Openreach Give FTTP on Demand Broadband a Stay of Execution

A couple of months ago we revealed that Openreach had launched a review of their FTTP on Demand (FTTPoD or FoD) product for UK broadband ISPs (here), which proposed to stop selling it later this year. The conclusion of that review has just been published and FoD has been given a reprieve, at least for now.

As we always say, it’s vital not to confuse the normal gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service with FoD. In a normal native FTTP rollout, Openreach foots the bill from its own pocket to install the optical fibre cable down your street, but with FoD it’s the customer who chooses to pay for the often extremely expensive civil engineering side of that build (desktop quotes for this often run into the tens of thousands).

The service thus enables you to get a gigabit FTTP line built right to your property, even if full fibre wasn’t previously planned to be natively deployed into your area. All of this sounds great, except for the high cost of building such infrastructure and the long lead times involved, which make it far too expensive for most ordinary consumers (i.e. Openreach targets it more as a premium product for small businesses).

Furthermore, FoD has also found itself positioned, rather awkwardly, between solutions that inhabit the same field, which could be said to include everything from Leased Lines (Ethernet products) to Fibre Community Partnerships (FCP). Not to mention the impact of Openreach’s own FTTP rollout to 80% of UK premises by December 2026, and similar builds by rivals.

However, back in April 2022 we revealed that Openreach had proposed to place a “stop sell” on FoD from November 2022, which ISPs suspected was down to the combination of low take-up, high cancellations of existing orders and the desire to re-focus related resources on their wider FTTP rollout.

Conclusion of the Review

Some of the FoD supporting providers, particularly those that have invested a lot of time and money into supporting it, informed us that they were deeply unhappy with Openreach’s proposal and warned that some of FoD’s potential customers would struggle to find an alternative. A stop sell might also fail to provide short term savings to Openreach as orders already in provisioning would continue for 12-18 months and need the existing teams.

Openreach has now shared with us the outcome of their review, which effectively gives FoD a stay of execution: “We’ve received significant CP feedback, to which we’ve listened and acknowledged. We have therefore decided to step back from our previous plans and will not be withdrawing FOD at this point.” But the operator added that it was still their intention, over time, to “withdraw FOD” in favour of native FTTP build.

However, the price of retaining FoD, in the “short-term“, will be reflected through a number of product changes. For example, FoD will only be available for “framework/call-off bids” subject to formal request from an ISP and an Openreach deliverability assessment. The product will also become a Project Managed delivery solution, which will be inclusive in the price provided in the quotation.

Openreach are also putting FoD through somewhat of a cost review, which they warn is expected to result in a more expensive product. So if the cost of FoD was a problem before, then that side isn’t going to get any easier for supporting ISPs. The writing is clearly on the wall.

No doubt some people will be frustrated when FoD eventually does go because, despite being an awkward option, it was still nice to have such a choice in the first place – however imperfect it may be. Some homes and businesses did end up taking it too, albeit not enough to make any meaningful difference to the landscape of national FTTP coverage.

The country is now slowly moving toward the goal of “nationwide” (at least 99%) gigabit broadband coverage by 2030 (initially reaching 85%+ by the end of 2025) and, like it or not, this will increasingly limit the prospects for a solution like FoD. As will the new generation of LEO satellites (e.g. Starlink) and other alternatives.