Openreach pitches its tent as Ofcom preps review of broadband market rules Openreach wants Reg readers to know that the UK's fixed telecoms market is coming along just fine, and is imploring regulators to not spoil it by, for example, listening to what competitors say. As the infrastructure arm of Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly BT, Openreach continues to upgrade the network in line …
The service with my current ISP is provisioned by Openreach.
The PPP session drops fairly regularly and takes ~5 minutes to reconnect - which is a real pain when streaming a movie or when in a web meeting.
I've also suffered at least three outages of over 30 minutes where the PPP session dropped.
My ISP says these are down to Openreach faults and "normal behaviour" (if the session drops it takes 5 minutes of the connection to be cleared). A couple of questions:
1) Does that sound plausible, or are the ISP themselves responsible for the PPP session?
2) Why does the system ignore PPP connection attempts for 5 minutes?
None of this makes any sense to me.
If this is down to Openreach, then we need alt nets in the area so that I can move else where.
If the ISP is saying it's Openreach faults, that points to the physical link dropping.
Remember, PPP runs over another service - over VDSL for FTTC, over ethernet for FTTP.
When the PPP drops, do you see a drop on the physical link?
If the link drops, PPP will not be able to connect till a) the remote end is contactable, and b) the remote end is ready to accept the connection.
I have had link drops where as soon as it's back up the PPP session could be remade, and others where after the drop the remote end hadn't timed out from the previous session.
If the ISP is saying it's Openreach faults, that points to the physical link dropping.
True and for FTTC/P most of that is OR equipment. But if it's ADSL (hopefully not many of those left by now but an unstable connection usually means ADSL) then it might not be Openreach equipment at the head-end.
ISPs will try and fob you off with any old excuse. Usually, if they physical link is OK, then it's the ISP. You should be able to tell if your VDSL link goes down, or your fibre, by looking at the DSL light or the fibre ONT respectively and seeing the one of the lights goes out.
Your ISP should absolutely be able to tell if it's a physical link problem.
Openreach can be unreliable, especially when not using fibre, but ISPs can be pretty awful too.
That certainly isn't normal but whether its down to OR or not depends on the type of connection.
If it's FTTC/P then yes it's OR and it needs to be fixed as it's clearly a fault. A quick check of my TBBQM data shows the only drops my FTTC connection has had in the last year have been in the early hours and they were almost certainly the result of maintenance.
On the odd occasion when I've had to switch my router off I reconnect in less than a minute.
If you are still on ADSL then it might BT Wholesale or someone completely different eg; TalkTalk. Either way you need to have a serious talk with your ISP and keep at them until it's fixed. This is why I avoid the budget end of the ISP market. I rarely do have an issue but if I do I know that IDNet will resolve it and quickly.
It's great.
When I moved to Watford nearly a decade ago, the entire estate/street had no significant broadband.
They offered me "up to 4Mbps". I'm not joking. And wanted me to pay £160 to resurrect the line because obviously previous tenants had not thought it worth the effort. No cable. No alternative providers.
No fibre. That was it. We all used 4G etc. instead and got far better speeds for years.
I could literally have thrown a stone and hit the city centre.
I moved near Oxford. Completely rural area, miles from anything. I got 30Mbps with an option to 70Mbps. Who through? Openreach and their resellers. That's it. No other options. Nothing. Not even a wifi or satellite provider.
I bought a router with DSL and 5G and that's all I can get (and the 5G is actually 4G and very ropey but better than nothing if the DSL goes off).
25+ years ago, when my brother and I first convinced my parents to move away from a modem and get a DSL line (which up until then was just something that we only heard US people talk about on IRC), we got 8Mbps down, then 24Mbps in the space of a couple of years. I've literally not progressed significantly in home DSL connectivity (or wealth of options) in over 25 years.
I would buy a Starlink connection TOMORROW if Elon wasn't involved in it (come on and hurry up with yours, Bezos! At least you're the lesser of two evils!).
So all this "world-leading" nonsense implication is just that. My daughter in Spain has gigabit fiber (proper fibre FTTP, a literal fibre hanging out of the wall) by default. I've priced up leased lines, backup DSL connections, 5G, etc. for workplaces smack-bang in the middle of towns and only leased-lines are at all viable in terms of speeds for them, but cost the Earth.
We are *decades* behind. Literally decades. Some areas get ludicrous speed, but the outliers never catch up, or even match the pace (if it took 10 years to upgrade a dense city, for example, why would it take 25 years for a rural connection to pick up the tech that's now OBSOLETE in the city and still be behind?).
