Sometimes getting a new broadband service installed can involve significantly more hassle than usual. At least that seems to have been the case after Lewis Roberts shelled out £9,600 to have Openreach (BT) install a 330Mbps FTTP on Demand (FTTPoD / FoD) broadband line in March 2019, and so begins our story.
As usual we need to start by clarifying that FoD is a different service from a normal native FTTP deployment. In a native FTTP deployment Openreach foots the bill from its own pocket to install optical fibre down your street, but in a FoD installation it’s the customer who chooses to pay for the expensive civil engineering side of that build (often because there would be no other prospect for FTTP without doing so).
NOTE: According to one ISP, the lead time to deployment for FoD is an average of 180 working days. All that pre-planning and civil engineering takes time.
The FoD product itself is thus typically aimed more at small businesses, although home owners with very deep pockets (and an awful lot of patience) or groups of premises can also apply. Normally the deployment takes place, the fibre goes to your property and an Optical Network Terminal (ONT – pictured top) is then installed on your inside wall. The service should then go live fairly quickly, but in practice.. sometimes odd things happen.
The problems for Lewis began after his fibre and ONT had been installed on 6th April 2020, which occurred roughly 13 long months after first ordering FoD from his ISP (Amvia). We have heard of even longer waits but this is still quite a long time.
Lewis told ISPreview.co.uk:
“My months of waiting and spotting the occasional Openreach van outside my home and in the estate culminated in the appearance of a couple of Openreach engineers on Monday 6th April (during lockdown I should add), who announced they were here to provide me with an ONT and splice in the fibre and needed a hole drilled in the house.
I was gobsmacked they were here given this was during lockdown but they advised they couldn’t enter and asked if I would be OK with drilling the hole. I was, and did. Fibre was run, the engineer spliced the fibre and after telling me that there was a little more work to do upstream before I had a flashing green PON light (LOS was red at this point), they went on their way.”
A couple of days later Lewis spotted the same engineer nearby, who promptly shouted out that the work was done and he should now have a flashing green PON light on his ONT (the POWER LED was also lit). “He was right, I did. He mentioned it’d be about 24 hours after that before the circuit would likely come live, [but] admitted it could be longer with [this] being an FTTPoD order,” added Lewis.
At this point Lewis contacted his ISP to inform them of the development, which surprised even them, but after a few days the service still hadn’t gone live. Instead the ISP found that it was struggling to have Openreach recognise that the ONT had actually been installed, with the network giant insisting that an Audit & Commission event had to take place before he could get one (even though he clearly already had a fibre connected ONT).
Three weeks passed and at the start of May 2020 Openreach were continuing to insist that they were “waiting” for the audit and commission to happen, otherwise Lewis wouldn’t get the ONT (i.e. waiting for something that has already happened can be problematic). “I’m at my wits end and the provider is doing everything they can,” said Lewis.
On 4th May ISPreview.co.uk contacted Openreach to raise the issue and was told that it would be investigated. Later that same day the operator responded to say that they were just waiting for more information from the business about when this order will be fulfilled, but this was promptly recalled. Instead we were informed that the issue was still being investigated (i.e. more clarity was being sought from the ECRT team).
A few more days passed and Lewis reported that a promised visit by one of Openreach’s engineers had not materialised. In response we chased Openreach again for an update, but received no response. Sadly the problem continued for several more weeks until, on 28th May 2020, the ISP received a promising update (forwarded from Openreach).
Status Update from Openreach
“The field manager says openreach have encountered an issue with the cable-link which they are now trying to resolve. This is not something the customer will have a view of (not local work) as the issue is located further down the route.
They have said they will chase the field manager again to ensure that he is pushing this fix through with the relevant team. Once this is resolved they will be in the position to arrange the final site visit. As soon as we have an update this will be shared with you.”
On 1st June Lewis was finally given a date for one of Openreach’s engineers to visit in order to verify that he does indeed have an ONT installed (apparently photographs aren’t considered acceptable proof). “Sure enough, yesterday came and the very helpful and chatty engineer was taken by surprise that the CSP was in, more surprised that the ONT was also in and boggled by the fact that the PON light was flashing!,” said Lewis.
The engineer promptly advised that they needed to “build the circuit” and this would take about 10 minutes. Success! The flashing green PON light was now, finally, a solid green. “I was left to wait 50+ days for this 10 minute resolution,” complained Lewis. Unfortunately it would then take several more days for Lewis’s connection to go live as some final configuration issues remained.
We had to nudge Openreach a couple of times but they did eventually furnish our inbox with a brief explanation.
A Spokesperson for Openreach said:
“We’re really sorry for the delay on this. We’re building huge amounts of full fibre broadband at the moment and, most of the time, the work causes minimal disruption and gets completed on time. In this case though, we had to apply for permission to close two roads from the local authority, and we had an error in our systems which meant it took longer than it should have to get the service live.
We always want to provide customers with the best service possible, so we’re reviewing what happened here to see if we can improve any processes in the future.”
Suffice to say that somebody spending close to £10k for an ultrafast broadband service might rightly expect a smoother experience than this, but all’s well that ends well.
