Openreach and BT

[Deanilson]

Hi all I'm looking for help is there anything I can do...

I live in a fibre enabled area (within London) and after doing some research and speaking to the fibre in the community team at Openreach (who quoted me £2k) I have found out the main trunk from the exchange runs across the road to my property my main grievance is why is my block on copper and other in my road on fibre and also it can be done as your quoting me a price to get this done. For years I have been checking the status and it went all the way up to build and markings where even made by the old street cabinet for a new housing of one then all of a sudden nothing back down to "we dont have plan to upgrade" after this last year is when I took the route of talking with the CFP team the guy was at a lost as to why my block was not on fibre even after he requested to plans but after a few weeks came back to me with the £2k quote any help is appreciated.

 

[Mark.J]

At a guess your building is on an Exchange Only Line (EOL), which means you can probably only access ADSL? I'm just guessing as there's not much info. to go off above and London has a fair few EOLs to big buildings.

EOLs require a complex network rearrangement to resolve, although I must confess that £2k seems like a curiously low quote for such an upgrade. I assume this would benefit more than just one apartment? As such I'm not sure why they haven't done it commercially yet, it must be very borderline.

However you should be able to get that quote down by harnessing some of the Government's Gigabit connection vouchers and involving other residents. I dare say it could then be done for zero cost to yourself.

 

[Deanilson]

At a guess your building is on an Exchange Only Line (EOL), which means you can probably only access ADSL? I'm just guessing as there's not much info. to go off above and London has a fair few EOLs to big buildings.

EOLs require a complex network rearrangement to resolve, although I must confess that £2k seems like a curiously low quote for such an upgrade. I assume this would benefit more than just one apartment? As such I'm not sure why they haven't done it commercially yet, it must be very borderline.

However you should be able to get that quote down by harnessing some of the Government's Gigabit connection vouchers and involving other residents. I dare say it could then be done for zero cost to yourself.

Thanks for the reply...

yes the line is ADSL as it is copper right now but capable of FTTP (if I remember correctly at the exchange). The 2k was just my flat it's a small building of 8 flats at 2k each. The feeling I got from the guy at CFP is itwqs a mystery as to why it hadn't been done already.I will start to look into the government scheme in more detail.

 

[Mark.J]

The quote might just be for your flat, although Openreach would be installing the groundwork so that everybody else in the building could get it if they wanted. Ideally you need to find somebody who works from home as the Gigabit vouchers tend to require at least one business to be present, but they're fairly flexible on definitions.