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Community Fibre build in North London

Got a rather teasing email from OpenReach - I wonder if it’s actually meaningful?

This is the Finchley Central / West Finchley area.


I went back to their checker and instead of a “sorry not available” message, it now says “Build planned between now and Dec-2026”.

Quite a range… why even bother with such an update?
The website doesn’t give actual dates, just a dummy range. I think if you have been targeted directly it should be activating soon. Did you see any activity in your area?
 
The website doesn’t give actual dates, just a dummy range. I think if you have been targeted directly it should be activating soon. Did you see any activity in your area?
Where I am seems to be on a boundary between poles and holes. My specific area is holes, but 0.5km away it changes.

I’ve not seen any digging other than for power and gas.
 
Openreach just announced that various exchanges in Enfield and Barnet are finally going to be upgraded to FTTP by the end of 2026. My initial excitement was dampened by the cost and upload speed. 150Mb/s was around £24 and wasn't symmetrical, only 17Mb/s up or so. I'm not even sure it's worth it as a stopgap. I'm assuming I'd have to have a new line installed for Openreach and then another if I wanted CF
 
@FunkSoulBrother you would indeed have two fibre connections if you took both an Openreach provider and Community Fibre.

However, at present, Community Fibre's coverage seems static and the "half finished" builds I observe in my travels remain "half finished" so unless that changes, if you can have Community Fibre it's an available option, if you can't then it's fairly likely that Openreach will be the first FTTP you will be able to buy.

For many users the 150/30 Openreach product will meet current and near future requirements (particularly using devices on WiFi) and will most likely have a "proper" IP address rather than CGNAT so for a few pounds more it compares fairly well with the 150/150 Community Fibre product.

Depending on what your current service is and your requirements you can decide what to do once Openreach fibre is available.
 
@FunkSoulBrother you would indeed have two fibre connections if you took both an Openreach provider and Community Fibre.

However, at present, Community Fibre's coverage seems static and the "half finished" builds I observe in my travels remain "half finished" so unless that changes, if you can have Community Fibre it's an available option, if you can't then it's fairly likely that Openreach will be the first FTTP you will be able to buy.

For many users the 150/30 Openreach product will meet current and near future requirements (particularly using devices on WiFi) and will most likely have a "proper" IP address rather than CGNAT so for a few pounds more it compares fairly well with the 150/150 Community Fibre product.

Depending on what your current service is and your requirements you can decide what to do once Openreach fibre is available.
Hi @Barnet, I've since moved out of the area but was travelling through East Barnet last weekend. I still can't believe that after over 3 years, Parkside Gardens remains unfinished for both Community Fibre and Openreach. See here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLztXr1zX6yLPMqJ6

The only other road in the area to get Openreach FTTP is Church Hill Road, which Parkside Gardens joins onto. Even then, it is only the half towards Russell Lane. It's all a bit odd!
 
@FunkSoulBrotherit's fairly likely that Openreach will be the first FTTP you will be able to buy.
I think I'll probably pass on an Openreach line all together unless the price falls quite significantly. If it arrives at the end of 2026 it's plausible that CF will be available before then or not long after. I suspect that we were close to getting CF before they stopped, so should they restart I don't think it'll be a long wait
 
@FunkSoulBrother you would indeed have two fibre connections if you took both an Openreach provider and Community Fibre.

However, at present, Community Fibre's coverage seems static and the "half finished" builds I observe in my travels remain "half finished" so unless that changes, if you can have Community Fibre it's an available option, if you can't then it's fairly likely that Openreach will be the first FTTP you will be able to buy.

For many users the 150/30 Openreach product will meet current and near future requirements (particularly using devices on WiFi) and will most likely have a "proper" IP address rather than CGNAT so for a few pounds more it compares fairly well with the 150/150 Community Fibre product.

