FTTP On Demand Trial - Bristol South, St Agnes and High Wycombe

[#1]

Hi,
We're looking to trial FTTP on Demand soon in the following areas:
Bristol South
St Agnes
High Wycombe
FTTP on Demand is a new service that Openreach are developing that will allow customers in an FTTC enabled area to order FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) and get speeds up to 330Mbps. The product is similar to the current FTTP product we are trialling except as part of the order engineers will need to run Fibre from the cab to your property whereas the normal FTTP product most of the fibre will have already been done. As such it takes longer to order as there's more fibre to be run which may require digging, road closures etc. to get it to you.
We're just working out the finer details of the trial but it would be good to hear from anyone now if you're interested in taking part, will fill in the hows etc. once the trial starts. As mentioned you'd need to be on one of the above 3 exchanges (Edinburgh Waverley will be added later in the trial) and either already have FTTC already or be able to get FTTC (a survey may be required to see if you can get it even if you already have FTTC). In the early phase of the trial blocks of flats and multi-occupancy business units won't be included with the exception of a place called The Paintworks in Bristol South.
Let me know if there are any questions and especially post if you're in one of the trial areas, have or can get FTTC and would be interested in taking part (posting doesn't form any kind of obligation).

[#2]

I'd be up for it but I suppose you can't stretch the fibre across to N.Wilts can you  Put pressure in BT to do Chippenham please 

[#3]

Hi Dave,
I am in High Wycombe, have FTTC and would be very interested in participating in the FTTP on Demand trial.
I upload and download large medical research image sets - might need to upgrade my data allowance 

[#4]

Hi,
Welcome to the forum, I'm checking if you can get FTTP demand with BT and will get back to you as soon as I know.

[#5]

Hi Nikkor,
We've got the results back and the good news is that you are in one of the trial areas, I've sent you a ticket out which you should be able to see here:
https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=questions
Have a read through and let me know if you've any questions on the ticket and we can start things moving for you.

[#6]

Hi Dave,
I have already phoned business sales about this but at that time no one could help.
Have a client in High Wycombe that would be delighted to take part in the trial.
Their location is Cressex Business Park, Lincoln Road, High Wycombe. Bucks.HP12 3RF
Happydays
Kevin

[#7]

Hi Kevin,
Let me check if they're in the trial area and I'll get back to you.

[#8]

Do we have any kind of idea what this sort of service would cost a) install b) monthly cost after that

I don't expect it to the penny but it may gain more interest from people if there was an estimate/ball park figure.

[#9]

Kevin, still checking that address, should hopefully know if they're in the area shortly.
BRABUS - we don't really know how much it will cost us to install yet so can't really give an indication. Part of the aim of the trial will be to work that out. With the normal FTTP service they've pre-laid all the fibre between cabinet and distribution point but on demand hasn't had that done so there's more work to do, but that work could be simple (imagine the cab is right outside your house and fed by a direct duct) or it could be harder (miles of overhead cabling to run).
From the trial perspective, it's free to us and the end user no matter what it costs (on the original FTTP trial there were a couple of installs that had they charged would've cost quite a lot). From both our and Openreach's point of view we'd like to have some of the difficult installs to see what the cost would be if they were charging and to see what percentage have a higher cost.
I'm sending out small batches of invite emails to the people in the 3 areas that can get it to control the number of orders I'm processing.

[#10]

Hi Dave,
Many thanks, fingers crossed for my client, another the other side of the A4010 New Rd has just had your mail shot for this today.  Could be looking good?
Happydays, Kevin.

[#11]

Hi Kevin,
Unfortunately it's bad news, the cab for that business park hasn't been done so it can't take part in the trial. If you get them to register their interest on the Openreach website and get everyone else on the park to do the same then it may get included at a later date:
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/expression-gen.aspx

[#12]

Hi Dave
For the purposes of this trial what is the definition of 'High Wycombe'? I'm on the Chesham exchange, my landline has a High Wycombe area code (01494) - I doubt very much this is in scope, but thought I'd ask anyway!
Regards
Alan

[#13]

Hi Alan,
It's the High Wycombe exchange and you need to be on one of the FTTC enabled cabs at that exchange. Unfortunately other exchanges in the High Wycombe area aren't included.

[#14]

A little update on my FTTP on demand trial so far..
The survey engineer came around and checked where they could route the ducting to my house - my estate is late 1960's so everything was buried copper or aluminium. All looked fine.
A group of workmen came around and laid a duct through the garden from the street.
A second, different, group came back the next day and ran an armoured cable (steel round the outside, lots of copper in the middle) through it and then set the end closest to the house in a block of concrete where it emerges from my drive. Unfortunately, I was away on a business trip that day but when I got back, I could see immediately that there was no central hole for the fibre.......
The survey engineer came back early the next week, saw the problem, and apologised for the error.  It's not clear how far up the garden the duct goes and from what point the armoured cable takes over but it will certainly need some digging all over again.
Apparently there is also some duct to be laid in the street on part of the route from the cabinet so it's going to take a while.
I'm sure that Openreach are are learning a lot from this process.  60's estates are clearly not going to be easy to connect up for fibre.
A minor hiccup but I'm sure it will be fine in the end !

[#15]

A new update on my trial.
A team came last month to rectify the previous cable laying error, the tube carrying the fibre now surfaces next to our front door.
The BT Fibre Engineer came on Thursday and fitted the ONT, fed a new length of  fibre though the wall into the house, spliced this fibre to the one arriving from the exchange. He then powered everything up and checked that there was an optical link to the exchange.  The engineer was very amenable to me watching and explained the process very well. I was surprised how fine the fibre is!
I turned off the FTTC router.  After an unexpected issue with the new router not accepting the non-alphanumeric  characters in my password, I had  to change it on the Plusnet system, After that, the connection worked first time.
The first speed test that I did at 4pm showed an download speed of 67Mbps and an upload speed of 27Mbps with a ping of 5mS.  This compared to a speed test on the FTTC conection, using the same speed test site, of 36.4Mbps up and 8.2Mbps down with a ping of 26mS. A second test a bit later showed a speed of 85Mbps down and 25Mbps up with a ping of 11mS.
The BT engineer showed me one immediate practical benefit, that on BBC iplayer, jumping backwards and forwards through a streaming program is immediate with no swirly buffering icon.. 
I then carried out a couple of large file downloads from an academic  FTP site which ran at an average of 113Mbps. This compares to a typical speed of 22Mbps on the FTTC connection for similar downloads in the recent past.
I am not sure why the results are not in accordance between real-life downloads and the speed check site but  I suspect that the on-line speed test results might be limited by the bandwidth of the server at the other end rather than my fibre connection to the exchange.
Unfortunately, two days in, the FTTP connection has started to run very erratically with frequent messages when browsing of "this site is not available and the router status cycling between "internet" and "no internet" although the PON light on the ONT remains on all the time.
I've not yet had time to investigate further with Plusnet due to being out at work;  to prevent moans from the household,  I've provisionally reverted to the FTTC connection.