*** Official Hyperoptic Discussion Thread ***

[bigredshark]

BDUK funds Openreach because they are the only people who put cables into the ground and don't also run an ISP. If they gave the money to Virgin or these guys then in a lot of places the only option for fast broadband would be to buy it from a private company who got a government subsidy to be there. That's the reason most/all of the rural broadband projects haven't received government funding, because they either refuse to or don't have the infrastructure in place to allow competing suppliers to use their cables.

Except that they're legally the same entity as BT Broadband (same company/VAT numbers etc)?

Sorry, it's a pet peave of mine...but yes, that's why Openreach get the money, the impression of neutrality. It would probably do a world of good if somebody else started a wholesale 'cables in the ground' operation to compete but there's sod all money in it so it'll never happen...

 

[Caged]

It could probably work at a regional level if local authorities planned ducting work to coincide with resurfacing works / other utilities but lol if you think a local authority can plan anything.

 

[Doco]

..... I want this! Though where I live I'd end up getting hyper-optic when the rest of the world is upgrading to super-special-awsome 100gig Broadband or something lol

 

[KIA]

Personally I think £60 is a bit excessive for the 1gig in.

u wot?

Get the 100Mb package you cheapskate!

 

[Omar]

Personally I think £60 is a bit excessive for the 1gig in 2014

It's £62.50 including £12.50 line rental (with free evening and weekend landline calls), so really the underlying broadband charge is £50 per month which is not too bad for the fastest available speeds in the UK. Plus depending on your building they usually have initial sign-up offers ranging from a few initial months free all the way up to 12 months half-price including the line rental!

 

[bledd]

I'm waiting to get this installed but man their customer services sucks, one minute it was meant to be installed october 2013 then Nov 2013 then by mid Jan 2014, I just called up today and now hopefully by the end of the month


Personally I think £60 is a bit excessive for the 1gig in 2014 but having a constant download/upload speed with no restrictions on volume of data also having to use sky broadband with no option of their fibre service or any other fibre provider service in the apartments I just have to try out the 1gig when it becomes live.

Do you know what a gig is?

£60 would be a hefty price for a gig to see a band, yes

 

[bigredshark]

I'm interested to see how it lasts as they get bigger, the fact is the service must be contended at least 20:1 to make the sums add up. As they bring more people online I wonder how that'll play out...

That said the business model is naturally limited as there's only a finite number of sites it's economical to fit out like that, most people don't need 1Gig and won't pay £50 for internet and the 100Mb product isn't a compelling upgrade over FTTC for the vast majority.

Then again, all these things apply equally to anything more advanced than FTTC these days, the underlying costs of the ISP business mean that for services deployed on any scale, they will be contended, they will be shaped and they will be expensive. Until the cost of transit, backhaul, hardware etc falls some more that won't change and to make things harder people have got used to rubbish £10/month broadband and think that's what internet access should cost.

That's pretty negative I know but, well, the way I see it the ISP business has become a commodity industry and in that market, BT and VM etc will win except for in some small niches.

 

[FrankJH]

I'm waiting to get this installed but man their customer services sucks, one minute it was meant to be installed october 2013 then Nov 2013 then by mid Jan 2014, I just called up today and now hopefully by the end of the month


Personally I think £60 is a bit excessive for the 1gig in 2014 but having a constant download/upload speed with no restrictions on volume of data also having to use sky broadband with no option of their fibre service or any other fibre provider service in the apartments I just have to try out the 1gig when it becomes live.

I dont know where you are based but Im in a similar position although Ive had slightly better information all along.

I got a flyer in my building in late Nov advertising that equipment was about to be installed. I registered interest and within a few days had a firm appointment to have router installed.

Installation engineer phoned me in the morning to confirm (for an afternoon appointment) and installed without any issue .......but told me OpenReach hadnt yet fully installed the cabling between the exchange and the building......and this is meant to happen middle of Jan

£60/m is cheap for 1GB, but I still couldnt justify it so I chose the £35/m for 100MB......as long as it ends up that way.

