I was wondering if other people's experiences with FTTP installs are the same as mine or whether what I’ve observed is unusual.
A couple of years ago, Zzoomm came to my road, which is around half a mile long, and installed fiber along the whole road. At the same time, Trooli were installing fiber using the telegraph poles to get the fiber to houses in my area. They backed out of my road because permits were needed for each pole as they also carry power. Apparently, Openreach has permits for all poles by default, while others need to apply.
Once Zzoomm finished, I had their 2 Gbps package installed. Around three months later, a third ISP (sorry, I forget the name) arrived and started digging up the road again. This time, they did not cover the full length and stopped a couple of hundred meters from my house (I live towards the top of my road).
At the same time, Openreach turned up and started connecting houses via the telegraph poles. The dust had barely settled when Virgin arrived and again dug up the road. They stopped even further away from my house, covering maybe 30% of the road.
Outside my house, I have one connection in the pavement for Zzoomm. As I walk down the road, houses have two and then three connections towards the bottom.
So, what my road has been left with is a number of products that are inferior to Zzoomm, as none of them offer symmetrical speeds and, in most cases, there is little to be saved in terms of costs.
I can’t understand how the ISPs can justify the cost of installation when Zzoomm got most of the fiber business because people couldn’t wait to ditch the poor FTTP service my road and many others in the area had.