There is still no plan for ANYTHING in my area in terms of upgrades. All the community wifi, etc. projects don't cater to us or require so many people to sign up we'd have to start importing residents to achieve the necessary numbers. The only option is to ignore ALL existing infrastructure and go with something like Starlink. Which tells you just how good "BT" / "Openreach" / "Ofcom" really are.
The Government rules of engagement say that Ofcom has to upgrade x% of subscribers to fiber. Those subscribers are predominantly in city areas and some are easier to do that others so delivery can be manipulated to give the correct statistics. But ask yourself, where do you see VM or Cityfibre installing outside of an urban environment? That's not because of a pointless Government dictat but because of cheap, dense infrastructure installation where they can chop through existing services and let Openreach/electricity supplier/water board take the flak (or all three in a local, resurfaced the month before, housing estate). They do not care about less profitable subscribers but at least Openreach have to supply most of them ...
Be careful what you wish for.
There is providers that will lay fibre outside of cities, but I'd guess they mostly stick to more well off areas. My folks live in the Cotswolds (so plenty of rich people about), and previously the best they could get was 0.9Mbps ADSL. Then a company called Gigaclear came round a managed to sign up enough of the village to justify running fibre, and now my folks have a 120Mbps connection. They could pay for more, but they really don't need it.
The monthly price is a bit more expensive than you'd pay in a city, and I doubt they'd bother running fibre out to a village where there couldn't find many customers.
Still, it's nice to have a connection that can cope with more than one device connecting at once.
Seems people aren't mentioning one issue with fibre rollout: That the old copper cable is removed at that point meaning the old phone systems are removed: You have to swap to VOIP.
Issue there is VOIP requires power where the old copper phonelines provided that power. So now you're at risk if there's a power cut: You also lose your phoneline. True, mobiles may cover you, but there are places where you won't get reliable mobile signal (I live in one such place) so a land line is pretty much essential. So having UPS on your broadband/VOIP kit is kind of essential. And a battery backup should the power be down for more than a few hours (also comes in handy if you need to power other things while the mains is down, but... need the right kind of kit depending on the output required).
Seems people aren't mentioning one issue with fibre rollout: That the old copper cable is removed at that point meaning the old phone systems are removed: You have to swap to VOIP.
People are going to have to do that anyway. BT announced the end of their PSTN several years ago. It was due to end last year but it got an extension to the end of 2027. Whether you have fibre or copper (or even carrier pigeon) you're going to have to switch to VoIP anyway.
ISPs won't give you a PSTN line / number nowadays, even if you switch to them rather than get a new account. I had a number from a previous ISP, I switch this week, I literally can't take the number with me (and the old ISP kept telling me to get ready for Digital Voice - i.e. SIP - on my main number and not having an PSTN line/number, but never did anything about it).
They are chasing businesses to terminate them and are putting prices up for PSTN lines (ours go up this month for the remaining "emergency" lines we have).
It doesn't matter one bit to me, but if you had an old landline, you're going to HAVE to move to VoIP very soon.
I literally can't take the number with me
That is NOT because of the shift from PSTN to VoIP. Lack of portability has been a problem for some numbers, with some providers, for a long time. In general, most people will be able to port their number to VoIP - if they can't, it's likely to be an issue with the current owner of the number block and them doing something that blocks it's porting.
"People are going to have to do that anyway. "
Yep. That doesn't detract from the problem I mentioned: VoIP systems need power to the house. The old copper phonelines provided that power. So if you had an old style hand set, you could still make calls even when the power is out - rather useful if there's an accident due to said power cut.
Hence why I mentioned people need to consider a UPS on the VoIP system / router in their house so they've some resilience on a power cut, if they don't get a reliable mobile signal. That the rollout of Fibre is being used as an excuse to disconnect copper (it's what they did to me when I swapped) when it's not necessary (they've a few years to go before the 'planned' disconnect) shows they want to push people off copper as quickly as they can, meaning people may not be prepared for the swap. I know, when I did my research into VoIP that people aren't eager to swap due to a reliance of some systems (medical alert systems, alarms etc) that don't work via VoIP, so for some, losing a landline is a serious issue.
This also affects businesses - the company I work for was lucky their alarm system was compatible with internet connection as the copper line was disconnected suddenly (apparently the line got damaged and BT weren't going to replace it...). Cost a lot less to install the module needed than to replace the entire alarm system (fire and intruder) with one that was. Had to be done at some point, but would have been better if it had been a planned swap.