Depending on what your current service is and your requirements you can decide what to do once Openreach fibre is available.
Give me call
 
I've spoken to Community Fibre last week who are still adament they will be in the Bush Hill Park area (EN1) by the end of the year. I've seen some here say CF's building has stopped but I've not seen any citation for that. (Could anyone from Community Fibre comfirm/deny?)

Open Infra in this area haven't really progressed anywhere, still trying to get sign ups to reach their threshold.

Openreach sent an email to say they will be in our area, I assume its related to this:

The checker now shows build plans between now and Dec 2026 for 1800 Mb/ps download 120 Mb/ps upload

I would certainly go with CF if i had the chance, im not overhead poles but underground ducting so im not holding out too much hope.
 
I've spoken to Community Fibre last week who are still adament they will be in the Bush Hill Park area (EN1) by the end of the year. I've seen some here say CF's building has stopped but I've not seen any citation for that. (Could anyone from Community Fibre comfirm/deny?)

Open Infra in this area haven't really progressed anywhere, still trying to get sign ups to reach their threshold.

Openreach sent an email to say they will be in our area, I assume its related to this:

The checker now shows build plans between now and Dec 2026 for 1800 Mb/ps download 120 Mb/ps upload

I would certainly go with CF if i had the chance, im not overhead poles but underground ducting so im not holding out too much hope.

I saw some Open Infra signs in Lincoln Crescent a few months back. Jammy gits.

There's no doubt that CF have stopped building. I don't know if it was officially announced but there was news about it and nothing has been built since and nothing planned in the near future. If CF are saying they've got plans to do BHP by the end of the year then great but that's not something they've publicly announced. I don't know how far along the build is but they're missing money from those potential customers.

I wish openreach had a timeline that was a bit more specific than sometime in the next 18 months.

I've seen a lot of activity for Open Reach, hard to know if it's for their FTTP rollout but it seems that way. Presumably CF will want to get their rollout completed before Openreach. While I'd much prefer CF I think a lot of people wouldn't bother switching if they had Openreach FTTP already even though at the time of writing it's £28pm vs £20pm for 500/68 vs 500 symmetrical
 
Here is the article about Community Fibre "pausing" their build.


I see half finished build on poles around the area so it was very much a "down tools".

To a degree the "early mover" advantage that Community Fibre had is going as Openreach do their build around London.

The uptake in recently covered Openreach fibre areas looks fairly reasonable, judging by the plugs in their boxes at the top of poles (it's a bit easier to estimate than the Community Fibre uptake).

For a minor speed increase against FTTC, an Openreach service can be reasonable value if you don't want a phone line and my guess is customers of the "value brands" are taking that saving.
 
It’s worth mentioning that the “end of 2026” estimation is basically useless. This is the end of Openreach upgrade plans and what it shows for all areas that are not currently building out. On top of that Openreach may start the build and decide that certain properties can’t be easily serviced and ignore them for now. So read “end of 2026” as “the build can start anytime from now till that date” and there is guarantee your property will be served although most properties will be upgraded. Eventually Openreach will look to decom all copper lines so whatever is missed will be slowly completed as the exchange gets moved to mostly fibre. My educated guess is that those exchanges earmarked for decommission will take priority for full copper decommission as Openreach has a financial incentive to sell the exchange property and save a lot on property maintenance costs.
 
Here is the article about Community Fibre "pausing" their build.


I see half finished build on poles around the area so it was very much a "down tools".

To a degree the "early mover" advantage that Community Fibre had is going as Openreach do their build around London.

The uptake in recently covered Openreach fibre areas looks fairly reasonable, judging by the plugs in their boxes at the top of poles (it's a bit easier to estimate than the Community Fibre uptake).

For a minor speed increase against FTTC, an Openreach service can be reasonable value if you don't want a phone line and my guess is customers of the "value brands" are taking that saving.
You’re right, there’s an awful lot left unfinished.

