UPDATE2 BT Resuscitate 330Mbps Fibre-on-Demand Broadband in Wales

BTOpenreach has told ISPreview.co.uk that their premium “ultrafast” 330Mbps capable Fibre-on-Demand (FoD / FTTPoD) broadband service has now become available for all exchanges in Wales (albeit only for those who can already receive an FTTC line), but you still can’t order it.

The reintroduction of FoD at “all exchanges in Wales” was made as part of an agreement between BT and the state aid supported Superfast Cymru project in July (here), which saw the operator pledge to make Fibre on Demand (FoD) available across the “majority” of Wales by the end of summer 2015.

The first hints that this was finally happening came last week after the project announced that 504,352 premises in Wales were now within reach of predominantly FTTC based “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) services (here), which resulted in several of our Welsh readers running availability checks only to find that FoD was also an option. Sadly we weren’t able to report this as news until BT confirmed the deployment, which took them a full week.

However residential consumers would be well advised not to get their hopes up as FoD is strictly speaking a business service (home owners can also order it), albeit one that’s suffered due to the lack of a strong Service Level Agreement (SLA) and an inability to connect into Multi-Dwelling Units (big apartment blocks etc.). It’s also quite pricey.

Unlike a native Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) deployment, where you only have to pay a modest connection fee and affordable rental because the infrastructure already passes close to your property, FoD effectively requires the customer to help cover the build costs of bringing that fibre optic line to your building and in some cases that will attract a hefty four-figure installation sum (example).

On top of that very few ISPs offer a FoD service for sale and those that do aren’t exactly cheap on the monthly rental (£200+ per month and 36 month contract terms etc.). Needless to say that the issue of cost and deployment pace appear to have been two of the reasons why the service was effectively suspended from sale (“stop sell“) at the start of this year (here).

Openreach Stop Sell Briefing Statement (Jan 2015):

“Following an increase in demand for FoD … [we’ve] identified that the customer experience and lead-times are currently not meeting the product specifications. Because of this, we’ll be implementing a temporary Stop Sell. This will allow us to review current processes and make changes to improve the overall customer experience on this product.”

Since then a new FoD2 (NGA2) service has entered trial alongside BT’s early G.fast + 1Gbps FTTP deployments. Some additional details released in April (here) appear to confirm that the FoD2 aspect involves changes that should speed up the installation phase (end-user prices are not expected to benefit). It’s presently unclear if Wales will immediate benefit from any of these FoD2 improvements, but they should filter down once the trials have finished.

Otherwise FoD’s return, even if it is only applicable to Wales (for now), is perhaps one way for the Welsh Government to meet their original pledge for ensuring that “at least 40% of all the premises in the intervention area also [benefit] from access to services in excess of 100Mbps“.

However this would be controversial as the nature of FoD is that it doesn’t technically cover any premises until after the service itself has actually been built to your property (not unlike how some leased line services are deployed) and the price makes it unrealistic for the vast majority of homes.

As a method of connectivity it’s good to have FoD as an option, but unless something can be done about the price and more ISPs introduce support for it then the service seems unlikely to help many domestic customers. Only the richest home owners or very particular businesses need apply.

UPDATE:

A couple of ISPs we queried with have suggested that the BTWholesale “stop sell” is still in place for Wales, which would effectively mean that while FoD has been deployed (Openreach) it is still not strictly “available” to order yet by end-users in Wales.

We did specifically reference the “stop sell” in our original query to BT over a week ago and the meaning should have been clear, although their BTWholesale and Openreach divisions both seem to share the same PR contacts – Ofcom’s “functional separation” doesn’t yet extend to the spin doctors (we really wish it did!) – and so it’s possible they may have got their wires crossed in the reply.

Once again we have prompted BT to clarify the situation, although being the weekend we might not get a response until next week. At present BT’s PR team seems to be so focused on other things (Ofcom’s Strategic Review) that they’re not being very effective at responding to any other queries.

UPDATE 12th October 2015

After several attempts to clarify BTWholesale has confirmed that the “stop sell” remains in place and there is currently no firm ETA for when it might be lifted. Strictly speaking ISPs can take FoD direct from Openreach, but for various reasons those that offer it will normally use the BTW product and without that then FoD may be “available” but you can’t actually order it from anybody.

We’ve been given quite the run around by BT’s PR folk on this one and aren’t best pleased about it, but we do understand that they’re under a lot of pressure and a heavy workload right now.