-line and have had it checked by techs on the phone and in-person.

I am in dire need of an infrastructure upgrade which was similarly offered to nearby properties, I did contact the better broadband for nottinghamshire scheme showing them proof my connection fell under their schemes remit, however they just said "well the data we have for your property disagrees" and ended it there.

What, if anything are my options? I am a homeowner and plan to be in this residence for the foreseeable. I'm on a connection which I had much better than a decade ago. Virgin media isn't an option so I am stuck on copper from the cabinet. Can I pay for FTTH to be installed? How do I prompt an upgrade without throwing my name in some form and crossing my fingers for the next 5 years?

Any help would be massively appreciated!

Cheers,

Rich

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

Keith_Beddoe — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 05:56:15 GMT

@richarde90

Openreach provide the infrastructure.

If you are a business user, then you can normally pay for FTTP to be installed, but it costs thousands of pounds initially, and then an expensive rental charge.

If you are just a residential customer there is nothing you can do, apart from hope that Openreach upgrade your local network.

Are you still a BT customer?

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

Starwire — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 06:32:06 GMT

As Keith said the FTTPoD would be available to you as you have FTTC.

Although the cost can be extremely expensive, it’s only for Business Lines so you’ll end up paying for Business Line Prices.

Also Openreach limit the amount of FTTPoD Orders so you might not even be able to place an order.

If no other Alt Net is available and won’t be anytime soon then your best bet is getting your Neighbours together and doing a Community Funded Partnership.

https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-fibre-partnerships

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

richarde90 — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 22:33:57 GMT

Unfortunately I have no other choice in terms of using openreach infrastructure, it's all just another service wrapper around the same line. I am not a business customer I just work from home, it basically means even though I'm on 23Mbps (sometimes less), which fell within the boundary for government backed upgrade programs, because the data was wrong I'm missed and stuck in a void. The nature of where I live means it's an older population, the demand is not going to push BT to upgrade here for a long time IMO.. such a downright broken system.

Quite literally the address I lived at prior in the same town, I immediately bought FTTP and had 300 down which was the max they offered at the time, down the road from people stuck on 25 and below. The spot upgrading based off inconsistent and often inaccurate data is frustrating, they can estimate speeds all they want, distance, line quality and other external factors can push people into a gap where they should be eligible but are completely forgotten.

I challenge my situation with evidence to every official body I get in touch with and just hit a brick wall. "Well our data says otherwise". What does it matter if the data says my property should get above 30Mbps if it gets 2/3 or less than that in reality?

FTTPoD is obviously not appropriate being I'm not a business user, I just work for an organisation from home and either way the cost is prohibitively high. Why as a user can you not front the cost from a continuation of the fibre from the cabinet to your home? Depending on the cost I would happily front a module on the nearest telephone pole that others could use. Pardon my lack of understanding in regards to FTTC/FTTP, obviously it may not be that simple.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

Carlusha — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 08:08:13 GMT

@richarde90 I am long retired but when I worked from home for some considerable years, only having to traipse up to London perhaps twice a month, my employers paid ALL my broadband and ad hoc internet charges together with computer hardware. Have you discussed the possibility of this with your organisation?

FTTPoD :

Openreach FTTPoD pricing

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

Starwire — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 08:11:48 GMT

Have you considered a 4 or 5G Receiver?

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place

iniltous — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 10:02:58 GMT

FTTPod can be provided as a residential service, but BT don’t offer it ( it’s unclear if you are a BT customer anyway ) you would have to use an ISP that does offer FTTPod , but as already mentioned it can be ( very ) expensive, other forums have contributors that have paid £8K and more.
If there has been upgrades to FTTP provided nearby, the reason for those deployments could be someone paid for FTTPod and their neighbours benefited, a CFP ( community funded project ) a ‘BDUK’ type project although if that’s the case those areas may well have been ‘slower’ than you, or a regular Openreach deployment, any of which are neither any benefit to you but are not to your detriment either.
BT have no more influence on where OR chose to install FTTP than any other ISP, and personally I’m always puzzled by the apparent double standard of those that simply shrug their shoulders if Virgin Media are not available , but are ‘outraged’ if Openreach are ‘ignoring’ them or their area , why not lobby those other national infrastructure providers that are apparently also ‘ignoring’ your area ?

Your speed of 23Mb is only 1Mb short of what can be considered ‘Superfast’ speeds anyway ( Superfast classed as either 24Mb or better by some measures , although some use 30Mb or better )
If you are a BT customer, you could post your router stats , or the wholesale checker returns for your phone number from

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Its possible your speed can be improved , if the official body for your area states potentially you should already have 30Mb available, but if your speed is as good as it gets , TBH, all you can do for now, (assuming FTTPod isn’t economically viable ) is be patient , it’s not just OR that build FTTP networks, and there will be some that would be delighted to have 23Mb available as it would represent a big improvement on what they currently get, the USO ( the minimum the Government say you have a right to expect ) is 10Mb and you obviously exceed that.

