Network access provider Openreach has notified UK broadband ISPs about a new Complex to Fibre (C2F) trial, which could result in some copper-line based customers being given a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service in situations where it’s available and repairing the existing copper line would be too complex / costly.
At present Openreach is on the long journey to both build and migrate customers away from copper-based lines and on to full fibre networks. As part of that they’re looking to find opportunities to migrate lines to FTTP where it is to “everyone’s benefit” (Reactive and Proactive migrations).
“One of the most time-consuming copper repairs are those which require ‘2nd Stage’ work (excavations to get to cables, for example). Openreach is proposing a trial to understand the potential benefits of installing FTTP in place of repairing the copper where an Openreach engineer attends a copper repair and identifies that 2nd stage work is required to repair the copper service,” said the operator.
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The C2F solution is thus designed for areas where FTTP is available, but customers – for whatever reason (e.g. awareness of its availability, lack of interest, fear of switching etc.) – continue to use copper-based services. The trial itself will take place in Northern Ireland, which has a good mix of such locations, and run for 6 months from 12th January 2023 to 13th July 2023. Further details here.
…Everyone in England now rips out their copper line….
I suspect it would be cheaper and less hassle just to order FTTP and upgrade normally 🙂 .
The way I understood the story was if you don’t have FTTP available to your property and just have a copper line. And Openreach have no current plans to install FTTP. If there is a serious damage to the copper line they will instead of replacing the copper, just bump you to the top of the FTTP install list and install FTTP early in the ducting instead of replacing the copper.
Hence why everyone should just rip out the copper lines to get their FTTP install done earlier than planned?
Criminal damage lol
@Anthony
you misread the article as it clearly states
“The C2F solution is thus designed for areas where FTTP is available,”
so it will not fast track FTTP to an address which doesn’t have it. Basically it is designed to move people to FTTP where they cannot be bothered to just order it themselves.
I am all for FTTP because I have to use Powerline Adapters because in Scotland you can’t buy your council house now I would love to have Cat6A Ethernet cable all over the house. But I need my powerline network but if I had FTTP I wouldn’t have to worry about interference from the FTTC/VDSL2 because powerline adapters use the same frequency as FTTC VDSL2 uses 17 MHz while Powerline AV1 uses 2 to 32 MHz and AV2 uses 32 to 86 MHz. But I find if I try to use AV2 with MIMO technology it usually crashes the whole internet connection. I had get Openreach to relocate my NTE 5C socket to reduce the interference from the Powerline Adapters. Because my phone master socket right next a power socket. I know from research into full fibre or FTTP I understand fibre optic cables uses pulses of light instead of using electricity that means no interference.
Powerline adapters have always largely been trash.
Mesh wireless would likely out perform them massively and can still present an ethernet connection to use on middle-nodes.
Get a couple of Amazon Eero, PLAs are a waste of time.
Yeah, I had Powerline adaptors, well I still have them, but not in use, never really go on with them, so I just ran an Ethernet cable down the stairs. Every thing I can put on Ethernet I have, I only use Wireless if I really have to and the wireless in this house is pretty good
The only good about powerline adapters it’s cheap way of networking your house. But if had bought my house before the Scottish government stopped us I would’ve lay Cat6A cable all over. Powerline Adapters are a good invention but they’re not stable they’re sensitive to interference like I like electrical noise and different types EMI.
I have to admire your commitment to Ethernet cables though out the house, however the thought of holes in plaster work and the fun and games of threading cables down partition walls have long put me off.
To be honest, I find modern Wi-Fi routers good enough. My desktop is near the ONT/Router and hence uses a shot Ethernet cable.
Before I had FTTP (and did some hardware moves) I had FFTC and used power line adaptors with no issues.
as @matt said MIMO via mesh/nodes but take step further as personal setup is as follows ethernet backhaul (CAT6A FTP) 2.5GBaseT (5GBaseT via LAG) is plenty fast using .ax capable devices and NICs based on WiFi6E. I highly reccomend a pair of Asus ET12’s paired linked to Asus RT-AX89X (GW) 10GBaseT via SFP+ to NAS/zyxel XGS1930 24port Switch to carry (940mbps 110mbps FTTP)
No interferance and not a single powerline adapter in sight 🙂
I had this setup when I was on my old VDSL2 WiFi was fine then now on new FTTP contract 900Mbps (700mbps guaranteed -during peek hrs too!) Its a very fast network built which it makes using the internet a dream the way it should have been 10-15yrs ago. FYI: The Asus microtrend IDS is very good as is their AiMesh technology… Good luck Drop the powerline adapters run the internal network cables in its place.. A great weekend project perhaps! checkout cablemonkey for faceplates modules Amzn for 100m+ CAT6A/7
Makes sense, I’m surprised they don’t already do something similar where copper goes faulty so lines are swapped to fibre as a way of forced upgrade.
