Broadband USO

[apmcroome]

Thanks yes the USO is not ideal. But affordable and merely adequate connections are its cornerstone. Interesting that BT and/ or Ofcom seem to have estimated the max cost of connecting the hardest to reach at £45k when it was being devised. Noteable too that we are apparently hard to reach when in the commuter belt of a major city. But on the key point of my situation it really does strain belief, as fibre is already in situ, that installing a cabinet able to serve 20 properties would cost as much as running new fibre from exchange to me.  The cabling costs you estimate surely support that particularly when  added to online research that suggests that in some cases it could only cost a few £k to install a cabinet. Or are you saying it is not technologically possible to link existing fibre to a new cabinet and that new fibre would have inevitably to be run from the exchange alongside the fibre there already? Surely not?

[iniltous]

I’ve never seen Ofcom estimate a max cost of £45k , how could they possibly know that, plus although your quote of £80k is obviously a large amount, I’ve seen articles where the estimated USO costs were in the hundreds of thousands of ££’s, no where does it say the USO has to be affordable , that’s a relative term anyway , £10,000 to a millionaire is arguably affordable, but £10000 to someone on £15k a year isn’t, there obviously will be some that live in places where the cost of construction couldn’t be ‘affordable’

You have made mention of fibres already in situ , how are you in a position to know that ?, what do these close by fibres serve ?, even assuming you are correct , how far away are these supposed fibres , 100m, 500m , 1500m ?, how can you know if a fibre cable exists, it has any spare capacity ?.
Being in a commuter belt of a major city doesn’t really establish anything, if the area were commercially viable , you presumably wouldn’t need the last resort of the USO, as network providers would be competing to provide services to the area .
I’m not sure you grasp the economics, a FTTC cabinet obviously needs fibre to it , and to suggest a cab could be provided for a few £k is based on what ? In my opinion that’s fanciful , it’s likely just to pay the local power company to get mains electricity into a cab could easily be ££ thousands on its own , before the civils contractor is paid to stand the cab up, the equipment costs , and the ongoing running costs ( 20 years of electricity bills could be £10k+ ) and where would it be sited ? obviously the closer to your property then little or no reduction on the £80k, and it’s not like if they provide a FTTC exclusively for your benefit , they wouldn’t include those costs in the USO quote, after all if you didn’t apply, they wouldn’t be considering providing it .
Even if the costs were way off , and the cost of construction was ( say ) £40k, subtract the £3400 , that still would give you a bill to settle of £36,600, would you pay that ?, it becomes something of a moot point if you couldn’t or wouldn’t, as I already said,  say you would contribute £10,000 , it’s a fraction of the likely costs, as £13400 is the scheme of things isn’t going to fund much ‘construction’ and if you have been quoted £80k, it’s not likely that a revised scheme somehow gets the costs down by  more than 75%.

Obviously it’s not what you want to hear , but unless you are prepared to foot a hefty construction bill, the USO is not going to supply you with service , so unless 4/5G becomes available, or some other operators service is accessible and you make use of it , you may have to make do with what you currently have.

[apmcroome]

Statutory Instrument 2018/445, in setting up the USO, says " Affordable broadband connections must be provided throughout the UK" and then goes on to spell out the adequacy criteria and the fact that if the cost of connection exceeds £3400 the end user must pay the excess ( with some detail around cost savings through aggregation of demand). So the law is pretty clear.

The reference to the originally estimated £45k max cost is in the Commons Briefing Paper on the USO ( CBP 8146). Available online. So  the sort of misconceived premise on which the USO is based is also pretty clear. And Ofcom say the info came from the industry.

It  therefore does not seem right when Openreach only  quotes for FTTP at a cost of £80k without any attempt to justify why that is as affordable as a lower tech FTTC solution . The more so when all the local community know that fibre is there. Twice in six weeks thieves have stolen the copper cable that runs underground beside the fibre ( leaving us second class copper-only customers cut off for days but also exposing the fibre ) . Openreach engineers involved with sorting out the mess indicated it would not be difficult to fit us fibre- bypassed  second class customers into  the fibre network. So I would be surprised if there was insufficient capacity in the fibre already there.

You are, I am sure, right that we are going to have to put up with what we have got----- unless we make a fuss.  That still seems to me worth doing despite the replies to my queries . My £80k quote, when divided by the number of relevant properties in my cluster in accordance with Ofcom's recently amended conditions, only just left me the wrong side of the £8400 cut off . And if that sum comes out at less than £8400 I would, as I understand it, only have to pay that rather than the impossible £80k. That is an outcome of Ofcom's review into BT's approach to high excess costs. So, in practice, any difference in cost between FTTC  and FTTP is likely to have a significant impact on affordablity for me and get much closer to delivering what the USO is all about.

I am grateful for your comments on the technical side, such as reference to capacity in the existing fibre. Useful . Many thanks.        

[licquorice]

I have no idea why you think an FTTC solution would be cheaper than an FTTP solution. It's extremely unlikely to be so.

[Paul608085]

The cost of providing a permanent mains electrical supply is easy to under estimate.

Many years ago, whilst working at BT, I was tasked with investigating the practicality of getting a permanent mains electricity supply for the equipment inside our cabinet in the car park where the television vehicles parked at that time, at the main Twickenham Rugby Stadium. As a guide, this was probably no more than about 30 metres from the nearest point of the main building itself, but obviously doesn't indicate where the new supply would have to be run from.

The cost quoted cannot be directly compared with this situation - we asked for a 63 Amp supply, (to be able to power a satellite uplink van if one was needed for a job), and I would think that a FTTC cabinet would need considerably less than this, (!) and it was back in the early 1990's.