And that's why there's a risk with this push to fibre: It's also a push to get people off the old copper phonelines, and for some, that means planning out what needs doing to support that move.
Actually it's usually the owners of the road who don't respond to Openreach or deny them permission.
Openreach need to obtain a wayleave from the owner.
"Openreach does have certain statutory powers under The Code to be able to install our apparatus without the need for a signed wayleave agreement. However, we would only consider using these powers under exceptional circumstances and if we are left with no other alternative."
Oh, wayleaves.
So, used to be a Wayleave officer working for a rival to BT, so this does take me back a bit.
The wayleave is needed to cross private property - including the property to which the service is being provided (it's part of the service agreement). If it can't be obtained from the landowner then the provision for statutory power applies if, and only if, there is no alternative provision of an >essential< service.
Telephony is considered essential, and it's under the telecommunications act that Openreach has (or had) statutory powers, but only if there was no other service provider already supplying telephony service to the site. So if VM has their services available, even if people aren't subscribed to VM: Openreach do not have access to those statutory powers and so would need permission (wayleave) to go and lay those cables.
Now, there's another reason they don't want to push those statutory powers like they used to: Fibre may not be classed as telephony. It's internet. They'd have to prove that it should be classed as telephony to get access to those statutory powers (plus they'd have to do so where there's no alternative provider - and it's possible that mobile telephony will count as an alternative, thereby fulfilling the role of 'essential service'), and it's also possible that if BT are removing the old landlines (which they are), that they need to put in fibre first, which won't be covered by their statutory powers as the essential service provider as they're already providing telephony and this is a new service, hence they would need a wayleave...
Makes the whole statutory powers thing a bit less certain.
Here at Linux Mansions both OpenReach and BT have confirmed MULTIPLE times recently that OpenReach and BT have ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS whatever for fibre to the Linux Mansions apartment. This after letters to the BT CEO, the OpenReach CEO, and subsequent person-to-person telephone conversations with ACTUAL PEOPLE at OpenReach and BT.
So......imagine my surprise when a Swedish company called "Open Infra" offered me fibre-to-the-premises in June 2024....with a commitment to complete the installation this month.
Yup.....Swedish! Yup....September 2024!
Quote: ".... calls from some parts of the industry to restrict how Openreach competes...." --------- a joke surely?
They insisted they wouldn't be doing our village until 2025.
About three months later there was a team and multiple BT Openreach vans running fibre through all the ducts and up the poles.
I don't know what their rollout plan actually is, but it certainly looks like than "Jump in with monopoly power if an altnet gets funding".
We assume the latter is a reference to the fact that simply cabling out neighborhoods doesn't solve anything, unless network plumbers actually make the last part of the connection to subscribers' premises.
Well yes but that's industry practice. It makes no financial sense to connect every property to such a service. It's highly unlikely that every property will want it immediately and some will wait until the copper is withdrawn. Others might decide that mobile broadband is perfectly adequate.
According to their latest results take-up on Openreach's network is running at about 30% which is pretty decent. The other 70% can and should be left until the property owner asks for it.
And I agree that VM should be made to open up its ducts. In addition I think that anyone who has to deal with blocked ducting should be required (with compensation) to restore it to viability. At present an Altnet can bypass the Openreach ducting but their new ducting remains their property for their sole use. That seems unhelpful to whoever comes next.
Basically I think that ducting of any kind should be considered a public resource. That will reduce the cost and disruption of multiple operators digging the roads and pavements up.
Openreach should be required to keep accurate data on their network and freely share this with others.
Also instead of all these overbuilds a non profit should have been created to own the lot and then distributed the work evenly with GPON being binned by now and all infrastructure being put in being symmetrical XGSPON and existing GPON being replaced.
Instead we have a shambolic free market approach that's led to some streets being dug up 5 or more times, streets missed because of past decisions intentionally made by GPO, BT, Openretch to have used direct in ground cabling to save money / impede competitors / up the amount they can charge for future maintenance (no ducting)
Openreach should be required to keep accurate data on their network and freely share this with others.
A large part of the OR network was installed long before they came into existence. Before even BT was formed. There are some parts that are over a hundred years old, if not more - though granted they are likely overhead so location at least is more obvious. But even the older direct buried stuff isn't hard to find. Cable detectors have been around for years and in most cases you know the cables will be in the pavement following the route between access covers.
