I Can finally get FTTC Increasing my speed 2MBps to ~ 60 But it Costs too Much!

[mk1]

So apparently i can now get FTTC to my number (checked on a number of sites) this is Great BUT,

I am very disappointed with the costs associated with it. I would firstly see a £10pm increase on charges (for no extra download limits) plus i am required to pay ~£100 connection fee! This is all very well but i would also have to upgrade my router which would cost another £100 for a decent gigabit router! I am also assuming there is a minimum contract of a year for the connection which is not good enough for me (one reason i joined idnet is there is no minimum contract).
Why can't i just have a slightly faster broadband of say 20Mbps which i would fined greatly useful compared to my current mere 2mbps, and pay less money! 60mbps is very nice I'm sure but i wouldn't have much need for that much speed especially as it costs so much to change!

[Steve]

I assume your a long way from your local exchange so the only option for better performance is FTTC from a nearby cabinet. Unlike ADSL the minimum contract length for an individual customer's line for FTTC from Btw is one year minimum and it's non transferrable hence the one year contract. There are other suppliers who will offer discounts on connection and hardware but there's usually a downside ie longer contract than 1 year, network performance (esp peak time) and reliability may not be as good.

[Glenn]

I believe the connection cost is what BT charge IDNet, along with having a minimum contract period. Once the 12 months are up, the contract reverts to 1 month.

[mk1]

I can see your points the costs are not any better from other providers although if i join Zen Internet there is no connection fee. I think ill just have to sucker up and stick to the ADSL until i feel i am in a more permanent situation as to where i live!

If the £100 fee is a BT connection fee why is it £40 for an ADSL connection surly the BT person does basically the same thing? Plugs a wire from a to b!

[Steve]

They're recouping the FTTC modem cost I think.

[Glenn]

Also, the exchange engineer or maybe call centre staff will deal with an ADSL connection. A visit by an Openreach chap is required both at the cabinet and your home to ensure you have a working FTTC connection through a new filtered faceplate that is fitted.

[andrue]

Costing is a complicated area but a major factor will be BT trying to recoup the cost of their national roll-out. No matter what consumers think broadband is expensive to operate and the FTTC roll-out is costing BT many billions of pounds. With residential broadband prices being what they are BT is already looking at RoI (Return on Investment) times of far more than the usual 3 years.

This is why only BT has been able to win the government BDUK contracts. Only BT is big enough to be able to persuade the banks to lend it enough money over a long enough period to make it viable. A lot of the problems with residential broadband provision in the UK can be blamed on the ridiculously low prices we pay. The UK is (and long has been) one of the cheapest places for broadband. Frankly it's impressive that BT could even afford to do a partial national FTTC roll-out.

On the plus side our low prices have meant that as a nation we have long had the best overall coverage (over 95% for at least a decade) and we have one of the highest adoption/usage rates in the world.

As for only paying for 20Mb - sadly that can't work. The costs of provision are for the building of a cabinet, connecting it to the exchange with fibre and buying the FTTC equipment to go inside. Those costs are the same regardless of the speed you connect. The same is largely true of ADSL actually. It's a common misconception that headline speed is where the money goes. In truth the real cost is how much you use and when. It's quite possible for you, on 2Mb/s, to be costing IDNet more than me, on 71Mb/s. Even if I keep hitting full speed as long as I'm only doing it in bursts it's easier for IDNet to handle than you running flat out.

[karvala]

I can see your points the costs are not any better from other providers although if i join Zen Internet there is no connection fee.

Yes there is: all of their fibre broadband packages list a one-off installation fee.  No small/independent provider is in a position to waive this because their margins on individual accounts are relatively low; if the waived the fee they would make a loss during the first year of the contract, after which you could leave.  Zen also fail to include VAT in their listed prices, which I find dishonest given that this is a home product and not eligible for any VAT exemption scheme.

[colirv]

Well I'm well pleased with the upgrade earlier this week. I've gone for the Fibre Lite package, which costs me an extra £8 pm. I bought a Netgear WNR2200 N300 router from PC World for £40. My measured download speed is up from under 3Mb/s to a solid 37Mb/s, and of course I continue to enjoy IDNet's customer service!

[Tacitus]

Zen also fail to include VAT in their listed prices, which I find dishonest given that this is a home product and not eligible for any VAT exemption scheme.

If you click the Home/Home-Office tab all the prices are VAT inclusive.  I've noticed their site often appears to default to the business section where prices do not include VAT.

http://www.zen.co.uk/home-office/broadband/fibre-optic-broadband.aspx

[mk1]

I know this is kinda double posting but...

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,30729.0.html

I hope Idnet pass this on removing the £100 fee

[Steve]

I don't see why not however I doubt somehow it will be a full reduction, currently an engineer is required to visit the local exchange  and the connected FTTC cabinet to perform the connection so that will attract a fee. The customer then has to provide two pieces of hardware, BT and Sky will no doubt hide that fee in the length of contract the smaller ISPs may not be able to do so or ask the customer to provide their own sourced modem and filter.