Re: Not all of London has 'superfast' Broadband
"their standard of FTTP means *four* fibres to the premises, not just one!"
Surely any sensible comms provider would lay (blow?) more than one, given that the cost of the fibre itself is almost negligible if you've already got everything else in place?
Apart from all the other obvious benefits, having spare fibre out as far as the customer might allow Openreach to routinely return to their decades-old low-tech approach to diagnosis in the "last mile" before the end user: if something's misbehaving, then swap the customer-specific last mile wiring with another piece of wire/fibre not currently in use, and see if it helps anything. If proper service is restored, great, no further diagnosis immediately necessary (though it would be helpful in the medium term, as a former "spare" pair is now apparently showing faults, and you might need that spare one day).
Of course while BT/Openreach are allowed to continue treating routine fault diagnosis as a revenue opportunity, nothing much will change in terms of cost effective maintenance and repair. The usual £100-200 charge to the BT (Openreach) customer for diagnosing each fault can be quite significant to a retailer outside BT, but is simply a book-keeping exercise between BT Retail and BT Openreach when the customer is BT Retail.
Happy New Year.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
