FTTP in Verwood, Dorset Timing

[rettopttam]

I’ve seen a lot of activity from BT Openreach engineers in our street recently and wondered if that might mean FTTP is nearly ready.

Can anyone confirm a rough timeframe for it being ready? Verwood exchange. Would like to upgrade ASAP to help with working from home.

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

Only openreach will know the answer to your question and there is no link from this forum to openreach

just need to keep checking here. https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

[autodesignsystems]

Verwood was nominated as 1 of the selected towns to become full fibre / Full FTTP back in early 2020 - see this news article from Verwood Today.

But after seeing many many BT Openreach Vans and tons of cabling going on it’s seems to have just fizzled out and they seem to be concentrating on more areas in Ferndown and bigger places rather than finish the work they started in Verwood. My guess is that despite being named as a full fibre town they’ve kind of given up and moved on 🙂

Based on the lack of Openreach resources I’ve seen in the town over the last 6 months that’s all I can assume has happened and that we’re still another 2 years or longer away from becoming Full Fibre / FTTP.

I’m a bit fed up of BT broken promises if I’m honest. I have full fibre with 300mbs download and 300mbps upload speed in a tiny village in the middle of mountains in Rural Portugal which cost nothing to install and a relative usually price of 35 euros  per month and incredible speeds at a drop of a hat. If they can lay it through thousands of kilometres in the middle of nowhere I don’t really understand why it takes us 10 years in the UK to simply lay it inside the ducts that are already there. We are absolutely decades behind here in the UK compared to Europe and it will take more decades before we even finish getting it rollout here… just crazy!

[garybs29]

Well, a quick google search seems to bring up a direct link to a local fibre provider so are we sure this was promised by Openreach? The link provided from the press also doesn't state any providers so I'm wondering if this was a local scheme & nothing to do with Openreach (nor BT retail btw)

[rettopttam]

Agree, very frustrating and also after a lot of activity with cables being laid nothing seems to have happened for a couple of months. Interestingly I raised an enquiry with OpenReach back in December 2020 and they said FTTP would be enabled by end of July 2021 for my road. However with only 5 days left in July I’m not convinced it will happen. 

Email extract below:

Thanks for your recent enquiry via the Openreach website about getting faster broadband.   

I’ve looked into your enquiry and the great news is that we will have some fantastic connectivity options for your home. I can see the fibre equipment you’re connected to is getting an upgrade. This will give you fibre to the premises. 

Our engineering will take place over the coming month/s. If everything goes to plan, fibre broadband should be available to order by the end of July 2021. 

We’d love to keep you up to date with our progress. To receive any future updates please go to our fibre checker, input your postcode, choose your address from the drop-down, then scroll past the availability information and complete the Gigabit Fibre form and we’ll update you once plans change. www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband.

[autodesignsystems]

I’ve seen them laying lots of fibre cable around all of Verwood for 12 months since this announcement was made and I’ve seen them pull up on our road many times during this time and once with a big drum of fibre optic cable but then it later transpired that they didn’t actually lay any into the ground and that was Feb / March this year. No one has been back and I’ve hardly even spotted any “Openreach” (yes I’m a bit of a BT spotter lol) cans anywhere in the last few months perhaps since May 2021 but I do know that Full Fibre / FTTP is now being done in Ferndown (where my relative lives) which wasn’t even listed as a full fibre town so my guess like I said before is they’ve kind of just given up doing Verwood as it’s not big enough or something or someone has decided to changes the plans or maybe it’s just too much hard work to get it finished

[pompey1898]

Hi @autodesignsystems ,

This won't help solve your issue but it will show you are not alone.

There was a lot of fibre cable laid to part of my village about 2 years ago.  From then on activation dates came and  went every six months until early this year when a "supervising" engineer explained that another team would be required to join all these various lengths in order to reach the required destination.  He said that actual avalabilty to properties would likely be end of June, early July.

This has happened for 70% of the properties.  I am in discussion with Openreach as to why the remaining 30% have not been connected.

[autodesignsystems]

Considering we are supposed to be nominated as one of the full fibre towns and has been work in progress for a year and a bit I’m guessing that this by wholesale checker result is a good indication they’ve decided to ditch Verwood from their plans completely now

Apparently Verwood is not on the priority exchange list despite being announced that they were making the town / village full fibre.

[evanswillo]

Rollout seems to be moving forward again in Verwood, actually had a team laying fibre in my street today.

Hopefully BT can provide an update as to when orders will be made available.

[autodesignsystems]

Yes after I emailed Openreach asking what’s happened to Verwood, they came back and explained the fibre would be laid in my street in Jan 2022 but as luck would have it about a week after a van turned up and laid the fibre along the street. So happy my email clearly did something here.

But it’s now been 3 weeks since it was laid and not looking like it will be live anytime soon still. I think it can take many many months before it will be order-able for customers but let’s keep our fingers crossed