BT and Openreach as I’m sure you are aware are not one and the same company and are not interchangeable terms, your relative was a John Lewis customer , and at no point have you said or implied that BT are your preferred ‘new’ provider, so it does seem odd that you are posting on this BT forum .
See message 4 , the possibility of ECC was pointed out there , it’s unfortunate, but if someone chooses to use FTTP instead of the existing copper pair ADSL/FTTC service, or inadvertently loses their copper pair service and FTTP becomes the only option for ‘new’ supply , and construction charges are necessary because the install isn’t a standard install, then to expect everything to be provided for ‘free’, smacks a little of entitlement, it would mean overall that every other OR customer has no choice in subsidising that installation, and would obviously be paying more for their own supply than necessary.
When BT was the only game in town this type of social cross subsidy was understandable even desirable , but now we have a competitive market, you obviously could ask City Fibre , or You Fibre or Virgin etc. but presumably you would simply accept that they would simply say ‘No’, and in a competitive environment why should OR be ‘forced’ to pick up all the difficult premises while the competition ( who will never service these places with a commercial rollout ) simply target cheap and easy locations, even with copper pair service, there was always a point at which excess charges were raised , same as with electricity supply and mains gas .
It should be noted that the £ 1500 is probably not the entire construction cost OR face , a hefty contribution , in the order of £3600 is made towards those costs by Openreach , and there are ways to mitigate ECC , like excavation of the trench for the ducting yourself (and reinstating after the duct is installed ) , obviously this isn’t something everyone could arrange, but as this scenario is often associated with farm buildings , or seriously wealthy individuals who chose to live ‘remotely’ , it is feasible in many cases.
Although the PSTN switch off is 2025 , there is no date at which every copper pair service will cease , there are copper pair products that deliver services without PSTN/WLR , however if an area has the appropriate level of FTTP , then OR can stop the sales and migrations of new copper services , that could mean , in some situations , a person effectively having to stick with the provider they currently have , and in this case , if John Lewis is vacating this communications business , they should be arranging the migration which doesn’t affect connectivity , if that option is unpalatable, that’s really a consequence of joining JL in the first place .
At the risk of being blunt , what’s this got to do with BT ?
