Full Fibre

[#1]

Hi All,

I forgot that my contract had expired so I've veen paying full price - almost £60 for a FTTC connection for quite some time 😞.

Openreach have installed full fibre poles on my estate but when I look at offers and upgrades on Plusnet, I only get a part fibre option. Why is this? 

Alfaman

[#2]

@Alfaman Does Full Fibre show as available on this page? https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Ascreenshot of the full detail, Excluding personal info, would help.

[#3]

Ah ok it doesn't but the poles were only put up a couple of weeks ago so maybe it'll take some time to feed through? It says at the bottom that FTTP is not available. Thanks for your help!

Featured Products	Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Upstream Line Rate (Mbps)		Downstream Handback Threshold(Mbps)	WBC FTTC Availability	WBC SOGEA Availability
	High	Low	High	Low
VDSL Range A (Clean)	40.4	27	8.4	6.1	22.4	Unavailable	Available
VDSL Range B (Impacted)	39.8	22.4	8.3	5.9	17.6	Unavailable	Available
G.fast Range A (Clean)	--	--	--	--	--	Unavailable	--
G.fast Range B (Impacted)	--	--	--	--	--	Unavailable	--

Featured Products	Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)	Upstream Line Rate (Mbps)	Downstream Range (Mbps)	Availability Date	FTTP Install Process
FTTP on Demand	1000	220	--	Available	--

Other Offerings	Availability Date
VDSL Multicast	Available

Exchange Product Restrictions	Status
FTTP Priority Exchange	N
WLR Withdrawal	Y
SOADSL Restriction	N

FTTP is not available.

[#4]

@Alfaman 

It can take time for the backbone network to be commisioned. Does the pole that serves your house have a box that looks like this.

https://community.plus.net/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/62134i68567DDA298F3522/image-size/large?v=v2... 

In the meantime I would consider recontracting now just to get your price down. You can upgrade to Full Fibre at any time.

Note that which ever way you go your lose your landline if this matters.

Brian

[#5]

How does your current phone/internet get to your house?  I understand the FTTP is conveyed the same way.

[#6]

Hi yes, the pole has a black plastic thingy at the top which looks like the picture on the link you've sent. So you recommend recontracting now at the part fibre rate until the pole is commissioned? It's strange that I received an email from Openreach on the 4th April   saying "Congratulations, you can now get Full Fibre on the Openreach network" followed by my house address.  (I'd registered with Openreach to be kept informed when full fibre was available)

[#7]

Underground through a duct and I already have FTTP. But the duct only extends part way up the road the rest of the cabling is not ducted and Openreach say it's too expensive to dig it all up which is wht they have installed the poles. Bit of an eye sore, I must say,,,

[#8]

@Alfaman I'm a bit confused. If you are already on an UG feed, the fibre cable should follow the same route from the chamber. If you already have FTTP, I'm even more confused.

[#9]

@Alfaman 

I assume you meant FTTC in your last post.

Full Fibre is coming but when is the question. It could be next week, it could be a couple of months. If you recontract now on SOGEA you reduce your bill while you wait. Full Fibre 74 is the slowest speed and is usually the same price as SOGEA.

As I say you lose your landline but that's happening anyway in the near future.

Brian

[#10]

Hi Yes, we on the estate are confused as well  - we  all thought  that the full fibre installation  would follow the underground route. But we all received a letter from Openreach a few months ago  saying that they had decided to install full fibre via the telegraph poles. Couldn't get a clear answer from the pole installers they just said they installed the poles where they had been told. But I saw an Openreach engineer walking about and had a chat with him - he said that the underground ducting on my road was very short - the rest of the phone lines were just buried in the ground (difficult to believe🤔)  and they would have to dig up 100 metres of road to install the ducting for the fibre  which would be too expensive hence the pole option. So at the moment I have FTTC (18MbS)  via the underground duct, but as you know by 2027 all the underground copper cabling will be decommissioned and we'll all have to be on a full fibre connection, which is why I was trying to get a full fibre FTTP connection via Plusnet seeing as the pole is just outside the house.  But if you think the pole commissioning will take too long, maybe I should do what you suggest and get onto a part fibre contract asap...and upgrade to full fibre sometime next year? 

[#11]

Yes sorry FTTC at the moment...

[#12]

Ah, so your cabe is Direct In Ground for most of its length - that explains the change to an OH feed.

[#13]

@Alfaman 

No one knows how long it'll take to commision the fibre backbone.

You could phone the PlusNet Customer Options Team on 0800 013 2632 and ask if it's worth jumping to SOGEA now with full fibre so near. Only you can decide.

The copper network is not being decommisioned. It's the PSTN service that runs on it that's going. SOGEA will continue to use the "last mile" of copper from the to a property for a good few years.

Those on ADSL have a problem as this needs the phone line but various solutions are being put in place for those users.

Brian

[#14 · Accepted solution]

All good I think I'll just sign on tomorow on a contract about £ 23 I think and see what happens with the pole backbone  commissioning. Many thanks for all your help - you've certainly cleared things up a lot and I now know what the situation is. Bit different to when I was a student and we used to program IBM mainframes with punched cards - every line of code was on a single punched card and the program consisted of hundreds of punched cards in order which were fed into a punched card reader! 🙄 Pre internet age.........