I get the impression that Community Fibre were heavily impacted by blocked ducts and direct burial in Barnet. In my old road, they switched mid way from underground to pole to pole deployment. When speaking with an on-site senior, he said the build team were under significant pressure to get things live, as costs were spiralling. Since then, I noticed that houses on main roads (exclusively underground served) never got built to. One road got Toby boxes and it looks like they gave up after that.

I know that ISPs can build where they want but the fragmented build in Barnet and Whetstone is extremely disappointing. I’m not sure if there were plans to return that have since been put on hold as part of the stop-build.
 
You’re right, there’s an awful lot left unfinished.

I get the impression that Community Fibre were heavily impacted by blocked ducts and direct burial in Barnet. In my old road, they switched mid way from underground to pole to pole deployment. When speaking with an on-site senior, he said the build team were under significant pressure to get things live, as costs were spiralling. Since then, I noticed that houses on main roads (exclusively underground served) never got built to. One road got Toby boxes and it looks like they gave up after that.

I know that ISPs can build where they want but the fragmented build in Barnet and Whetstone is extremely disappointing. I’m not sure if there were plans to return that have since been put on hold as part of the stop-build.
I think they did think they were going to come back to missed properties based on where they could build out at the slowest cost. But then again there are still loads of properties they can target just using poles and overhead cables so when and if this was going to happen is not clear. On top of this Openreach continues to advance their build so the first mover advantage is quickly disappearing. Finally I think the estimations on how much take up they were going to get was too high. Turns out most people don’t care about symmetric speeds and don’t really spend much time trying to lower their internet costs. My neighbours knew about CF as I told them and yet they choose to move from BT to EE as they have them a “good deal” which included their mobile phone plans. How good was this deal I don’t know but I doubt it will be cheaper/better than CF + SIM only plans. But here is the issue. It was convenient and it was cheap enough.
 
I think they did think they were going to come back to missed properties based on where they could build out at the slowest cost. But then again there are still loads of properties they can target just using poles and overhead cables so when and if this was going to happen is not clear. On top of this Openreach continues to advance their build so the first mover advantage is quickly disappearing. Finally I think the estimations on how much take up they were going to get was too high. Turns out most people don’t care about symmetric speeds and don’t really spend much time trying to lower their internet costs. My neighbours knew about CF as I told them and yet they choose to move from BT to EE as they have them a “good deal” which included their mobile phone plans. How good was this deal I don’t know but I doubt it will be cheaper/better than CF + SIM only plans. But here is the issue. It was convenient and it was cheap enough.
Agreed. Where I live now, Gigaclear have built out and Openreach have swooped in before the Gigaclear service has gone live. I spoke to a rep at Gigaclear and he wasn't aware of the aggressiveness of OR's build; they got almost everywhere ready for service in about 3 weeks! The response was "we don't normally build where Openreach have a presence. Damn. Okay, thanks for letting us know".

On the Community Fibre uptake front, I chatted to a few neighbours who used to have Virgin via RFoG, when it was first built. A few of them switched back to FTTC, as the reliability from Virgin just wasn't there. When I mentioned Community Fibre, it was very much a "once bitten, twice shy" response.
 
Turns out most people don’t care about symmetric speeds and don’t really spend much time trying to lower their internet costs.

Maybe. I'm sure there are people that just go for whatever they see advertised but a lot of people care about getting good value and in areas served by CF I think they'll have a large take up once people are aware. The turn off of POTS will help too, one person I spoke to was interested but didn't want to switch to a IP based system, even though they'll have to anyway
 
Maybe. I'm sure there are people that just go for whatever they see advertised but a lot of people care about getting good value and in areas served by CF I think they'll have a large take up once people are aware. The turn off of POTS will help too, one person I spoke to was interested but didn't want to switch to a IP based system, even though they'll have to anyway
Yeah obviously everyone is different and personals circumstances vary a lot. But on top of the reasons I have there is also the bundling with other services like cable/sat TV, non-IP phone, mobile plans and the fact that most people don’t like changes. If it was just purely on price Altnets should have really be having a time of their lives as most Altnets are priced aggressively and beat the larger networks easily.
 
