Openreach bypassed my street for FTTP and ignore all attempts at dialogue

[Desaan]

So for the past 18 months or so, we've been getting the occasional door to door visit from some very confused BT cold callers trying to sign us up to ultrafast fibre in the area.  I was initially surprised because I hadn't noticed any work being done in our street but they where insistent that they had signed up multiple people in the area that day including someone from just across the road from me.  Upon doing their spot check of the postal code and address and confirming I couldn't receive FTTP they left confused.   So I started looking into things myself, checking local addresses and postal codes on the availability checker and sure enough the area in every direction gets FTTP, in fact it became difficult to find an address that didn't have superfast fibre available.  The funny thing is that my next door neighbour, whilst living less than 15 feet away from me but is actually part of another block/street CAN receive full fibre.   If you where to visualise the entire local area as a green square, we'd be the singular red line somewhere in the middle that looks like a mistake.

Then I decided to start canvassing people in the area I knew, all within 5-10 minutes walking distance.  They all had superfast fibre, some with bells and whistles (EE TV packages etc).  By this point I started to get really annoyed, partly due to the fact that since being on FTTC for 7-8 years our speeds have declined steadily from just under 80mb down to just over 40mb down, the upload fell slightly from 15mb up to 12mb up (but the price keeps going up!).

I started trying to contact local and relevant bodies to try and find out what was going on and was there a reason the work for my street wasn't carried out, the local council say it's nothing to do with them and I should contact BT but BT say Openreach handles that sort of thing so I contacted them and got a reply within a few days, much of it was copy and paste response text but there was this paragraph - Openreach response.  All attempts at further communication as to why this occurred and what the plans for the future are and if/when the work was ever going to be revisited at some later date are just plain ignored.

So what are my options here?  It looks for all intense purposes Openreach backed out of the rollout for one street whilst providing the rest of the area with FTTP and getting a pat on the head from BT.  As far as BT is concerned the area is now superfast fibre active, hence the constant cold callers trying to sign me up every few months.  Openreach just stonewall me.

[jac_95]

Can you please copy and paste the full results and text (minus address)

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

Openreach do sometimes initially do some work and if they hit some complexity may drop that street or area to concentrate on another. They may come back at a later date 

Also check the map here: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband

[iniltous]

You are aware that Openreach and BT Consumer are not the same organisation, so a ‘complaint’ about what Openreach chose to do or not do , on this BT customer forum is no more relevant than a post on Sky or Talk Talk consumer forums ( but it’s certain there will be no complaints raised there ) .

Its not that uncommon for a particular part of an area to be excluded when the majority of the immediate neighbouring area has FTTP access , and it invariably is due to cost ,

Openreach are a private company  ( independent from BT although within the BT Group )  and like every private non charitable organisation are responsible to their shareholders and like any every private company are at liberty to spend their money where they see fit ….generally if the costs to serve a particular group of properties falls outside the  budget allowed ‘per property’ then providing service to them will be deferred , while property that can be served within  budget are serviced ….obviously your individual circumstances are not known , but for example, if your property and very near neighbours were served underground ( using DIG, direct in ground armoured copper cables ) but the majority of the area were served by telegraph poles ….then the overhead served property is relatively inexpensive to service , maybe less than £100 per property , but the DIG property or properties ( in this fictional case , say 5 properties) require £3000 worth of excavations etc , that £600 per dwelling exceeds the budget so they are excluded….the fact that you have already used the process to check if it was a ‘data’ error excluding the address and had confirmation that it’s not that , really signals the end of the road ( for now ) 

Although ( unfortunately )  your address is an uneconomic proposition…..that’s not to say the situation is fixed for ever , as revenue from FTTP customers increases and the costs from the legacy copper network decreases then these ‘not spots’ can reviewed, as and when budget allows , before you shout ‘unfair’ , this is absolutely no different to how Alt Nets view areas , if an Alt Net becomes available or if they had arrived earlier than OR but were leeching on OR assets via PIA , the situation would be the same …the one thing for sure is that you , the local or national Government should not be stipulating that one company should have to take all the uneconomic customers leaving cheap and easy provisions to a different ( favoured) company loading costs into one company that competitors don’t have is  immoral as well as illegal .

