UK watchdog won't block Openreach’s discount fiber pricing UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has given the go-ahead to Openreach’s Equinox 2 discount pricing scheme, despite earlier criticism from smaller network operators that it allows the dominant player to undercut them. Openreach is the infrastructure division of Britain’s telecoms giant BT, and provides a nationwide network platform …
"Fibre to the Premise not Premises - like it's not Fibre to the Cabinets. Or is that too paedantic?"
Not too pedantic. Just plain wrong.
When referring to a single building or even part of a building, it is still premises:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/premises
"Premise" is something else:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/premise
"One altnet provider, CityFibre, claimed at the time that it would give Openreach an unfair advantage in winning new customers"
Stop following BT around laying fibre where they have already provided it and go lay some where it isn't yet available.
It's not rocket science, if you're coming round six months after BT then anyone who wants fibre has probably already got it - if you went somewhere else then BT wouldn't get that advantage, you would.
And there are plenty of places around here where there is no BT fibre, but there are enough houses to make city fibre worthwhile to lay (i.e. similar housing density to where they are currently laying)
We were one of the first areas to get BT fibre, and I now have a 1000/100 service from an ISP that runs over it.
I would switch to any altnet that installed in the area, as the costs I've seen are lower and they offer symmetric services - it's really the upload speed I need, and I had to go with the 1000 service (that I don't really need) to get the fastest upload possible.
It's an orderable product for any Openreach wholesale ISP. The only place we've ever provisioned one is for ourselves in-house as a VRRP failover for a 1Gbps leased line if I'm honest, the big jump in cost over 1000/115 is prohibitive for most people and doesn't make sense. When you can get a 1G/1G leased line for ~£320+VAT in most areas a leased line is an easier sell with the extra SLA offered.
And there are plenty of places around here where there is no BT fibre, but there are enough houses to make city fibre worthwhile to lay (i.e. similar housing density to where they are currently laying)
Have you told them? It might be worth a try in the unlikely case that they have somehow overlooked the multiple possible locations you mention. However I think it's more likely that they are aware of those locations and whilst they might (or might not) be lucrative there are other locations which are more lucrative.
In all these kinds of discussions going all the way back to the ADSL roll-out there's always an intimation from some people that CPs are choosing locations arbitrarily or ignoring locations out of spite. This is not the case. All CPs are choosing locations according to sound business principals. They perform an extensive RoI analysis and pick their next target area based on optimising the return.
CityFibre are building where it makes the most sense to build. That means number of customers and the actual build costs. The other locations you know of might well be attractive but most likely CityFibre just hasn't got around to them yet. They can't build everywhere at the same time.
What I don't like about the way CPs target areas is that several of them are competing at the physical layer. This is stupid and The Powers That Be should never have let that happen. I live in a moderately small market town and by the end of this year I expect my house to be passed by Swish, Gigaclear and Openreach fibres. This is a waste of resources. Sharing a single fibre is not technically difficult. There is no good technical reason why my house needs three fibre cables passing it.
How can it possibly be more profitable to build out an area where those who want fibre are already served (and likely already in contracts)?
Do you want to have 80 customers for yourself, or compete to win 100 customers from an existing supplier contract and relationship?
This is one area where the altnets are doing themselves no favours at all... They should have a reseller arm that does openreach fibre, and a dedicated network arm that does their own.
Issue is the altnets go to cable an area that OR say isn't getting fibre for many years.
Then as the altnets are using OR ducts, OR turn around and go, well we are in the ducts anyway so might as well bring forward our fttp installs as we have to services the ducts anyway, so the alt net use them. Might as well pull fibre at the same time.
It happens every week.
The only place this doesn't happen is where the altnets run there own ducting or poles.
So that's hull and the middle of no where.
It would be nice to just setup a company to say they are going to do an area and then OR would do it anyway, rinse and repeat.
Openreach and BT needed to be fully separated years ago. Instead OFCOM bowed to political pressure and told them to stop being naughty boys. That lasted about as long as it took them to get out of the meeting room whereupon BT said "F*** that!" and carried on with it's monopolistic behaviour, and it will continue until they are forcibly completely separated. Once separated then the other infrastructure companies would be able to compete on a level-ish playing field as they would "only" have to deal with a mahoosive national infrastructure company.
I've tried others and so far i am BT 1Gb and yes its dear but we all work from home here and it works, first class customer service in the remote times I've needed it, unlike the others where support plebs just read a script. I get an engineer to the door after I've explained I am an IT professional and know what to do and if i cant fix it here its a line problem.
The others just follow like sheep, as been stated before lots of places fibre doesn't exist so go and install it instead of using openreach lines.
The small companies only exist because BT/Open reach can no longer hold a monopoly, No other reason simples!!!!!! they should get there availability and customer service up to scratch and stop the cash cowing they see off the back of BT lines and start digging holes. of course they can offer cheap fibre because the holes have already been dug and tubes been laid so coming along later after contracts have been signed is not fashionably late but bloody arriving after it finished (without a bottle to boot)
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