The ducting may be properly mapped but as for its condition - how much money should they spend on maintaining accurate data? The lines on my estate (built in the 90s) are all ducted but almost nothing has happened since then - nothing probably other than the occasional access cover lifted and a connection remade. How and why should OR know the state of the ducting? For the last 30 years it has been irrelevant. Once the current FTTP roll-out is over it'll become irrelevant once more.
And OR do work with third parties. That's what PIA is all about. I expect that third parties can (through OR) find out everything OR knows about cabling in a given area. That might be a lot or might be very little.
I do believe that a single organisation should deal with the ducting but I'm not so sure about the fibre.
I mean technically having all CPs share fibre seems sensible. It's easy enough to do as is demonstrated by the UK's existing array of CPs most of which are happily sharing BT's infrastructure.
But the problem is if/when that organisation would choose to upgrade the hardware. What would be the motivation in upgrading from GPON to XGSPON? At least with multiple cables in the ground there is an incentive for companies to differentiate by utilising better hardware.
I also don't think you can criticise the GPO and possibly not the original BT for using direct buried cables. To be fair there were some in the GPO who foresaw the need for FTTP but I think we'd have to concede that it was reasonable for the GPO to continue with copper at the time and to assume it would suffice for many decades. In fact they did. Some of those cables have been in the ground for sixty years now doing everything - more than everything originally expected from them. There are probably 70 year old cables currently carrying FTTC signals.
Ahh the same "good old GPO" who derided telephones as some hideous american idea, "we have plenty of messenger boys and who would want such a thing in their homes?"
Fast forward to 1980 and they are still issuing shared party lines till privatisation LONG after they were phased out in other countries (most of the US IIRC phased them out in the 60s)
I'm more inclined to believe direct in ground non ducted cabling was an intentional choice to stymie any new technology as that means change and change in the world of the GPO / Openreach is a bad bad bad thing.
Using ducting both protects the cabling and permits a replacement cable to easily be pulled in should the cable become damaged. Its just another example of GPO/BT/BT Openreach being their usual difficult obstructionist selves.
GPO became Post office telecoms (as witnessed by the mixture of names on the infrastructure in my street), which was then privatised as BT, who then (under regulatory mandate were forced kicking and screaming) to hive off the infrastructure into Openreach and even then have faced the regulators wrath several times and been forced to increasingly divorce openreach further and further from their BT parent due to playing favourites, obstructing non BT companies and other sins.
Openreach are WHY the fibre rollout is taking so long, they ONLY stopped rolling out FTTC as Alt-Nets started putting in full fibre and disproved openreach's scaremongering about it being utterly unfeasible and totally unaffordable to ever rollout in the UK for <insert BS here>
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My town marked in 2020 to be upgraded by 2026, status on openreach fibre checker says that, then goes to build not planned and now to not yet available, yet their own mapping still has my town marked down to be upgraded and their site doesn't explain any further.
I query this with them and get an email saying it has to be passed to second line as they see what I mean but don't have the information so have asked a specialist team to respond. Great I think, *maybe* they have realised being a shower of borderline abusive wastrels isn't a good thing?
In the meantime while waiting for an answer, I come home and notice an openreach van leaving and on the pavement OLT and PWR has been spray painted.
Now I'm thinking "wow, perhaps someone has looked into it and realised there has been an oversight?" and I'm now understandably optimistic and thinking positively of openreach.
I check my email and get a proforma response from second line telling me "they have no plans to upgrade my area but please keep checking our website, however if you want it sooner you can purchase our FTTP on demand service that provides up to 330mbps of download speed"
......cue positivity extinguished
Just shows how utterly clueless and incompetent openreach are that they can't even communicate internally ......hopeless is a total understatement.
I replied with the photos (as they don't believe you otherwise) to be met with deafening silence - as per usual
Clearly still think they are the only telecoms supplier and worse to some extent think they legally should be the only option on a take it or leave it basis....
well iirc they then can offer to connect others once the infrastructure has been built on your £ - bit like the gas networks told my folks years ago they could connect their house to gas but then let it slip they would then offer to connect their neighbours for a token sum, result my parents held off and less than 5 years later the council or someone else in the public sector paid them to roll it out
I'd even accept what I got from tier 1 "I need to consult the relevant team and I or they will come back to you"
"Yes it seems that yes your town is down for by december 2026, clickety, clickety, I see we are just finishing up the next town over, so next step is to do some upgrades in between you and them, then do some surveying work, so.....hmmm wait a sec you said something about someone out painting for an OLT?....click click click tap tappity tap...ahhh found it, yes they are coming out to do this, with an estimate of X, after that connection to end customers should be roughly a - b months later so current non firm estimated date is on or around this date but this can be moved back and forward depending on weather etc. I'll also ask the web team to correct and update the website" - you know like...most other companies can manage.....
