FTTP provider options - are they limited?

[peasblossom]

We may have covered this but it's probably buried in a thread somewhere. We have City Fibre as our city's fibre broadband provider. The deals with other providers are better so I wondered what flexibility, if any, there is? When I can finally get FTTP (seems to be a long way off yet for reasons unknown) do I need to wait 'n' years to swap? I have scoured the lists of providers City Fibre work with.

[Simon]

I'm not sure I understand your question. IDNet operate on City Fibre's network, so you could get fibre through them if City Fibre is already in your area.

[peasblossom]

Sorry, I was a little gnomic there. What I want to know is, if I wanted to go with say, Gigaclear (moving away from the otherwise fabulous IDNet) would I need to wait a few years before doing so? As I understand it, I think I'd need to stick with IDNet/City Fibre initially because they are the FTTP provider here. Is that the case?

[Simon]

As I understand it, you can only go with a provider that uses the network(s) available in your area.

[Clive]

Which is why I had to leave the fabulous IDNet and get FTTP with the unapeaning name of Ogi.

[nowster]

Which is why I had to leave the fabulous IDNet and get FTTP with the unapeaning name of Ogi.

Oi! 

[peasblossom]

Oi! 

Oi! Oi!

Apropos, I did discover that an Oggy is a name the Cornish use for their pasties, which makes it an odd choice for a Welsh firm.

[Clive]

The takeup has been very poor according to the engineers who installed the system and I have no doubt that it will eventually be absorbed by BT who are advertising like crazy in this area.  I'd go back to tin cans joined by a piece of string before I went back to them!

[Simon]

The takeup has been very poor according to the engineers who installed the system and I have no doubt that it will eventually be absorbed by BT who are advertising like crazy in this area.  I'd go back to tin cans joined by a piece of string before I went back to them!

Ah, but if BT / Openreach were available, you could go back to IDNet.

[Postal]

One thing to remember is that there is currently a plethora of venture capital funded companies installing fibre networks around the country.  In the nature of venture capitalism the aim is to invest, grow the investment then sell on so many of the smaller network companies will only have a limited shelf life before they are taken over by one of the major players.

In the meantime each of the smaller providers runs its own fibre to your house to its ONT (Optical Network Termination).  This is the fibre equivalent of the old style telephone master socket and similarly to the master socket the ONT is the demarcation point between the network and the customer.  If you move between fibre networks you get a new fibre to your property and new ONT each time.  You are not allowed to remove the previous ONT as it is not your property (and the owning provider will wish to retain the physical equipment on site in case the current or future resident wishes to access their services again and they won't have to re-do the physical installation) so you could end up with a line of ONTs along the internal wall.

If you go with some of the smaller network suppliers they only have a limited range of ISPs who can access their services - the provider currently fibreing our village restricts you to using their own ISP.  BT have now announced that we are also in their roll-out plans but when the BT fibre arrives we will have the choice of a multitude of ISPs through the one ONT in the same way as a BT telephone line allows access to lots of ISP FTTC connections.

[Clive]

 I'm locked in with Ogi for a while but I would certainly like to return to IDNet when I can.  Thanks for the information. 

[peasblossom]

It would just be useful to have a clear idea how long one had to wait but I guess we can't know that.