Seems unnaturally sensible.
Yeah I read the article and was surprised this wasn’t already existing.
Does that mean until now they’ve been repairing copper at great expense in FTTP areas?
Yes we do repair copper where FTTP is available. The most frustrating ones are on many speed faults the customers have not been told its available by their CP while booking a fault so when told they order it there and then.
To the original point. Fault to Fibre can’t be the standard yet as there isn’t the workforce to hit that workstack with the existing faults not in FTTP areas.
For example I just attended a faulty socket that took 5 minutes to fix to restore service. She booked it yesterday.
If OR upgraded everyone to FTTP by default then she’d be waiting weeks for a appointment as it’d take a minimum of 1 hour plus two engineers due to a EL pole. There simply isn’t the resource to make it work with the two networks right now.
i’m probably 1% of england with fibre optic connection feels good hahaha.
These trials are al no oat exclusively about the systems and business processes to support them, not the tech – especially in this case.
Why? That’s the hard part. Not the tech.
With the added complication that this is Openreach driving the CP to change the product they take, rather than fox a fault – something that Ofcom would have something to say about. But not if it’s a trial.
If the business processes turn out to be reasonably smooth, expect Openreach to request Ofcom to permit them to do this as an offering.
Another one of their famous trials that take another 6+ months of time.
Everything with BT is a trial, to make it look like they are doing something. Then they will have an extension of the trial area after this, then a pilot after this……
I can see what will happen here, where fibre is available any fault no matter what is wrong Openreach will class as too expensive and push people to fibre and what proof would we have that the fault was simple to fix? The fault I had a few years ago would certainly have given openreach a reason to push me to fibre if it was available at the time and if the C2F solution was around then. I hope my broadband stays stable.
I wonder what they would do where people are with providers who don’t offer a fibre service yet, like now broadband, even if fibre is available
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And what are the downsides of being upgraded to FTTP? Hard to see why someone would complain to getting better broadband.. As the saying goes, some people complain for the sake of complaining.
@K
FTTP is better than FTTC, but not all of us want or need the extra speed, and some of us don’t want to end up paying more for this extra speed. I don’t want the hassle of having it installed. If I have FTTP, I want to choose when I want it, if I want it, not anyone else.
If Openreach does put FTTP instead of fixing a fault, then there is no way the ISP could extend the contract or put the price up, and they would have to provide a service that was the same speed of the original FTTC speed, if that is what the user wants.
I can get FTTP from openreach and a Alt network, but at the moment I have no requirement for it.
It’s a little 5″ rectangle white box that they installed exactly where I wanted then to so its now located somewhere I can’t even see it. The ONT is much less noticeable than a master socket with a fibre filter on it, they actually removed by copper line when installing FTTP so I was able to remove the master socket totally. The FTTP package I took was the same speed as I had on FTTC so cost me exactly the same, I did have to sign up for new contract though so agree that if they are doing this for a fault that shouldn’t happen.
@Rich, I know what is involved, and I know about the outside box, which is the splice box and the ONT inside. But it is still hassle as I have to be here when it is being done, the appointment may not be kept or changed, I only have one day a week I can have it installed unless they install on a Sunday. Also the hassle of people in the house, i hate it when I have to have my boiler serviced.
They did not remove my next door neighbour’s copper line, well not from the outside anyway and when my brother had fibre a couple of weeks ago, again the copper cable was not removed, in fact my brother took the service without voice as him and his wife felt they did not need the home phone and yet the phone line is still connected and works.
Unless your broadband was awful and you were haviong problems with it, what is the point of going to fibre to get the same service you were getting with FTTC? Hassle for no gain.
if I am going to have people drilling holes in the wall and sticking boxes in line and having to pay extra for the little bit more energy required to run two boxes, ONT and router, then I would want some gain.