I forget the exact cost, but it was in excess of £60,000!

We didn't proceed with this, and just used a generator when we were on site 😀

[apmcroome]

Sounds like what BT management might say and clearly my references to the infrastructure already there and what the Openreach engineer on the ground suggested make no difference to your assessment —- so thanks for taking the time.

[apmcroome]

That is a very interesting example. Many thanks

[iniltous]

The affordability element of a USO compliant connection is in regard to once provided it shouldn’t cost more that £45/month, the requirement that the USO provider should contribute the first £3400 towards the cost of providing  ( construction ) of the network  is not really an affordability measure, that’s a fixed contribution, after all construction costs of £4000 , with a £3400 contribution is obvious more affordable than  construction costs of £80k with a £3400  contribution , the USO implicitly says the USO provider  doesn’t have to pay whatever it costs, but make a contribution of £3400 max, although it can be aggregated to cover other property’s that currently get less than 10Mb.

‘decent’ broadband service  taken to mean a minimum of 10Mb download1Mb upload it’s phrased this way so that if a mobile service were available but more expensive than traditional landline broadband, provided it could be purchased for £45 or less per month , then it satisfies the USO and a provider cannot be bullied into providing a  compliant ‘landline’ service simply because that’s what the USO applicant prefers, although accepting in your case you do quality for USO so presumably sufficiently ‘good’ mobile isn’t available ….everything else is moot , the £45k you mention I found no reference to, plus if the network provider contribution is capped at £3400 ,  is irrelevant anyway…. affordability has nothing to really to do with construction,  but the cost of the tariff once the USO connection has been supplied….it’s obviously a trade off , they could have said the network provider has to contribute £10k , but then can charge £100 a month for a minimum of 5 years, the £3400 aligns with the USO that was already in place for telephony service .

You have been provided with costs that you cannot or won’t pay ( understandable as it’s £80k ) you have now muddied the waters by saying your £80k quote divided by the number of benefiting property’s , so this £80k isn’t solely for your individual property, but presumably cluster of property’s ….it sounds like you probably should be using the CFP ( community funded project ) option rather than the USO , as although the costs for USO can be aggregated for several qualifying property’s , not everyone will want to use BT, whereas with a CFP ( an Openreach initiative) the choice of provider is with the occupant, I’m guessing that you tried a CFP and either couldn’t get enough interest, or the individual contributions from the CFP members was too much ( even if Government vouchers were available to offset the costs ) so went down the USO route , possibly conflating the two.

[apmcroome]

Thanks again, Iniltous, for sticking with this and you may well be right that the USO is not going to help but when you explain "affordability" and say it only applies to ongoing service costs and not connection cost you are just repeating BT's interpretation of the law.  I contend that is wrong. As I said in a previous quote, the Statotury Instrument, which of course is the actual law, expressly refers to both the connection and service cost as needing to be affordable ( with the excess cost contibution proviso, but that proviso does not give licence to BT/Openreach to ignore connection affordability altogether. ) I got Ofcom to accept in writing that they had oversimplified when they initially made a similar point as yours about affordability . in correcting themselves they told me"..as you have noted, the Order [the SI] also requires affordable connections and services to be provided throughout the UK. The requirements in respect of affordability of connections are very important, but they are at the same time qualified by the requirements in respect of payment of excess costs by consumers."  I am ok with paying affordable excess costs if these look fair, particularly if after BT crunch the numbers as they must I am not forced down the shared cost route  ( no one being likely to want to share the £80k costs) . If only BT would be transparent about why FTTP is the affordable solution when, based on what Openreach engineers have said informally and the existing infrastucture, FTTC would appear to a layman evaluating the evidence to be likely to be more affordable. But they have not been. 

This thread has certainly educated me about the component parts of infrastucture cost which is helpful. I think it does also show that there is a tendency to take at face value BT's assertions about USO affordability only being relevant for ongoing services . I think it a pity BT are not prepared to be more transparent generally about the USO. Another issue I had with my quote is that the number of premises in my cluster, which determines whether I am forced down the shared cost route, suddenly shrank from one quote last year to the next. Explanation given by BT: they rely on Ofcom data --- but Ofcom say it is for BT/Openreach to decide (with help of Ofcom data) who to put in the . So the consumer is left in the dark facing a circular argument. If anyone has any ideas for getting BT to be more transparent please share,

[iniltous]

There are pretty good reasons why BT /Openreach won’t give you a breakdown of costs , the rates at which they can purchase civils work ( for example ) would be useful to competitors.
Unfortunately some employees of OR , thinking they are being helpful , will offer an opinion on things they are really not qualified to comment on.
In your case , I think you are of the mind that if a FTTC cabinet were sited close by , then you and others would benefit from a connection that exceeds the USO , and as it’s a common network then the costs would be OR’s , but that’s the commercial decision OR took with every FTTC cabinet they provided , for whatever reasons , they decided it wasn’t commercially viable in your area , and now as a dead technology, it’s even less likely that it would be provided not more likely ….what if some future Government decides the USO minimum speed needs upgrading to 50Mb , and your recently provided at some significant costs FTTC service was now not compliant , who pays then ?, organisations like BT and OR are often criticised for not seeking the big picture, arguably dismissing FTTC as an option these days is seeing the big picture, but as already stated , it wouldn’t be cheaper anyway.
If the affordability measure was  poorly worded , and clarification were needed , it’s safe to say it would be clarified to mean the monthly cost is affordable not the construction costs ….say an unemployed hermit living atop a mountain could ask for a USO connection and not expect to pay anything they couldn’t afford , so the network provider is on the hook for the potential £100’s of thousands of ££ to provide it.