Here is the article about Community Fibre "pausing" their build.


I see half finished build on poles around the area so it was very much a "down tools".

To a degree the "early mover" advantage that Community Fibre had is going as Openreach do their build around London.

The uptake in recently covered Openreach fibre areas looks fairly reasonable, judging by the plugs in their boxes at the top of poles (it's a bit easier to estimate than the Community Fibre uptake).

For a minor speed increase against FTTC, an Openreach service can be reasonable value if you don't want a phone line and my guess is customers of the "value brands" are taking that saving.
"To a degree the "early mover" advantage that Community Fibre had is going as Openreach do their build around London"

Not really as CFL signed deals with landlords (council) to supply mostly to MDUs, OR have missed out on that market as all the alt nets have scoop most of them up. Once they restart there building I still believe the uptake will be greater. There is still the loyal customer base/ people who don't know or care about FTTP but OR are not building fast enough in London for myself. near me in N12 the uptake in each MDU is 95% if not 100% as the only options was ADSL+ from OR and only a few could get VM02 and I don't expect OR to be done anytime soon.
 
That's a good point and (particularly) a "blanket" install in larger MDUs and good pricing would, I'm sure, have good uptake. That was the Hyperoptic business model and compared with the phone line based alternative it's a very good proposition.

More difficult for Community Fibre is the typical "Metroland" style London suburbia. The demograpic will probably be a bit older and assuming their copper phone line is OK often fairly happy with a VDSL service so a speed based "upsell" doesn't work so well.

Community Fibre do have a "landline" phone service which addresses one barrier to adoption for some potential customers in suburbia but there is a fair degree of existing supplier "stickyness" and unwillingness to change unless the existing service is seen to fail.

If the existing supplier (Sky, Talk Talk, whoever) sells a speed "upgrade" for minimal cost increase or even a saving (using the Openreach FTTP), for many that's an easier sell.
 
That's a good point and (particularly) a "blanket" install in larger MDUs and good pricing would, I'm sure, have good uptake. That was the Hyperoptic business model and compared with the phone line based alternative it's a very good proposition.

More difficult for Community Fibre is the typical "Metroland" style London suburbia. The demograpic will probably be a bit older and assuming their copper phone line is OK often fairly happy with a VDSL service so a speed based "upsell" doesn't work so well.

Community Fibre do have a "landline" phone service which addresses one barrier to adoption for some potential customers in suburbia but there is a fair degree of existing supplier "stickyness" and unwillingness to change unless the existing service is seen to fail.

If the existing supplier (Sky, Talk Talk, whoever) sells a speed "upgrade" for minimal cost increase or even a saving (using the Openreach FTTP), for many that's an easier sell.
Hyperoptic serve two larger block next to mine but they were a pain to talk to and was not interested cause my block was only 8 flats. Barnet was definitely an issue with building to across the borough (blockages, permission's etc) and both parties was not happy (Barnet and CFL bit of the blame game started).

I believe others in here have mention before and you are right as I have seen this for myself in my role. Most people don't even understand broadband so are happy to be mislead by whoever there with and only want to change if there is an major issue even who better options all round (speed, price, etc) are available.

The landline conundrum is going to be an very interesting battle ground I myself have had no need for a landline for many years now but the older gen depend on them and like most things there not being prepared for the switch over let alone understand it.
 
A friend of mine in outer London was a long standing Virgin Media broadband only customer and being spanked hard financially because they didn't like the risk of doing a proper dance with retentions.

Despite all this it took several attempts to get them to sign up for Community Fibre for less than half their existing monthly cost and a higher speed symmetric lower latency connection.

They're happy campers now but they probably wouldn't have done it without me pushing and berating them to do it.
 
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