If you were in a remote area the Government has already deemed likely to be uneconomic, they do use public funds to subsidise build costs ( the vast majority of contracts recently have not been awarded to OR but Alt Nets ) the local , national government or an individual customer is at liberty to subsidise any build if they want to , but an isolated pocket of addresses within a generally commercially served area will not be so lucky , so you could look to FTTPod , that probably would be relatively inexpensive as the Aggregation Node etc presumably exists relatively near by .

[Desaan]

@jac_95 Here is the info

I've checked the map, doesn't really give too much more info all than we are already building in this area.

Here is my neighbour meanwhile

[Desaan]

@iniltous I understand that Openreach is a subsidiary of BT, but fully owned by BT nonetheless.  My point is more who to go to for answers, because everyone points the finger at someone else. It's not about being economically viable, the work has already been done in literally the entire area bar one small street.  When someone 15 feet away (my neighbour) has FTTP but you don't I think it's ok to question to the where and why of the matter but when BT and Openreach don't seem to be able to provide an answer that's where the ranting/complaining starts.  

[jac_95]

@Desaan 

It is Openreach, a separate legal entity compared to BT Consumer that will need to answer the question. BT Consumer can only get the same information as other communication providers provided by Openreach. The relationship between rest of BT group and Openreach is heavily regulated and the rest of BT must not be seen as having an advantage relationship between itself and Openreach - https://www.bt.com/about/bt/policy-and-regulation/our-governance-and-strategy/our-commitments

You can also try your parliamentary or assembly representative who can raise the question to Openreach too.

[Desaan]

@jac_95 Alright, guess I'll have to go lobby my local MP then.  Sure is frustrating trying to understand the BT/Openreach dynamic.  Kind of felt like I was bashing my head against a wall with the whole situation 🙂

[licquorice]

Openreach and BT the ISP are both subsideries of the BT group.

It is the same relationship as Screwfix and B&Q being part of the Kingfisher group.

[iniltous]

The survey note for the neighbour property that can order FTTP shows UG 2.5inch plastic duct 56 , this is the usual Openreach method of delivering service since the very early 1990’s , so is there any difference between your property and the neighbours property, or were they built by the same developer near enough at the same time as each other on the same ‘phase’ of the development if the development were over several phases.

There can be localised issues even if everything seems else seems on the face if it , positive.

Housing  built after 1990 and is served , when it comes to Openreach almost exclusively by underground ducted means , especially with big brand developers , when it comes to near neighbours, some with some without availability, there can still be practicalities that are not obvious.

When  OR construct a PON ( FTTP network) it uses by and large the existing infrastructure, you could have a unseen boundary ….

As an example,  imagine a road running roughly North to South  , 100 detached houses on that road , (all the same side of the road to make it easy to understand)

No.1 is at furthest north and No 100 at the south end of the road ….the Openreach duct provided at the time of construction was from both the north and the south , No 1-50 are served from the north , and 51-100 served from the south , and although to the naked eye number 50 and 51 ( next door neighbours ) appear to be served in the same fashion they are not , they use completely separate duct routes, imagining the cable route looking out if the front doors  , No 50’s existing cable is from the left , and No 51’s cable comes from the right,  in that example  if a  PON was created to service the north side of that road , the last property within the PON boundary would  be No.50 and No.51 outside the PON boundary , dictated entirely by the route of the existing duct ..

You may say , connect the ducts together and instead of getting 50 houses , you get 100 , but that doesn’t happen ,  the occupants from 51-100 would have to wait until OR provided the PON designed to service the south end of the road ….this isn’t the only possibility of near neighbours being either side of a PON boundary, there could  even be something as ‘simple’ as a group of a few houses , within the boundary of the PON are served by a duct known to be unserviceable, and the costs to repair or replace this duct are deemed unacceptably high for the small number of houses that gain ( as stated earlier , if a duct repair/replacement  will cost many thousands of ££’s  maybe to get an extra 1-5 houses  with FTTP availability, the numbers just don’t stack up ,) in in that scenario , that ‘section’ although planned , just isn’t built .

As stated , you have already asked OR to check if it’s simple mistake that your property is excluded, and they have responded presumably saying it’s not a mistake, you have nothing more you can do .