SlimJ
Regular Member
Hi all,
I live in East Kent and our house is situated among 10 addresses just on the outskirts of our village separated by a farmyard and fields, we’re pretty much 1.5km from our cabinet. Our speeds on FTTC range from approximately 20Mbps/1Mbps (myself, furthest point on the line) to a max of 30Mbps/5Mbps (for those closer to the cabinet due to the route the cable takes) – Due to the distances, the service can be unreliable, I have lost count of the number of times in the past 5 years that we’ve had Openreach engineers visiting one of our houses to fix faults - we've had our drop wire replaced twice!!
As part of the Rural Gigabit Voucher scheme and Kent Top-up, we should be able to claim the full £7,000 voucher for each property. As a result, I’m thinking it is worth taking a punt on a CFP as it could be 5+ more years before our area is covered – I have registered my details and have access to the portal to add addresses.
Our little neighbourhood is fairly simple layout wise with all properties served from 3 distribution points. In 2019, Openreach also ran fibre cabling past our neighbourhood enroute to another village (who just had ADSL) – There are 2 fibre joints situated in the same locations as 2 of the copper distribution points. If another span of fibre cabling is required back to the aggregation node then it is highly likely the underground ducts are still clear. I’ve included a simple map of the layout of our neighbourhood.
Questions
I live in East Kent and our house is situated among 10 addresses just on the outskirts of our village separated by a farmyard and fields, we’re pretty much 1.5km from our cabinet. Our speeds on FTTC range from approximately 20Mbps/1Mbps (myself, furthest point on the line) to a max of 30Mbps/5Mbps (for those closer to the cabinet due to the route the cable takes) – Due to the distances, the service can be unreliable, I have lost count of the number of times in the past 5 years that we’ve had Openreach engineers visiting one of our houses to fix faults - we've had our drop wire replaced twice!!
As part of the Rural Gigabit Voucher scheme and Kent Top-up, we should be able to claim the full £7,000 voucher for each property. As a result, I’m thinking it is worth taking a punt on a CFP as it could be 5+ more years before our area is covered – I have registered my details and have access to the portal to add addresses.
Our little neighbourhood is fairly simple layout wise with all properties served from 3 distribution points. In 2019, Openreach also ran fibre cabling past our neighbourhood enroute to another village (who just had ADSL) – There are 2 fibre joints situated in the same locations as 2 of the copper distribution points. If another span of fibre cabling is required back to the aggregation node then it is highly likely the underground ducts are still clear. I’ve included a simple map of the layout of our neighbourhood.
Questions
- For those that have been through the CFP process, how many properties did you initially cover in your scheme and what were your quoted build costs? Did you end up personally incurring any of the build costs?
- While I believe I can get at least 5 of us interested, are there any tips you would suggest in order to encourage sign ups? With the high value of the voucher and the small number of properties in this area, costs to us with enough interest are likely be negligible (I had a desktop quote for FTTPoD for £14k a few months back).
- I’m thinking of submitting the 10 addresses to the portal to obtain an indicative project cost before approaching all the neighbours which should make it an easier sell (especially if the costs are low!). But before I do this I may put an A4 page together highlighting what I am doing and what the benefits are. Would this be worthwhile?