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FTTP on Demand high monthly rental prices

cbdeakin

Regular Member
I could get FTTP on Demand in my area, according to the BT checker. I believe my home is either approx. 200m or approx 700m from the aggregation node, depending on if it is near my local cabinet, or near the telephone exchange. So, hopefully the civil engineering costs would be £10,000 or less, and hopefully this cost could be mostly covered with a few gigabit vouchers for businesses.

EDIT - Just found out that the aggregation node is very likely to be right next to the FTTC cabinet and PCP cabinet serving my property. Apparently, they are often deployed in "a 3-lid chamber near the PCP (phone) cabinet". I saw a three lid chamber next to PCP cabinet, which judging by the tarmac, looked like it was connecting something to both cabinets. Source:

But, the high monthly rental charges for FTTP on Demand are off-putting, I saw prices of £120 p/m on one provider's website and haven't found a cheaper one yet. Since you have to take out a 12 month contract, thats a total of £1,440 for the first year.

Openreaches rental charges for the 115mbps FTTP on demand teir are just £248.8 (including vat) for the first year, from September 2020. Link here:

The hardware costs for customers, including a Fibre modem ONT + optional router, wouldn't be much more than £150-£200 (correct me if im wrong).

So, all together, perhaps £540 would be roughly how much it would ideally cost, taking into account 20% profit for the ISP. Athough I havent considered extra costs like possible network upgrades etc.

Does anyone know if there are any FTTP on Demand providers that offer lower teir packages, for a lower monthly rental?
 
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Your only real choice for FTTPoD is Cerberus (or one of their resellers) - I believe they use BTWholesale for the connection so the OR pricing is not really relevant to the monthly costs (BTW is quite expensive). Personally I was happy to pay the increased monthly rental for a year to get native FTTP installed.
 
Hi brookheather, do you have to pay a high fee to get the line regraded to ordinary FTTP, once the initial year is up with a provider?

Does anyone know if the aggregation node is likely to be in the 3 lid chambre next to the 2 green cabinets at the bottom of my street?

Or, could this contain something else, like a splitter?

Also, what kind of hardware do most FTTP connections use, is it standardized or different depending on the ISP?
 
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Cerberus also make it easy to get a quote in the first place, which is another plus.

The FTTP that comes from FoD is technically ordinary FTTP already, when looking at just the service side of things. So there should be no extra costs when you reach the end of your contract, it's just treated as an FTTP to FTTP ISP migration on the Openreach network.

The agg node is usually fairly close to an FTTC cabinet, albeit not always, but your guess is a reasonable one.

As for hardware. Well the CPE router is obviously going to be different for every ISP, but otherwise on Openreach the ONT (internal wall hung box) is usually Nokia or Huawei (some older installs also got something from ECI). But ADTRAN has now become another supplier. Generally Openreach varies what they use between areas (some areas will be all Nokia or all Huawei etc.).
 
But, the high monthly rental charges for FTTP on Demand are off-putting, I saw prices of £120 p/m on one provider's website and haven't found a cheaper one yet. Since you have to take out a 12 month contract, thats a total of £1,440 for the first year.
Approx £100/m is about as good as you're going to get on FoD. But surely if you're willing to spend £1000s on up front FoD costs then another £1200+ on top in annual rental isn't that much of a big deal? For most, its the up front FoD costs which are off putting, not the monthly costs which are potentially miniscule in comparison for many. Crucially, you don't pay the £100/m for life, after 12 months you can regrade the service or change ISPs- even to a £25/m FTTP 40/10 service if you really wanted.
 
With Cerberus there's no charge to regrade to standard FTTP after 12 months; you just have to sign another 12 month contract for the new service (currently £55+VAT per month for 300/50). Or you can give 30 days notice to cease and move to a different FTTP provider of your choice.

Managing FTTPoD orders can be a long, time-consuming process for Cerberus. My FTTPoD took nearly 18 months from ordering the survey to service going live. During that time Cerberus were providing weekly updates and constantly chasing BTW/OR about whatever the delay du jour was.

I don't know what they actually pay BTW for the first 12 months service, but any markup they make is well-earned payback for the hassle during delivery.
 
