The Curious Case of Openreach’s £73k FTTP on Demand Install Quote
Eyebrows were recently raised after UK network operator Openreach (BT) quoted one home in Scotland over £73,000 to have an FTTP on Demand (FTTPoD) broadband service installed. The high cost of FTTPoD is not a new issue, but in this case a nearby neighbour already had the service and the operator’s fibre even ran directly outside the house.
Just for some context. It’s important not to confuse the normal / native Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service with FTTPoD (or FoD) – the latter is a premium product aimed more at smaller businesses. In a normal native FTTP rollout, Openreach foots the bill to install the optical fibre down your street, but with FTTPoD it’s the customer who chooses to pay for the extremely expensive civil engineering side of that build (desktop quotes for this often run into the tens of thousands).
The advantage of FoD is that it can enable 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 people. Not to mention that it’s awkwardly positioned in an area of the market that is also inhabited by Leased Lines.
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Suffice to say that, in recent years, FTTPoD – now somewhat legendary for the high asking price of its desktop quotes – has taken a bit of a backseat. However, a proper engineering survey is usually conducted later, once an order has been formally placed (at cost), in order to find out the correct build cost – this of course may end up being either more or less expensive than the initial desktop quote.
How Much!?
Despite this, we recently came across a particularly unusual situation, even for FTTPoD, with a house (cottage) in the rural Scottish village of Farnell. Openreach had quoted the owner of this property £73,108 via UK ISP Converged to have FTTPoD installed, which is extremely high, albeit perhaps not too unusual for such a location (the high cost of building FTTP in a previously unserved area is often reflected in such estimates).
The problem is that the area was NOT previously unserved. In fact, the neighbouring house, which sat less than 30 metres away on the same road (both were also right next to the road), had previously had the same FTTPoD service installed just 3 years earlier (2022) and for “only” around £14,000. Better yet, the fibre used to reach that property ran right in front of the target house for the £73k install (along the same road).
The Google Streeview screenshot on this article shows the same road setting and, on the left of the road, you can just make out Openreach’s chamber with their fibre in, which runs up to connect the two properties in the background.
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Suffice to say that we can see no reason why it would cost £73k to hook up a nearby house and, strictly speaking, Ofcom’s rules do appear to forbid double charging for the majority of such an installation (in this case, it’s also a lot more than ‘double’). Naturally we asked Openreach for some pearls of their wisdom and, although it took a bit of time before they recognised the issue, we did finally get a reply.
A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:
“We completely understand how frustrating delays like this can be, and want to get this resolved as quickly as possible. We’re arranging for a specialist fibre engineer to conduct a detailed assessment of the local network to establish exactly which existing fibre routes already run close to [the cottages].
This review will help us determine if the original quote accurately reflects the work required and, depending on the findings, may allow us to identify a more straightforward and cost-effective solution.”
The likelihood is of course that most of this erroneous costing will end up being ironed out in the engineering survey. But the catch is that many customers would balk so hard at the first quote that they almost certainly wouldn’t even think to proceed further and place an order. Mind you, it’s not as if FTTPoD was ever particularly popular, especially now that FTTP is already available to the majority of UK premises and rising.
In any case, we’re now waiting to hear back from Openreach’s engineer to see what the actual cost of delivery might be and plan to update this post again. At the same time, it remains unclear why Openreach’s existing map of the area seems to have been unable to “establish exactly which existing fibre routes already run close to” the property concerned. Particularly since the previous FTTPoD build in the area was so recent.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’ve been quoted £110,000
Despite fibre (on poles) running past the end of my driveway (even on my side of the road, the same poles that my 3mbps ‘broadband’ is serviced by
Who’s fibre is it on the poles though? Altnets can use ORs dark fibre, but OR can’t use theirs
Not surprised by that at all, they wanted £100k at desktop quote for mine noting that there is a spine already running past the bottom of my garden.
Openreach seem hell bent on not optioning easy returns on infrastructure investment while they wait to claim big government payouts
Worth noting that the cheapest answer is typically to order a 1G EAD based product. E.g a £450/month free install 3 year term is usually less than a fttpod quote+rental for 3 years.
Sounds rather like monopolistic behaviour from the incumbent provider that the government(s) are obsessed with, gifting BT group enormous amounts of taxpayer money.
I’d love to see a public audit detailing and justifying what Openreach is charging the taxpayer for subsidised installations under schemes like R100. I suspect much of their commercial build is also indirectly part funded by these inflated costs since they seem to be able to pull out figures as they see fit and charge accordingly if nobody is checking the value for money.
No-one is having FTTPod delivered using public money. The cost is high because all the spend that is normally split between all the customers who wiould be served by a normal rollout are paid by the person requesting the work.
FTTPoD is offered on an entirely commercial basis. There is no enforced monopoly and there is nothing to stop the altnets serving these places. One wonders why none of these firms are queuing up. They even have the right to use Openreach’s crown jewels – their physical assets – to do so at a fraction of the cost.
R100 and other subsidy schemes would have been awarded based on the usual tendering processes, and there’s the obvious difference in that there is some economy of scale that FTTPoD doesn’t have, even in cases like this where a nearby neighbour already paid for an upgrade.
Competitive tenders?
What competitors? The Scottish Government stated that BT was the preferred supplier of the tendering process for R100. A legal challenge by Gigaclear who was trying to bid for Lot 1 was silenced by an undisclosed settlement – protected by a NDA. Tell me again that R100 is good value for money after a “freely” competitive tendering process?
