FTTP connection 31 October 2022 at 11:11AM in Techie Stuff 8 replies 266 views

MouldyOldDough

My local provider has just connected my road and is offering me an FTTP connection from £25 per month (150 Mbps)

I am currently on an FTTC 80Mbps Talk Talk line (£25 inc calls) - so I am considering a 450Mbps connection at £30  + cheap calls (unlimited at £10)

I want to know what would happen, should this provider go "out of business" ?

Would another provider automatically take over or what would happen ?

Also - they have dug trenches in all of the pavements - but no other provider is sharing the trenches with them - so when TT decides to follow suit - they will jave to dig their own trenches - ridiculous situation !

glennevis

Are you sure about the trenches?
When City Fibre were given the contract and dug up our pavements to install FTTP throughout our city it was very disruptive. It was a few months before other FTTP providers started to offer contracts. We now have a choice of at least 10.

I suspect it is a condition of their being awarded the contract that they must open it up to the competition after an initial exclusive period.

shiraz99

Who is the provider and how long does this offer last, eg, is it an introductory offer for the first few months only and you have to pay the full price after that?

Username03725

If your new provider were to go bust another provider might hoover up its customers, in the way that Octopus has taken over a lot of failed energy companies' customers, but there’s no guarantee. One of life’s risks really. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

When BT opened up fttp round here they used their own ducting that had been laid when these houses were built 20+ years ago, to run the fibre the final few yards to houses. When CityFibre (effectively Vodafone) began to offer fttp they had to dig their own trenches.

One other point: on another forum I saw an interesting debate about real life line speeds for fttp, the consensus was that 150Mb/s is plenty for most domestic users. At that speed I can watch 4K UHD content whilst my wife is working online and our sons are streaming audio or video. Once your line speed is above about 100 meg the bottleneck isn’t your connection, it’s whatever throttling etc is in place at the other end. A 1 gig connection won’t download e.g. iPlayer or Amazon Prime UHD content any quicker than the servers at the other end allow. 4K UHD video requires a min 15-30 meg line, dependent on which provider you listen to. Netflix, Amazon, YouTube all state different figures. With most ISPs upgrading to a higher package is easier than getting a downgrade.

Belenus

Username03725 said:

When BT opened up fttp round here they used their own ducting that had been laid when these houses were built 20+ years ago, to run the fibre the final few yards to houses. When CityFibre (effectively Vodafone) began to offer fttp they had to dig their own trenches.

Interesting comment.

Our house was built about 17 years ago. We bought it 11 years ago. At first we had TalkTalk and then BT phone and FTTC internet.

There is a cable service pit about 40 meters from our front door that serves 5 houses. That was upgraded to fibre some years ago as neighbours switched to FTTP. We remained on copper wire.

 A few months ago we switched to Sky FTTP.

Openreach installed the necessary fibre cables from that pit using the ducting that was presumably installed 17 years ago during the house build.

We would not have been pleased if a new trench had been dug.

Is there no legislation in place allowing existing ducting to be used by any or all telecoms organisations?

I thought Openreach owned the cable infrastructure and leased it to telecoms companies.

MouldyOldDough

shiraz99 said:

Who is the provider and how long does this offer last, eg, is it an introductory offer for the first few months only and you have to pay the full price after that?

This is a 2 year offer

MouldyOldDough

Belenus said:

Username03725 said:

When BT opened up fttp round here they used their own ducting that had been laid when these houses were built 20+ years ago, to run the fibre the final few yards to houses. When CityFibre (effectively Vodafone) began to offer fttp they had to dig their own trenches.

Interesting comment.

Our house was built about 17 years ago. We bought it 11 years ago. At first we had TalkTalk and then BT phone and FTTC internet.

There is a cable service pit about 40 meters from our front door that serves 5 houses. That was upgraded to fibre some years ago as neighbours switched to FTTP. We remained on copper wire.

 A few months ago we switched to Sky FTTP.

Openreach installed the necessary fibre cables from that pit using the ducting that was presumably installed 17 years ago during the house build.

We would not have been pleased if a new trench had been dug.

Is there no legislation in place allowing existing ducting to be used by any or all telecoms organisations?

I thought Openreach owned the cable infrastructure and leased it to telecoms companies.

I am guessing that Openreach subcontract the laying of fibre/cables back to the ISPs - because they are incapable of doing all of the work ?

We live less than 50 yards away from the BT cabinet - but it is across the road (concrete) so cannot easily have trenches through it - no idea how they will cross the road

The road was built in 1940's - so will not have ducts under it

matelodave

It's not difficult to dig a hole each side of the road and use an impact mole to do the job. We had a mains water pipe under our block paved drive replaced a couple of years ago using one.

We had a couple of quotes which entailed digging up the drive for around £2.5-3K but I found a moling company who did the whole job for £1200. The mole unit took exactly eight minutes to fight its way through 15 metres of ground under the drive without disturbing the surface at all - amazing.

I'm guessing that OR or their contractors can do the same

RumRat

City Fibre have placed their cables into some properties via the old telephone poles in some sections around here. So, they just run to the property the same as the old phone wires did, no digging up required. When I was contemplating changing from Virgin to CF it's how they said it would be connected to my house.
There are loads of Subcontractors, some I've not heard of before... Vodafone, TalkTalk, Giganet and Zen from the usual lot, then about 8 others, including a company called 'No One'?? 
Personally, I've found Virgin to be much more accommodating since CF arrived and they gave me their gigabit connection at a hefty discount from that advertised.

Edit....My neighbour had Vodafone FTTP installed today using the City Fibre network. It was installed from the top of the Telegraph pole on the street, so went overhead and down into the property.
No digging up needed...