Don't most business owners or customers try to apply for rural gigabit vouchers though, to cover most / all the cost of the installation?

If a few business owners in the same street do a linked order and apply for a few gigabit vouchers worth £3500 each, it should be possible to cover most / all of the civil engineering costs, at least if you live near the aggregation node (which I believe is true in my case).

Looking at the average cost since the Openreach price changes in 2018, £6,000-10,000 seems to be quite a common amount for the total installation costs, at least after people pay for a full survey.

Or, you could try to do a similar thing, by asking lots of people in your street to apply for residential vouchers, although I think it's less likely to be successful, unless you are prepared to pay the rest of the costs if doesn't work out.

I know that won't apply to some though, who don't live in a rural area (or an urban area not planned to have native FTTP installed yet), which is unfortunate :(

Have any users here managed to get together with other business owners in your street to cover the costs of installation? IF so, did you receive the full £3500 voucher to help with costs?
 
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I heard that the pricing structure for FTTP on Demand was changed (I think in 2017) for ISPs, customers used to be able to apply for native FTTP, once Openreach had finished the installation work. But now, FTTP on Demand is treated as a seperate product, and as a result, is only offered by a few ISPs in the UK.

Presumably, all customers who take part in a linked order who pay with vouchers, need to apply through the same ISP + same FTTPoD package? The main problem here is that many will not be able to afford the high monthly costs for the 1st year of FTTPoD, so many linked orders won't go ahead.
 
"If a few business owners in the same street do a linked order and apply for a few gigabit vouchers worth £3500 each, it should be possible to cover most / all of the civil engineering costs"

If you have a group of users (more than 2), you may be better off going for a Community Fibre Partnership, which is also eligible for vouchers. In this case, you can take native FTTP from day one.

"I heard that the pricing structure for FTTP on Demand was changed (I think in 2017) for ISPs, customers used to be able to apply for native FTTP, once Openreach had finished the installation work. But now, FTTP on Demand is treated as a seperate product, and as a result, is only offered by a few ISPs in the UK."

That's mostly incorrect.

FTTPoD pricing *did* change in 2018. The installation charge used to be priced by "band" which was distance range from the aggregation node. It also had a much higher rental and a 36 month minimum contract. In effect, much of the install cost was buried in the 36 month rental. However except in very rare cases where Excess Construction Costs were charged, the install price was known in advance. If ECCs were raised, the customer could choose to cancel the order with no penalty.

As of March 2018, the minimum rental period was reduced to 12 months, and the monthly rental reduced too. However the costing by band was abolished, and replaced with a bespoke installation charge given by a £250+VAT non-refundable survey fee. You now have to pay the whole installation charge up-front within 30 days of the getting the quote.

In both cases though, the product was "FTTPoD"; you could only order it through one of the few service providers who did FTTPoD, and you could switch to native FTTP only at the end of the initial term.

The other big change is that under the old system, only a single property was connected. As of March 2018, new installs make FTTP service available to other properties sharing the same CBT - typically those properties served by the same pole or same pavement footbox. The FTTPoD customer gets a £50 discount for each additional property made available for FTTP by their install, and those other properties *can* take native FTTP from day one, at no cost.
 
Thanks for the info. Candlerb. A community fibre partnership sounds appealing, particularly because native FTTP is offered once the installation work is complete. So, a community can get all / most of the installation costs paid for with around 3-4 gigabit vouchers for businesses, with a fibre partnership?

Also, would I need to get a certain number of households in my street to agree to a fibre partnership, or would 3-4 be enough?

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages of community fibre partnerships, vs applying for FTTPoD through an isp with a linked order?
 
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The number of vouchers required depends entirely on the size and cost/difficulty of construction.

If you can get 3 or 4 people to start the ball rolling for CFP, that's certainly a good start. Depending on your location in the UK, there may be residential as well as business vouchers you can use towards a CFP.

With a CFP, you need to contract with Openreach via a business or a Community Interest Company - you can set one up specially for this purpose, or maybe one of the participating businesses will agree to take on this role. FTTPoD can be ordered by businesses or individuals.

More info: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-fibre-partnerships
 
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