Little frustrating (especially over Xmas) having the router installed but OR ***** up, but cant really blame HyperOptic (cant prove they knew before hand or not, but by the way phone calls took place in front of me with their office I suspect they were left in the lurch by OR)

That said the business model is naturally limited as there's only a finite number of sites it's economical to fit out like that, most people don't need 1Gig and won't pay £50 for internet and the 100Mb product isn't a compelling upgrade over FTTC for the vast majority.

.

Bit confused by this comment.

the 100MB product is VERY compelling because these sites chosen by HyperOptic dont have the option of FTTC and are currently limited to standard adsl / broadband.

I dont know of course if this is the case for every building they are targeting but there appears to be a common thread of this kind of thing through those Ive heard getting the same flyers I did over the last month or so

(Unless Ive misunderstood your comment).

 

[bigredshark]

Bit confused by this comment.

the 100MB product is VERY compelling because these sites chosen by HyperOptic dont have the option of FTTC and are currently limited to standard adsl / broadband.

I dont know of course if this is the case for every building they are targeting but there appears to be a common thread of this kind of thing through those Ive heard getting the same flyers I did over the last month or so

(Unless Ive misunderstood your comment).

They seem to be focussed on high density sites in urban areas, if they don't have FTTC today it won't be long (and BT have a history of letting others deploy infrastructure to show a market exists then steamrollering it with their mass market product a year later).

The 100Mb is better than FTTC but is not vastly superior for most users and it costs roughly the same or slightly more, in 18 months time when the connected properties are sold on and the new owners have the choice of FTTC or Hyperoptic, that's when the crunch point will come...

 

[FrankJH]

1) High density urban areas (or blocks of flats ) - yes I completely agree

2)If FTTC was available today it would be a non starter, so thats completely wrong. "it wont be long" is as ambiguous as "how long is a piece of string" lol. All I can say is my exchange has been fibre enabled for 18 months + but no cabinets within a mile of my place in any direction has been enabled in that time, so I doubt it will happen for whatever reason (admittedly "north" doesnt count as its the Thames lol. I wouldnt expect BT to be offering anything in my area (given the time frame above) for a while yet - otherwise cabs in my vicinity would be getting enabled /connected.

"in 18 months time when the connected properties are sold on " I suspect this is completely random timeline picked out of the air. Even IF (and imo thats a huge if) openreach have actually bothered to enable the cabinets that they have "sat" on for 18 months or so without doing anything.

You are also assuming that in 2 or 3 years time (or when /if OR do the required work) that HyperOptic wont compete with BT on price (as given the amount of users, they could well have made profit in that time frame)

 

[bigredshark]

1)"in 18 months time when the connected properties are sold on " I suspect this is completely random timeline picked out of the air. Even IF (and imo thats a huge if) openreach have actually bothered to enable the cabinets that they have "sat" on for 18 months or so without doing anything.

You are also assuming that in 2 or 3 years time (or when /if OR do the required work) that HyperOptic wont compete with BT on price (as given the amount of users, they could well have made profit in that time frame)

Unfortunately I can give you a half dozen examples of BT saying 'no plans to enable that area' for years, then the instant somebody else turns up to serve that area it's suddenly part of their deployment plans. It's aggressive behaviour by an incumbent to say the least but it happens.

The fate of Invisible Networks in Cambridge is a standard template for those cases...

I do assume that with good reason, I've worked for a large number of ISPs (some of which played the 'lit building' game like this and jumped ship because it was financial suicide to continue) and there's a reason why many of those ISPs have decided business services are the future - BT / VM will always win in the consumer market.

Unless you have tens of thousands of customers and can afford the initial cost of outsourcing your support to call centres staffed by flow chart monkeys (UK or abroad) then you can't compete on cost there and unless you serve such massive user bases you can effectively contend backhaul and transit to avoid the true cost of bandwidth you can't compete on cost there.

Most people don't need or want 100Mbps+ broadband and it's a couple of % of people who'd ever dream of paying £50+/month for internet access alone.