@K one of the downsides is you lose the option of having a POTS line and instead will be served over VOIP which won’t work during a powercut. Of course everyone will be switched over in next couple of years, but some will fight this as much as they can
@Martin, losing POTs is not a problem for me, I don’t have a phone connected to my landline, I have been using a VoIP system for years.
Me personally BT should’ve deployed Fibre Optic cables years ago like Cable TV did in 1990s back then it was Telewest. Telewest lay fibre cables underground but we did have the technology for broadband but employment it then even though we had dial up at time we were ready for the broadband technology we had the technology we were ready. If BT lay fibre in the 90s like Telewest AKA Virgin Media. At least Virgin Media was ready while BT was years behind.
If OFCOM hadn’t stopped BT laying fibre for 10 years (to enable competitors to gain a market share) the country would already have full fibre services.
Sorry I meant implemented it then even though we had dial up at time
Agree with MC Comms, the fundamental issue with the lack of fibre deployment in the UK has been the government and regulators wanting to encourage competition and maintain a level playing field. This goes further back than even the cable companies, back as far as the 90s in the days of Mercury and Ionica
@plunet, but OFCOM was right to do that, BT had a monopoly and needed to be knocked down, sadly it did not really work as not enough companies stepped in. BT still have too much of a monopoly, they got the network for next to nothing when it was sold off, and they made a lot of money from it since.
It is a shame that more network companies did not come in and put in better networks, but this is the U.K, we are always behind. Even Virgin Media never bothered much with fibre, they just used their old coax to give faster broadband, which sometimes worked and sometimes did not.
What should have happened is we should have had a network provider, like openreach, but owned by the government and they should have run fibre around the country and then providers could have used that.
A few years ago, in fact even last year I was ready to have Fibre when it came, now it is here I am not that excited about it and not really bothered about getting it now.
Complex to Fibre (C2F) trial? This makes me laugh. My telegraph pole has not been upgraded to fibre while the whole area is. The pole is defective so engineers can’t climb it and need a cherry picker. OR basically ignored it. It wasn’t a problem for Community Fibre so BT can C2F trials they, they could even lay fibre to my house and I still wouldn’t get their expensive service ever again!
An annoying delay for your own personal situation but the defect will be on an OR list to be addressed and get the pole replaced.
So you’re saying CF ignored the warning on the defective pole , didn’t wait until the pole could be replaced and put their equipment up there anyway?
@Tony
There are different grades of defective poles. The worst are Policy D which cannot be worked on in any way because they are damaged or decayed. In this instance it sounds like it is a non-Policy D pole which means that it’s defective for less dramatic reasons (not buried deep enough, etc) so while it cannot be climbed it can be worked on safely from a cherry picker.
OR’s plans will generally involve adding the pole to it’s pole replacement program and then completing the FTTP work after it has been replaced, however this can take some time depending on how complex it will be to swap out the pole (access, wayleaves, etc). The altnet, on the other hand clearly just wants to get the job done and did the work with a cherry picker, enabling service to be made ready.
It’s exactly as RobC says. The pole can still be used using a cherry picker. OR either doesn’t want to extra expense of using a cherry picker, or they want to wait for the pole replacement to do everything at once or they thing that good FTTC (given the cabinet proximity) will be good enough for now. Either way they will end up replacing the pole and now they will have to coordinate with CF as their equipment is now installed therefore making the job more complex. So in my view OR did a mistake in delaying the FTTP upgrade for this pole. They could have got me as a FTTP customer for 24 months. Now I will never end up buying their service as CF and VM are more affordable.
Recently I had to have an engineer from Openreach as my router was keep resetting. One day it reset itself 4 times. MY ISP is BT. When the engineer came out he looked around the cabling etc. Then went to the pole as the pole is an old metal pole that my line connected, and he saw that my connections at the pole were rusted and cleaned them up. He did say that there should be a new pole as the metal pole had been there since the 60s and rain water was getting in, but to change the pole it would cost about £5k – £6k. I wonder, as Full Fibre is coming to my town in the back end of January, if another fault happens like the one above I wonder if they would just move me to full fibre.
I think the poles we have here been up since the 50’s 🙂 They are old Wooden ones, I saw a bloke on it last week climbing, I did not think they did that these days and used a cherry picker instead, but saying that I have seen a few being climbed over the last few months. Not sure if I would want to.