The village we lived in a few years got offered gas.
We'd only get it if x% of home asked for it and paid the "not insignificant" connection cost. It was also made clear that those asking for a connection later would also have to pay this fee - in effect the fee was a share of the full costs, and everyone would have to pay it regardless of when they got connected. So no hanging back, letting others pay, then getting yours cheap.
Not enough people wanted to pay, so we carried on with oil until after we'd moved. They got gas some years later, but I have no idea what the terms were.
Here's the thing, openreach for all its sins is forced to provide access to all to its equipment and ducts, cannot really set their own prices and have to provide to unprofitable locations. Alt nets including Virgin (who have over 16m subscribers) do not.
Hence you get the current situation of all the providers over provisioning in certain locations to take the cream then whine like girls because they don't get access to the places they didn't want to invest in and in the places they have built, refuse to let anyone else in.
In other words they are self sucking leeches happy to refuse to take part in creating an open and complete fibre network of the UK.
If it were up to Openreach, I doubt we'd have FTTP any time in the next decade. Thankfully an altnet got our (small, very rural) village ducted up about year ago and we finally got connected a week or two back. The 3/4 year delay was due to Openreach being obstructive and not permitting the altnet access to the exchange in a timeous manner.)
Now we have over 300Mbs both directions and could pay more for up to 2 gig both ways if we wanted it - no thanks to Openreach!
The 3/4 year delay was due to Openreach being obstructive and not permitting the altnet access to the exchange in a timeous manner.
If you have actual evidence of this you should pass it to Ofcom. They would be very interested and it would almost certainly result in a fine for Openreach. I expect it was more likely just general paperwork delays or possibly a lack of space, electrical supply or some other physical constraint.
As for when OR might cover you that depends how remote you are. Anyone living in at least a small town should have FTTP by 2027 as that's when OR is estimated to have covered around 90% of the UK. Beyond that they are hoping to cover 30 million premises. It's certainly good that altnets exist to cover over the gaps but you should avoid attributing malignancy to OR. It's just business. They are required by law to cover everywhere (albeit not yet with FTTP) so that means they tend to target the easier more profitable areas first in order to be able to have the resources to eventually cover the harder, loss making areas.
I can only go on what I was told by the manager on the ground overseeing the altnet's rollout - and given the physical evidence that they've had their equipment in place ready to go for nearly a year I don't see why he would be lying. He also told me that OR were being so obstructive about connecting up the next nearest village that they dug in five miles of their own fibre in order to get that village online in a sane timeframe.
These are not small towns, they're small (some would say tiny) villages - Openreach simply aren't interested. Frankly they should have had all the cities and big towns done years ago, but instead they've just sat on their heels enjoying their privileged position for as long as possible. Of course they have their legal obligations but we all know there are always ways and means of ensuring that they break these whilst maintaining plausible deniability.
If it were up to Openreach, I doubt we'd have FTTP any time
Fixed that for you, if it had been up to openreach they would have found an excuse to prohibit FTTP/FTTC/ADSL and all to protect their leased lines and ISDN services (ISDN being why they tried every trick in the book to slow walk the roll out of ADSL as ISDN was billed by the minute whereas adsl was a flat monthly fee)
Openretch frankly are an anachronism and should be shutdown as their "corporate culture" is frankly abysmal
...aims to make public its final decisions in early 2026.
That's nearly 18 months away. I'm just glad that our local ISP Wightfibre is a bit more on the ball and hooked me up to FTP over a year ago. I'm in a rural area so God knows when or if Openreach deigns to put in the effort to run cable past my house.
BT should put a rocket up Openreach because by the time they have worked out what they are going to do others will have eaten their lunch.
Ofcom are in a hard place, Equinox 2 clearly lowers prices to consumers, but is anti competitive. I think what is missing is the market making incentives.
An opportunity was lost with BDUK, which should have help build a thriving bunch of Alt-ISPs but didn’t. We also had the £5k grants to businesses to encourage them to incur the installation costs of FTTP. So perhaps what is missing is a levy on Openreach that helps funds Alt-ISP connections, reducing the upfront price difference between installing an Equinox 2 service and a local Alt-ISP.
Also a breaking of the all in deals, so Sky et al have to provide pure play streaming over all ISP services, not just their rebranded OR service.
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