You can't grow and make profit in that industry any more, it's not the 90s anymore, the only way you grow is to plough millions into infrastructure at a loss for years and that's no guarantee of success.

Hyperoptic might survive and make profit as a niche player in a few areas but that's about it (and if they do then a established provider will likely buy them to make some money out of the synergies).

I know that's *really* doom and gloom but I know the industry very well...for consumer broadband, it's curtains for anybody who isn't already huge or established in a niche...

 

[Caged]

If you need more evidence that people don't like paying more than the bare minimum for a service then you can use this thread where £60 for a gigabit connection was described as excessive.

 

[Alex_6n2]

Hyperoptic also have a number of relationships with big building contractors, and are supplying FTTH broadband for new builds (including some detached housing estates apparently). I used to work with them when I was a recruiter (Their staff growth has been extremely impressive!)

So it's not *just* limited to blocks of flats. But of course it's easier for them to bring the install costs down when lots of people share it out.

It's the same staff at the top who started Be Unlimited before they sold it to O2, so they know what they are doing.

 

[FrankJH]

Most people don't need or want 100Mbps+ broadband and it's a couple of % of people who'd ever dream of paying £50+/month for internet access alone.
.

Those are the prices for 1GB not 100MB but even a 20MB line (at £12.50/m) is likely to average at over 5* a standard ADSL line, and this is more than do-able for most families

https://www.hyperoptic.com/web/guest/home#3

2ndly - with a lot of people/families being interested in streaming multiple tv channels / VOD etc 100MB isnt going to be that unheard of, certainly 8mb lines just cant cut it (especially when most of where HyperOptic are focused on are harder to get to cabling wise etc so its either isp's like HyperOptic or they are stuck on terrible BT adsl that actually peak at 2-3mb)

So it's not *just* limited to blocks of flats. But of course it's easier for them to bring the install costs down when lots of people share it out.

It's the same staff at the top who started Be Unlimited before they sold it to O2, so they know what they are doing.

All I said was that from what I have heard around me, they are focused on huge installs like flats etc.

I said exactly the same about Be Unlimited a few months ago in the general FTTC thread when I first got the HyperOptic flyer through my door.

 

[MonsterMoshi]

I might be wrong in how I understand the system but BT is receiving millions in government grants to roll out 'super fast' broadband but still reported growing profits of £6.18 billion of the financial year 2012/13

As far as I am concerned they should not be receiving any grants and should be forced to reinvest every penny in the infrastructure they use to make that profit!

Are they actually doing much to bring super fast broadband to the rural areas they are supposed to be investing in?

Am I right to blame old Maggie for this?

 

[Caged]

If you want to be able to force what an organisation does then you need to buy it - they're a private company and can do what they want with their income. The government can't afford to buy BT.

And it was an utter shambles when it was publicly owned.

 

[stuie]

Ive got the option of this in my house not taken it up yet but if I get a nice pay review soon I might

https://gigler.co.uk/get-gigler

 

[sony007]

Do you know what a gig is?

£60 would be a hefty price for a gig to see a band, yes

Err yes I do and £60+ is still excessive in my personal opinion in this day and age, people are no longer struggling to find alternative suppliers as they use to 10 or so years ago, but in this case offering 1gig is great but really how many people will even need that sort speed to be tied in for 12 months at that price.

I know I don't need that speed and if they do provided a 1 or 2 month trial as a previous poster stated then i'm likely to try that out just to have a feel of that speed and then let common sense prevail and sign up to the 100meg....maybe!


I have no idea whether £60 for a gig is a hefty price to see a band, thats not my sort of thing, supply and demand would determine that factor and individual opinions of people who do go to see bands or would like to see bands would be another good gauge.

 

[Johnnytoxic]

Anyone using Hyperoptic and newsgroups? would love to see the speeds.

 

[d_brennen]

E
I have no idea whether £60 for a gig is a hefty price to see a band, thats not my sort of thing, supply and demand would determine that factor and individual opinions of people who do go to see bands or would like to see bands would be another good gauge.

Exactly, try buying a 1gbps from someone else!