Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme- FTTPconnection charges

Notagain42

I have taken advantage of a local Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and managed, through this to, eventually get a fibre connection to my rural home which is great. My concern involves a connection fee which my ISP (Vodafone) now wants to charge me. This is, about, a not inconsiderable £150. My concerns have been raised because my neighbour, who has BT as his ISP has not been charged any form of connection charge. The engineer who fitted the FTTP box etc was Openreach of course.
Has anyone else come across this charge?

matelodave

Different suppliers have differing charging structures and are free to apportion their costs as they see fit. Although  Openreach is the infrastructure provider they will charge BT, VF or any other broadband operator a connection and rental charge. However its entirely up to the broadband supplier to decide how they apportion that charge to their customers, eithe up front or through the duration of the contract by having a more expensive monthly charge.

Potentially BT's monthly  broadband subscription may be more expensive than VF if they've decided to roll up the provisioning charge into their monthly subscription whereas others may charge it up front as a one off payment. Likewise some providers charge for their router where others don't, some charge a connection fee and others dont' and some charge the postage cost for the router and others don't. There also may be other factors that come into play if you installation was more difficult or expensive than someone else's.

Perhaps you should compare the actual overall charge over the contract period between you and your neighbour to see what the total comestoo with all charges taken into account for an identical service. You might be surprised.

(broadband charge, router charge, postal charge, installation charge and even who owns the router - BT want theirs back whereas AFAIK Vodafone don't) 

MarzipanCrumble

I am with Plusnet (BT affiliated) - I changed from FTTC to FTTP mid contract - no installation charges.  But as expected new contract from date of install.

(Bit surprised no charges tbh)