You never know they may stick you on fibre, but if you want fibre then why not go for it your self when it is available?
I remember years ago when we had ADSL and i had a problem, Openreach came down, had a look at the cables and said my cable was old and had damage and needed to be replaced, but it never happened, still the same cable and yet it is now giving me 36Mb/s on a FTTC connection, the cabinet is a fair distance away, so I think that is flipping good for a cable that is supposed to be damaged
Steel/wood sticks are irrelevant to the technology used, they are only there to elevate the cables and attach the DP to at the end of the day.
@MOLO, seems like old wooden pole last longer than the modern metal ones. I know it makes no difference to the technology that hangs of it.
Last year they repainted the poles up here, I suppose they done it before fibre was installed, so they could paint where the fibre would run up the pole
Sounds like this is actually going to be much more about OR being able to instigate a process into the CP (Communication Providers) to facilitate the transition of a customer from copper to fibre, and I guess making it cost and contract neutral for the customer…
@K (several replies back in this stream)
Disadvantage of FTTP migration? Same disadvantages as “Digital Voice”, as the voice landline would need to be migrated to VoIP, with all the potential issues about needing battery backup for security pendants, changes to alarm monitoring devices, and fax machine snot working (the latter affecting very few people anymore, if you still need a fax then subscribe to a specialist fax over the internet service)
The care pendants and alarm monitoring shouldn’t be a problem for the vast majority of users either as the industry has known for years that this was coming. My mother has a care pendant, I called them to ask what their plans were and 2 days later they came out and replaced it with one that uses SIM cards. 4G signal is practically non existent where she lives, 3G is patchy at best but 2G is rock solid and the alarm has worked perfectly the couple of times she has had to use it.
Is there any high speed broadband solution yet for those customers stuck on Exchange Only lines?
Some European countries offer 1Gbps broadband for under 20 EURO per month. These countries use absolutely same equipment, engineers are paid same rate as in the UK.
1Gbps broadband in the UK I can find for £36 per month (around twice more expensive than other countries)
ihad fftp installed and the told me he couldn’t put my router where it was in a good position as the fibre was to delicate ,he put it in my living room speed is great but my wifi is bloody awful elsewhere
@Seamus, you can always put a longer Ethernet cable from the ONT to the router and move the router to where you want the loss will be minimal if any.
Not comparing apples to apples and not using proper data. Community Fibre currently offers 1gb plan for £27/month. If you use their refer a friend promotion you will get a £100 Amazon Voucher taking the monthly cost for 24 months to £22.83. Now let’s look at Spain prices, which is the mainland Europe country with the highest FTTP penetration (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/05/2022-full-fibre-country-ranking-sees-uk-overtake-germany.html). See this chart for prices:
https://i.blogs.es/c08139/mejores-tarifas-baratas-de-solo-fibra-en-octubre-de-2022/1366_2000.webp
As you can see the cheapest 1gb plan is €30 and that’s from the altnets. The big ISPs charge €40.95-50. Finally have a look at the Gigabit Broadband ISP List as prices have been going down due to competition presumably:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/isp_list/ISP_List_Gigabit_Broadband.php?orderBy=ufbb_total_price
Fault2Fibre is something that Openreach has been pushing for a couple of years now so just because they have renamed it, doesn’t make this news.
But to be clear this is just another one of Openreach’s (read: The BT Group’s) self-serving initiatives to force uptake of FTTP, in areas where it is already available (Greenfield or Brownfield).
But this initiative seems to on purposely ignore the fact that an End User will be in a contract with the respective CP, and taking up this offer will most likely cause an issue for both the CP and the End User (who will be losing their phone line and phone number from the day that the FTTP service goes live. Because if you didn’t know, Openreach has another initiative that allows them to decommission the End User’s PSTN line and analogue voice product on the day the FTTP service goes live, or in this case, will not restore service, so the End User better have a VOIP product in place sharpish).
I regularly have lots of issues with crackling on a copper line. Openreach come around switch it to new pair and it’s ok for a few weeks then the fault repeats and it starts again. Recently an engineer told me that there are a lot of copper faults in this area as they don’t bother to keep the cables pressurised in this area now and moisture gets in. It’s an area with a mixture of copper & aluminium I gather.
Unsure if the latter is just a story he told me or true, but if true FTTP would address this!