On checking your other posts , in July you were in the process of ordering FTTP ( your questions were regarding what constitutes a stage 1 install ) have you moved ?

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

richarde90 — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:15:47 GMT

My organisation pays for my main broadband connection, not my 4G unlimited sim and wouldn't bother paying for a fibre installation lol. They'd just tell me to drive to the office. 🙂

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

richarde90 — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:17:31 GMT

@Starwire as stated in my main post, I have a 4G connection which isn't great as I'm in the middle of all the masts in my area not close to one particular one. No operators which allow banding are in good reception range so I'm on vodafone using a single frequency, when it's good it's much better than my BT line but it obviously changes depending on contention.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place

richarde90 — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:20:35 GMT

@iniltous As stated in my original post, I lived in one of the properties which was upgraded. It was upgraded as part of the better broadband for Nottinghamshire scheme. It had the same speed as my current address due to being the same distance from cabinet however the data they used for this program says my new property should achieve 30Mbps so it was not included in the plans. It was literally due to incorrect data which they aren't willing to challenge.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

Starwire — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 10:44:53 GMT

Ah you did mention it.

As you have above the 10mbps you might be stuck then until such time they install FTTP in your part of the village and or an Alt Net shows up.

I’m in the same boat, they’ve put FTTP in some places in my Village where I live. I live on a road with 10 culdesacs along the length of it. We’re all fed off the same PCP that is connected to an antiquated ECI DSLAM that isn’t fit for purpose.

For whatever reason they installed FTTP in the culdesac on the top of the road and the two at the bottom. Everyone in between was told we’re not getting it for the foreseeable future.

Its the same story in multiple’Fibre First’ areas around me, they’ll put it in 3 streets, miss out 2 and then put it in the next 3.

How it was planned that way and why god only knows, trying to get a sensible answer out of anyone is impossible.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place.

richarde90 — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 07:52:06 GMT

@Starwire ah so it's not just me! We can suffer together. 🙂 10Mbps is insanity in this day and age, I really did get substantially better speeds than I do now a decade ago. To think my 4g antenna connecting to a mast in a distant farmers field regularly gets me 3-4x the speed of a solid connection is madness (although worse ping/stability). However when you factor in the cost of both I'm paying double what my mates pay for full fibre.

I think some reclassification is in order, the difference between FTTC and FTTP is so incredibly drastic how can superfast be defined as 30Mbps? By that standard also I'm on regular non-superfast broadband but everywhere blanket advertises that because FTTC is available that I'm 'superfast ready'. If I were to run a Netflix 4k sub that's my entire bandwidth gone and then some .. and their compression is incredible.

Also doesn't stop the "your whole family and the dog can stream on every device all at the same time!" marketing that gives the impression I am not in a black hole of connectivity.

It's like they are forgetting properties served by cabinets which are so far away will have terrible bandwidth, they have some odd calculation that estimates connectivity not factoring in a million other variables and it leaves a huge gap. They aren't pushed to upgrade infrastructure because why upgrade me if I already pay a blanket fee and have no other choice? The only driving factor is government subsidy which again works off faulty data and gives spots of upgrades and misses properties over the road.

'Fast' , frustrating. EDIT: Oh and also based on my offers I 'could be doing more with Fibre 1'

More buffering? They're the same because I'm at a literal physical limitation which they don't care to acknowledge.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place

pompey1898 — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 18:23:48 GMT

@iniltouswrote:
FTTPod can be provided as a residential service, but BT don’t offer it ( it’s unclear if you are a BT customer anyway ) you would have to use an ISP that does offer FTTPod , but as already mentioned it can be ( very ) expensive, other forums have contributors that have paid £8K and more.

A business in my village paid a six figure sum to get FTTPoD. Only for FTTP to be made available to it at normal FTTP prices.

Re: Nightmare! Paying for FTTP infrastructure? No upgrade plans in-place

iniltous — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 19:27:00 GMT

Apparently any FTTPod order should be checked against any ‘native’ FTTP rollout and if the area is in the programme the order doesn’t proceed , but given the lead times on FTTPod can be lengthy, it’s possible that the area wasn’t planned for FTTP when the FTTPod order was raised, but subsequently became one.

TBH , an Ethernet leased line may be a better bet for some businesses rather than FTTPod even quite small businesses, ( leased lines are no longer astronomically expensive in many cases ) but there is always the advantage with FTTPod than once the build cost and initial 12 months are up with the ISP that arranged the service, you can be treated as any other customer in native FTTP area with the prices that apply to that.