Voneus or BT fibre, long term ?

[NigelB72]

@RuthRvs it looks like Voneus specialise in connecting rural communities to full fibre and they also act as an ISP. 

[steephill]

There is lots of IT media speculation (e.g. current edition of PCPRO magazine) that the currently dozens of alt-net providers might be reduced to just a handful or even less within a couple of years so I wouldn't worry about being tied to one company for anything like the long term. It seems inevitable that there will be consolidation of providers as the fibre business matures - just look at the cable market which is now all Virgin Media.

Incidentally VM do not share any OR infrastructure as far as I am aware. There are also some upset communities out there where alt-nets have been putting up new poles and ducts rather than trying to share infrastructure.

[RuthRvs]

Thanks for that information.  They seem to be using existing poles (so far) in the village.  Voneus said they'll update us with their progress by email. Also asked Outreach for updates on their plans...👍

[rbz5416]

There seems to be two issues here:

Will Openreach install fibre in the future? Almost certainly a some point, but I'd suspect that will be only when all highly populated & therefore more profitable areas have been fully completed. The fact that a competitor has beaten them to it pushes it even further back from an economic point of view IMO. I'm in a similar position with Gigaclear having done half the village (not my half!) & County Broadband promising to do the rest (without actually doing anything). So I don't expect to see Opereach installing in my lifetime.

Will you be tied to Voneus forever? No, there's nothing to stop you moving back to BT or another ISP on FTTC. A number of Gigaclear customers here have done just that because the service was too unreliable.

[RuthRvs]

Hi, thanks for your response. I agree that BT will not be in a hurry to update the village, and I would also be concerned with the reliability and customer support from other providers. Luckily I am already getting good speeds with the existing BT fibre to the cabinet, and happy with that.👍

[iniltous]

I wouldn’t necessarily assume that if an Alt Net has a presence in an area , that area  gets pushed back down the order  of areas OR are considering rolling out FTTP to imminently, in fact some commentators suggest the opposite and state OR target those  areas ,  to stop losing market share , and if an Alt Net gets fewer customers than they expect, ( because OR FTTP becomes available not long after the Alt Net )  , then that makes the Alt Net financially less able to continue, …it’s obviously not in every case , especially if the Alt Net has received funds from the public purse via BDUK ( or whatever ) , because the area woukd never normally be a viable economic proposition, but as OR cannot use Alt Net infrastructure ( even if tax payers paid for it ) then the economics may not stack up  for Openreach.

[MaBM]

If you sign up to Voneus you will only have to stay with them for 24 months, after 24 months you can stay with them or choose another provider like BT. As you are in a rural village it will probably be a while until Openreach install fibre so Voneus will probably be the best at the moment.

[RuthRvs]

Hi, thanks for the input.  I'm planning to just stay with BT. Don't mind not having fibre for now as current BT speeds are good. Also, I won't have to replace my  alarms system for a while 😊👍