FTTP unavailable but is on site

[jarmanyent]

Hi, 

 I live in a rural village in Somerset and manage a small industrial estate at the far end of a village, about a mile from the green box. Until very recently (which I will get to) no houses or businesses in the village could get FTTP and it was luck of the draw with how close you lived to the green box to how fast your internet speed would be determined. 

 There is Fibre to the green box from the exchange in Baltonsborough and everything from that point is copper to premises. 

 Living near to the green box I can get around 74 mbps down, but at the industrial estate this drops to around 25.

The price you pay for broadband does not decrease to reflect this - that's just how it is with service providers. 

 In 2023, a property developer obtained planing permission to demolish an adjacent farm and construct 5 luxury properties directly across the industrial estate, which comprises of 17 tenants. 4 businesses on site are music recording and media related businesses. 

In December 2023 Openreach brought a discreet fibre connection across all the poles to the last pole on the industrial estate site, which is on my landlords land. From there, this connection goes under the road in some ducting and supplies the 5 houses. 

 Whilst this cable was being installed I was told on several occasions by different Openreach engineers that this would be available to our site once it was activated. 

 As you can imagine going from 27 mbps to 1600 would be very welcome to the tenants on site particularly the media related businesses. 

I have monitored the Openreach Fibre Checker the past year and everyone who is interested around 25 people have all signed up and registered interest, only to be told they are not in the build plans. 

 I have contacted BT about this and they say this is entirely down to Openreach to make this available. 

 I have finally had some kind of answer from Openreach about this:-

"I have had a look in to this for you and we don't currently have any plans to upgrade your property to receive Ultrafast Fibre Broadband right now, but we can keep you up to date when things change. I would also like to make you aware that our UK full fibre rollout plans are managed in individual local projects that must be commissioned in a phased manner. Due to this your neighbouring street/locality might get Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) before yours, if you are seeing the other residents in another part of your town/village or even the street appearing to have fibre available already, this will be why.

Please also note the Fibre which you have mentioned in your enquiry was built to supply the nearby new development. The network has been built with capacity for the new development only and so we are unable to associate your property to this network.
 

Please register your interest in Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband via our Fibre Checker. We’ll let you know if the plans change and when Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband is available to order. 

If you want to bring fibre to your property sooner is an option you could look into.

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) on Demand, FTTP on demand is a product which a few select service providers offer, which will give you a full-fibre FTTP broadband, as a bespoke installation direct to your premises. It is available across the UK – even in areas that cannot reliably get FTTC.

Fibre on Demand differs from standard FTTP in a number of important ways. As the fibre is delivered to your premises as a custom build, it is a substantial installation. If you would like to look into this option you’ll need to contact a service provider to place an order."

  There are several issues I have with this. The main one being that what she is saying is the network only has capacity for the connection installed at the new houses. I find that hard to believe. Also the Openreach engineer told me the type of cable installed has plenty of capacity for multiple connections ie. more than just five houses. To connect the site they would install a junction box. 

 The later part of the message is suggesting I go down the route of having Fibre on Demand installed. Well if we went down that route - it would be interesting to see whether they use the already installed cable or whether they would bring in a new cable. 

 Can anyone verify whether the COF215 cable installed has capacity ? How many properties can this do?

 When Openreach finally do connect everyone up to FTTP as per the government rollout plan, will it just be the case that suddenly our addresses are added to the fibre checker.  Also will they use the already installed cable that currently supplies the five houses.

 Does anyone have any experience of this happening to them ? 

 I doubt any of the tenants would object to paying a connection fee for the service, but if it was £10k+ for Openreach to use something that is already installed and just needs a junction box putting in followed by the standard connection to premises procedure, then that might seem excessive.

 Yes, I understand the developer paid for this. I am only here because the engineers at Openreach (on the ground) said we would have this available as a perk of being close to the new development. Also the cable is already on site.

Just seems madness we can't get it - but I think the reality is Openreach are going to make everyone wait, for how long, who knows.

If anyone has any insight to this or experience, I would be interested to hear your comments. 

Many Thanks

[licquorice]

This is a BT residential customer to customer forum and has no connection to Openreach or for business queries.

[36ULW]

If I had a £1 Coin for every time I heard, ‘An Openreach Engineer Said’ I’d probably be having lunch meetings with the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk to discuss how obscenely rich we all are.

I would take what any Openreach Engineer says, not with a pinch of salt but the entire 5lb bag of the stuff.

I guarantee that Engineer had absolutely zero knowledge about which premises that fibre would service and that what he or she said to you was purely to get rid of you.

Believe me, I have first hand knowledge on everything and anything that comes out of an Openreach Engineers mouth.

[jarmanyent]

Thanks for the reply. 

I must clarify the farmhouse is residential and the workshops which are part of the farm are businesses. 

The poles pass through the farmhouse front garden and the workshop premises. 

 The farmhouse can’t get FTTP and neither can the business units. 

None of the residential neighbours which the fibre passes nearby can use this connection. 

My post is intended to find out if BT customers are experiencing a similar issue, ie they have a fibre connection nearby which they can’t use. Was there a remedy ? 

Also the technical question regarding the type of cable used - what is the capacity. 

Many Thanks 

[jarmanyent]

Very true! 

[iniltous]

‘New Sites’ , new build housing developments are guaranteed FTTP , and depending on the size of the development can range from zero (£0) for the developer to pay, that’s on sites over 19 units , to £9800   the worst case (for the developer  ) being 7 units (£1400  per plot ) but the scale of charges is a variable , 5 units will  cost the developer £9000 this is £1800 per unit ,  in many cases whatever the developer pays won’t cover Openreach costs , but it’s a requirement that new homes can get FTTP ( its the law )  , and it’s pointless Openreach putting in copper pairs only to replace them in a few years time with fibre ….this has been the case for quite a few years .

It doesn’t matter to you if this  FTTP network for that new development went past the area you are concerned with by a few metres or a few kilometres,  ‘retro build’  FTTP is a different program to New Sites , has different budgets and timescales etc , so although you assumed  this development should benefit you due to its close proximity , it doesn’t , when that particular site was designed, the PON (Passive Optical Network) for it , only considered the new  units within it ….not the existing surrounding area.

Your industrial estate will be picked up and completed on the normal retro build schedule,  the newsite near-by neither speeds that up , or slows it down .

If this is a business estate and has businesses that would benefit from ultrafast speeds they don’t need to wait for the native FTTP rollout , businesses have had access to fibre products for decades, they are bespoke and cost more than residential products, but if they were business critical , rather then something that would be nice to have , ultrafast speeds  are available via ‘leased lines’ , but not for £40  a month though  , as all businesses do , they weigh the benefits and costs and make a business decision…..some business estates owners even get their own single leased line into the management building and ‘sell’ the units on that estate access to that leased line via their own local fibre network from the management building into each rented unit,  there are dozens of network providers in competition to Openreach , if the tenants don’t like OR based service providers prices (for Ethernet leased lines )  , nothing stopping you or the tenants approaching other networks and enquiring with them about building their own networks to service the area .

[jarmanyent]

Thank you for taking the time to write a very good response, it is greatly appreciated.

[36ULW]

‘Also the technical question regarding the type of cable used - what is the capacity.’

What type of Cable they’ve used for the PON Build is irrelevant. Being overhead it’ll most likely be a COF215 36F. 

As I said though, the Cable feeding the PON from the Agg/Spine is irrelevant.

It’s the Size and Capacity of the Spine they have used for that PON which is the most important.