Openreach and the Case of a Tricky FTTP Transition Problem

Imagine if your FTTC (VDSL2) broadband line was cancelled and couldn’t be re-provisioned by your ISP because “full fibre” FTTP was now the only option available. Fine. But now imagine if you tried to order FTTP and found that UK ISPs were quoting you up to £12k for installation. This could become more common.

As most people will hopefully know by now, Openreach (BT) is currently involved in somewhat of a hugely complex digital switchover across the UK, which tends to reflect a mix of two different, albeit complementary programmes.

On the one hand, we have the withdrawal of the old analogue phone (PSTN / POTS) service on copper lines, which is being replaced by an all-IP (digital) solution and is due to complete by the end of December 2025. On the other hand, we have the £15bn rollout of gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband technology and the eventual withdrawal of older copper line based products (ADSL, FTTC etc.).

Now in theory Openreach should not be withdrawing FTTC and / or ADSL based broadband products in areas where FTTP is not yet available. But historically, we have seen plenty of cases where Openreach’s or BT Wholesale’s databases have not always lined up with reality, which can cause confusing problems for consumers, and today’s case may highlight a new challenge for the switchover to FTTP.

The Cost of Availability Confusion

In this case, the problem appears to have been centred on a home connected to the Betchworth exchange in Surrey, which is an FTTP priority area (i.e. one where Openreach is introducing a “stop sell” for older copper products). Properties connected to this exchange should thus either end up with a choice between taking an FTTP line or, if that is not yet available, being able to take a standalone (SOGEA) Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) broadband service.

Unfortunately, that isn’t quite what happened to Bryan, who lives in a rural community within the same exchange area.

Example of the BTW Checker Result for Bryan’s House

Until recently, Bryan was fairly comfortable with his hybrid FTTC service, but this all changed after an error resulted in his FTTC connection being accidentally terminated by the ISP. Then the problems started..

Bryan told ISPreview.co.uk:

“I had been trying to get FTTP installed but the fibre runs about 150m from my home so there are ECCs [Excess Construction Charges]. So I had stayed on FTTC as that was available. However, someone had misplaced an order against my address and to cut a long story short, it resulted in a termination of the service.

Now Openreach won’t accept an order for FTTC as the exchange is FTTP priority, yet I can’t get that without a 6K bill.”

Bryan lives in one of those rare but awkward situations where the end of his driveway, where the new fibre optic cable runs down the local street, exists some 150 metres away from his house. You’re more likely to see this issue on farms, but a fair few rural homes can also be set back quite far from the road. Most network operators will typically charge significantly more to run the fibre over such a distance, which may involve additional trenching (i.e. it can get expensive).

Interestingly, Bryan was given some wildly different quotes for ECCs by ISPs. For example, Sky Broadband quoted almost £12k, while BT came in at just over £6k +vat. We note that Sky refused the order because they apparently don’t deal with situations where the ECCs exceed £1,000 (understandable, albeit problematic for those in this situation). It’s unclear why the quotes were so wild, but they usually stem from desktop surveys (not the most reliable).

However, for Bryan, all of this created an additional problem, since Openreach’s database cannot always identify such situations. In other words, Openreach had no reason to retain FTTC as an option, once terminated, because they would have expected that the customer would already be covered by FTTP.

An Openreach spokesperson said:

“We’re working with Communications Providers across the UK to phase out copper-based products and upgrade their customers onto newer fibre-based ones. For the vast majority of people in ‘stop-sell’ areas, this means that if they decide to order, change or upgrade their service, we’ll upgrade them onto our newer, more reliable Full Fibre network. But for some customers who can’t get Full Fibre yet, we’ll offer them an alternative (like Single Order Next Generation Access / SOGEA).

In this case, the customer’s copper line was mistakenly cut off and they were only offered a Full Fibre replacement – so we’re working to fix this. Our ordering systems suggested that Full Fibre was the only technology available and, because of the distance from the edge of the customer’s property to their home, they were also quoted an Excess Construction Charge (ECC). We’re sorry for any inconvenience this caused.”

The good news is that Openreach has now fixed the problem and Bryan should be able to reconnect via a copper-based SOGEA (FTTC) service, as per their normal approach. However, the case above raises a bigger concern, since such situations are likely to grow as FTTP continues to be deployed.

On top of that, the day will come when copper needs to be completely withdrawn and areas with FTTP will go through this transition first, possibly even reaching the phase of forced migrations further down the road. Suffice to say, Bryan might be able to fall back on FTTC today (once the current problem has been fixed), but in the future he may find himself running into similar problems.

How big is this issue? The need for ECCs like this is rare (i.e. homes or businesses that cost over £1,000 to install). Openreach indicated to us that the figure could equate to under 1% of their total full fibre footprint, which is still a lot of properties. If we simply assume the figure to be 1%, then that would be up to 72,000 premises out of their current 7.2 million premises coverage, or up to 250,000 premises once they hit 25 million.

Clearly, there’s the potential for a lot of very angry and vocal consumers in amongst that group. We think it would be wise for Openreach and ISPs to invest more time and effort into both identifying such situations and figuring out a better way to respond and handle them, when they occur. ISPreview.co.uk has been informed that this is an active topic of discussion.

In the meantime, most of those affected will be oblivious to such issues until the day they try to order FTTP – most likely after an availability checker has, perhaps misleadingly, told them it will be “available“.