It’s scandalous at the end of in 2022 that there are still places around the UK that Openreach have aluminium lines in some streets, which they still haven’t replaced. It’s only when altnets come in and install FTTP that they will get upgraded.
I know of areas locally where 100+ year old homes still only have aluminium Openreach lines where they will have to wait upto the end of 2026 to get them replaced. That is why people have to rely on altnets to do the job Openreach should be doing.
Because it’s more expensive for Openreach to continuously maintain the copper/aluminium network than build FTTP networks.
@Martin: Your experience with Openreach is not unusual. In fact, Openreach is one of the worst rated companies in the UK, see e.g. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.openreach.co.uk
Aluminium cables must have seemed a great idea when they were installed, no corrosion and that sort of thing, but then the Internet was not a thing then, so yes they certainly need to be replaced with fibre.
@GNewton
IO call openreach pout of reach because they are, the only way we can contact openreach is via our provider, so to us they are out of reach
This could be of use to me. Basically had a failed FTTP install, because the ducting that goes to my house, was damaged by the local water company after they repaired my neighbour’s drive. Making it difficult for OpenReach to thread the Fibre cabling to my house.
Martin There one way getting around it put Cat6A on skirting board
Fault to fibre has been in trial stages for quite some time now in NI, a good idea in theory,but not without it’s already proven drawbacks, mainly user having an existing ADSL/VDSL router with no WAN port to plug in the ONT.
This will cause much disappointment when an engineer arrives to fix a copper fault, instead of repairing the fault, they install FTTP and either recover the copper or leave it in place in a non working state, meanwhile there is an ONT and a ‘working’ service for all intents and purposes, but no compatible router until their CP sends one.
Openreach do have stock (albeit, at very limited levels) of FTTP compatible routers from a certain CP, no names mentioned but I’m sure you can probably guess which one! Unless all CPs are on board and begin replacing existing xDSL routers with FTTP compatible ones then this won’t be successful in my opinion.
In my personal opinion BT should’ve went full fibre years ago. If course I needs funding but the UK Government should’ve had Britain ready years ago. I do admit we didn’t expect a pandemic so soon.
@TrueFibre, in my opinion the national phone/broadband network should never have been sold off in the first place, openreach had the network for next to nothing and for years did nothing to it, now other networks are pushing Fibre, Openreach have decided to follow suit otherwise they would lose custom. I feel that if it was not for alternative networks, Openreach would not even have bothered with FTTC.
Since BT is a PLC, we should not be putting public money into it, they have had enough public money in the past, including money taken off the TV licence, while I don’t have a TV licence, many people do. Also local councils have paid BT out of council tax.
If public money is going to BT, then it has to also go to other network providers and that is the problem it has not or very little.
Bt needs to use their shareholder’s money to update the network, the problem is the technology that BT is using for their fibre network is not up to scratch. The alternative network that is building here offer 150Mb/s up and down for £33, Plusnet which uses the Openreach network is 145Mb/s up and 30Mb/s down for £30. Now, if I was going to choose fibre to get better speed, which one do you think I would choose?
Not that I am because at this point in time I am fine with my FTTC connection.
I agree with you bud Openreach should’ve done this years ago. They shouldn’t even need government funding instead of going FTTC they should’ve went straight to FTTP back a decades ago before the 2008 financial crisis they had good revenue.
Hey and thanks for pointing out a very big issue in the early stages of fault to fibre with incompatible ADSL equipment.
I have since found that when I point this out to the owning service provider when I request they swap customer over they are indeed capable of sending out replacement equipment within the 2 working day appointment we set for the customer.
So good news is that we can have the new equipment there for the engineer on the install date, which is at its earliest 2 days from copper repair engineer first arriving.
I am so glad to see the progress of the fault to fibre trial go so well and also glad to have helped so many customers move over from copper based network to fibre instead of us repairing or replacing copper service to there address.
The benefits of swapping customers over where FTTP is available far out ways the benefits of repairing the copper based service they would have had a fault on.
I look forward to helping as many customers as I can in future months ahead.
They should shoot PSTN/ADSL from the PCP or the Tpole/Chamber. That will avoid all this nonsense! They should continue to provide the service that the customers are paying for! i.e. upto 24mb ADSL by using the fiber optic cable to bring the DSLAM closer.