Superfast fibre broadband - why line rental?

bigredduke

I live in a community of 32 houses. The residents have each paid for an upgrade to fibre broadband to each property as BT were unwilling to upgrade the serving cabinet. Unlike most of the properties in the village where fibre goes to the cabinet and it is copper from there to each house, we are getting fibre from the cabinet to each property.
My question is: will we still need to pay for line rental even though the copper feed will be redundant. If the answer is yes, can anyone explain why this is the case?
Thank you

waamo

Yes and it's a mystery. I guess you are still having a line into the house. Just a fibre line rather than a copper line.

You would probably be better asking this question in the phones or broadband sections though rather than energy.

matelodave

If it's like the system we've got then the phone is still carried on copper and the broadband on the fibre. The drop cable comprises a figure 8 construction with a pair of wires plus the optic fibre and it replaces the existing copper drop cable.

At the pole end - the fibre is terminated into the Fibre Distribution unit and the coppers just connected to the existing distribution box. It depends how you have the house end configured - mine has the copper wires connected onto where the old drop cable terminated and the fibre continues onto to the Optical Terminal Unit.

In the whole great scheme of things "line rental" is much the same as the standing charge for your water, gas or leccy. It pays towards the fixed costs of provison and maintenance for the network, not just the bit that goes to your house. You are still renting the line, it's just optical in this case with some quite expensive kit incorporated into it.

As said above, why not ask this question on the correct forum