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FCP - from build to go-live

outofmyshed

Casual Member
Back in April this year, Openreach opened a Fibre Community Partnership to cover my exchange area, which falls within the failed Lot 4 Project Gigabit procurement. It's a large rural area (Piercebridge and surrounding areas) with some challenging geography and large distances between populations. There's no VMO2 or proper altnet presence (although Quickline put up a FWA mast nearby a few months ago, which might've been a factor).

In my village, there's been FTTC since 2011 and most properties get reasonable speeds so it was a bit of a tough sell. Those really out of the way who can't get VDSL2 end up with 4G routers as the local EE performance is reasonably good.

I thought I'd list out the timeline at a high level - it might be helpful for some.

April 2024 - FCP launched. Not much publicity initially, so start spreading the word myself.
June - FCP target (c. 300 vouchers) reached, after a lot of local campaigning and Openreach outreach. To be fair to OR, they did a great job of sending a team to be on the ground for several days at a time, knock on doors, spread the word, and reassure a lot of the older folk who live around here who didn't understand what it was all about.
July - Openreach surveys. Lots of green spray paint on the roads. OR realise what a state the copper network is in (not great). It's a hotchpotch of overhead, ducts, direct-in-ground and weird routing. Lots of blocked ducts and rotten poles to be replaced. Also a lot of sharing of poles with electricity supply.
August - A few telecoms notices start to appear in the village about new poles. There aren't too many and there are already plenty of them so not much of a fuss.
September - Roadworks notices start to appear and Openreach vans start encircling. There's some rodding and roping, including to my property (hooray!).
October - Build really starts to happen. CBTs start appearing on poles. JBFs are opened, splitters and CBTs installed. New duct is installed in a 60s-built cul-de-sac to overlay DIG.
November - First properties start to go live in north half of village. Two weeks later, south half goes live. Two days ago, I placed my regrade order, got an installation date of 2 weeks out.

So, about five months from hitting target to being able to place an order for FTTP.
 
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Wow, a good reward for getting out of your shed, congratulations. But does your shed now benefit from this FTTP loveliness so you can stay in there more?
Thanks. The shed certainly will, when I replace the dodgy wireless link to the house with some fibre, which is the plan once FTTP is in and I can face digging up the garden to put some conduit in..
 
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