OFNL??

fire_bb

Hi all

I am moving into a relatively new estate and was told that fibre is only available from OFNL, I never heard of it before but I am getting the idea so please correct me if I am wrong. So OFNL is a similar company to BT that offers the same kind of infrastructure on how the fibre is laid within a new built development (FTTP or they call FTTH) , and they have  couple of handful of smaller so called "internet companies" that lease their lines and offer the service / bandwidth to the consumer? is that right? (like BT has the lines and other companies lease off it)..
The reason I ask is that I have not heard of those smaller companies who offers the service and not sure if technically they are all the same or not? So if something goes wrong, more than likely will be the hardware (the fibre) so I assume no matter which provider I am with, I  will have the same kind of issues anyway? and what I have factored into my decision is price and follow up service? Because I guess if nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong, they are all the same. But if something goes wrong, its how they handle the matter that counts..
I have narrowed down to Vfast and Seethelight and before you ask me to check ispreviews, they do not have much and nothing on vfast. So anyone with actual experience with them and can share is very much appreciated.

Thank you so much,

littleboo

As you say, OFNL is a wholesaler network provider, similar to Openreach. The main difference is that, probably due to their relatively small footprint, they don't attract the mainstream providers. So the choice is between the more niche providers. The developer has done a deal with OFNL which probably excluded Openreach.

matelodave

The OFNL network does not provide connections to the OpenReach network and so operates as a standalone wholesale network provider in a similar manner to OpenReach inso far as it provide the infrastructure up to the point of connection within the customer's premises (ie an ONFL optical network terminal which presents as a standard ethernet connection for broadband and a phone jack for telephony).

Service is provided in a similar manner by ISPs who contract with OFNL however as you've found out they don't have any agreements with the mainstream ISPs (BT, SKY, TalkTalk etc) and many of them appear to be fairly local and so there's not a lot of competition.
It's unclear whether there will ever be an opportunity for OpenReach or even Virgin to either lay cables where suppliers like OFNL have a monopoly or whether OR and OFNL can come to an agreement to share infrastructure in the future. There may not be any commercial incentive for other suppliers to lay their own infrastructure although there's always the possibilty that OFNL might get bought out in the future - much like Virgin did with some of the cable tv companies.

I guess you'll have the same problems as any other customer where any faults or service problems have to be passed onto the network provider (OFNL or Openreach) by the ISP. It's down to how well the process operates, possibly what sort of service level agreements are in place and how responsive or reactive OFNL are, either now or in the future.

redpasta

Sky actually own one of the OFNL providers - seethelight - but they're completely separate & independent. You cannot move a Sky broadband contract over to seethelight, for example.
This is probably for the best: seethelight has pretty bad reviews compared to some of the other providers.