R100 is basically a very large government driven FTTPoD order. Openreach are clearly pulling out unjustified costs to connect premises at a small scale… tell me how that’s not happening on an enormous project across Scotland? There is really no way to know unless the details are all fully publicised.
I was quoted £136,000. At the time fibre ran past my street to other houses not far away.
One year later, VM came and dug the streets, 3 months later OR suddenly rushed and built it.
I was so convinced my desktop FTTPoD quote was wrong I paid £400 for the site survey. It came back at £90,000 for a run of 285 meters, on 7 existing poles, serving a cluster of 11 properties! I have subsequently contacted Openreach to challenge. Could this be Openreach protecting lucrative future R100 contracts?
It’s more likely Openreach being too busy with 10,000+ scheduled FTTP installs per day to be bothered with one-off projects.
As above. Many of these jobs are going to be very unattractive to OR, taking resource away from the national rollout.
That money would pay for several years subscription to Starlink.
FTTPoD should be capped price! Openreach FTTPoD quote always con, rip off and unfair price in my view!
Anything BT/Brokenreach is ludicrous.
The BT fan boys on here will rally to the cause, spewing out a whole host of excuses why they can’t do this or that, why they constantly pick out of date technology (GPON, whilst others deploy XGS-PON and Netomnia done 50PON). It’s not their fault as such, they are just programmed to defend, because it has the word “British” in it and couldn’t possibly be at fault. Some others have shares in BT and some simply work for BT or have family who have.
Meanwhile, in a number of cases, the beautiful, fresh smelling ALTNETS sail by, with their limited capital and fresh start unlike BT, even Vermin Media and then BT change their tune and rush to install.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Without the ALTNETS, this country would still be sweating copper. It’s only if the heat is turned up to maximum for BT do they ever respond. They are arrogant in their approach to residential, and always have been citing any reason to not spend money as “business strategy” or some other excuse. They hate the Altnets because they show them up.
Sure, BT has a captive audience, built up over decades, and many just upgrade from ADSL or FTTC straight to FTTP with BT, mainly because the Altnets not advertised they are in an area and because they have been with a household brand for years. As we have already seen the BT CEO admit, the ALTNETS are starting to bite at customer base, and they haven’t been around long either, or even had serious advertising campaigns.
If they install and sell service at a loss they’re acting uncompetitively. Other network operators will rightly complain. If you cap the price you simply make it unavailable to anyone whose cost to deliver is over your arbitrary cap.
I thought ADSLMax got FoD installed according to a thinkbroadband post they made?
Glad to see you’ve finally adopted a name “Fanny”.
The blessed altnets aren’t rushing to service this area. Why is that? Surely if it was such a commercial winner they’d all be queuing up to get those PIA requests in (we know they’d never fully DIY of course)
“As we have already seen the BT CEO admit, the ALTNETS are starting to bite at customer base,”
As it apparently needs constant repetition – Openreach (and by extension their ISP customers) suffer in areas where they do not yet have FTTP. They are leading the industry on build rates and especially on takeup. No altnet gets close. It’ll be even more of a bloodbath when they get symmetric and XGS online.
Hi BT Ivor, glad you love the new forum name. I chose it as Sweet Fanny Adams applies to BT for a couple of decades 🙂
Anyway, not worried about XGS-PON from BT or symmetric because:
1. The roll out of XGS-PON will be limited to the most expensive tiers only and will take years of BT trials and pilots to achieve
2. The symmetric offering to date rom BT has been laughable. Limited to tiers 1gbps or above, and sliced up into speed tiers, like a marketing person’s wet dream meaning it will be all too expensive and people default to lowest tier.
I do worry when BT fans and shareholders start to dispute what BT’s own CEO stated in a news article here. The fact she mentioned it, means she IS worried about ALTNETS eating into customer base going forward, regardless of whether BT in an area or not.
If an altnet wants to come in and offer fibre on demand at a cheaper price I’m sure they are at perfect liberty to do so….
I’m willing to bet most of these high quotes are coming from desk based teams in India who sometimes don’t understand the network that’s in place. It’s embarrassing having to speak to customers who’ve received these types of quotes.
Simply install Starlink.
It make much more sense get Starlink and wait to see if BDUK eventually comes your way than pay a massive upfront fee while large scale FTTP build is still ongoing.
“…We’re arranging for a specialist fibre engineer to conduct a detailed assessment of the local network to establish exactly which existing fibre routes already run close to [the cottages]…”
So what they’ve done so far, why not start from the simplest thing?
They’ve done a standard desktop survey, the simplest thing. The field survey costs a few hundred as it’s a lot more involved.
I’d say these quotes are artificially high, designed to put people off ordering, as OR’s attention is elsewhere
The property in question is not included in the R100 build programme, so its eligible to use a £5,000 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) voucher. That can be used for an alternative solution, but not for FTTPoD. The property is also included in the Project Gigabit’s Lot 5, which is currently under procurement, and is marked as a white property, in scope of intervention through that. So the fact here is that public IS available to this property for a superfast broadband solution, with further public money committed to upgrade it to FTTP in the coming years. As others have said, the resident should be advised to go with an alternative broadband solution now, whilst waiting for Project Gigabit to roll through. It is very worrying though if the resident is aware of none of this.