Excess Construction Charges

[Mrpower]

Hello All

 

Back in June the school signed up for a Lease Line. This week we have been told by our provider that Virgin media will charge up an Excess Construction Charge to install a cable to the school. This was never mentioned in the original price or in the contract we signed. My question is, is this a normal situation for providers require Excess Construction Charge? Or are we just very unlucky?

[Michael]

Yes it's normal practice - providers will normally cover the first £2.5K and the school pay the difference, but you also have the right to cancel at this stage also (as required).

[Jawloms]

Yes, completely normal, but when you find out what the charges are you have the right to cancel at that moment.

[Michael]

You have to view these costs as a one off as part of infrastructure (if the school do not have a lease line already), so even if the cable needed changing in future, Virgin would re-use the duct.

 

The only other gotcha is BT and Virgin for example will not share the same ducts, despite being on school land.

[Oaktech]

Really unhelpful, but yes, pretty normal.

 

Only twice out of 8 signups have I escaped excess construction.

 

One was a new ISP using us as case study so they threw everything in - construction, router, media converters, everything! The second was because the connection cabinet is literally againt the school fence 10m from the NTE across some grass.

[Mrpower]

I have already spoken to one of the SLT who was clear on the fact, the school is not going to foot the ECC, as its a bit big £6K almost £7K. I was just wondering if we cancel the order, are we going to hit the same hurdle with another supplier. Looks like it might.

We are looking to try to re-use the current BT infrastructure (overhead cabling) for the lease line. fingers crossed.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Very normal and most suppliers are very clear about this.

 

As others have said, you do have the right to reject the ECC's and cancel the order with no penalty.

 

I've been lucky. I have placed 10 leased line orders and so far not incurred any ECC's over the supplier limits.

 

From my understanding Virgin media cover up to 5k ECC's, whereas BT only cover 2.5k. So it might actually be worth asking your vendor to try the survey with Virgin Media carrying the leased line..

 

Hope this helps.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Wubbalubbadub

[FN-GM]

This sounds normal from what from I have seen when I was in the UK. Add you sure it isn’t in the contract? From my experience it was set out clearly.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hello All

 

Back in June the school signed up for a Lease Line. This week we have been told by our provider that Virgin media will charge up an Excess Construction Charge to install a cable to the school. This was never mentioned in the original price or in the contract we signed. My question is, is this a normal situation for providers require Excess Construction Charge? Or are we just very unlucky?

 

@Mrpower

 

it is normal practise to pay for ECC's and these will be given to you once a site survey has been done. With BT Openreach it is about £2.5k which they'll pay towards the cost and then you have to pay the rest.

 

It's different for Virgin though. The amount of ECC's you pay is dependent on the status of the partner (unless you go with Virgin direct). Some partners get £0 contribution, some £5k contribution. Because we spend a 7 figure sum with Virgin pa we get a £10k contribution from Virgin so if you came with us then these would probably be wiped off completely.

 

Everyone is correct, you are at liberty to cancel your order should you not accept the ECC charges.

 

If BT has already instead a line historically then it's likely there would be no ECC charges but rental charges are normally higher than Virgin based fibre.

 

If you'd like me to take a look to see if we can get you off the ECC's from Virgin do let me know

 

Thanks and good luck

 

Dave

Edited November 5, 2021 by SchoolsBroadband

[SchoolsBroadband]

You have to view these costs as a one off as part of infrastructure (if the school do not have a lease line already), so even if the cable needed changing in future, Virgin would re-use the duct.

 

The only other gotcha is BT and Virgin for example will not share the same ducts, despite being on school land.

 

 

 

Hi @Michael,

 

that's not quite correct. Virgin do deliver services through BT ducts where its considerably more economically viable for them to do so.

 

They us a product called PIA from BT Openreach where BT charge Virgin (or any other supplier) a rental fee to use their ducts.

 

We've just used Virgin to deliver some circuits in the York area using exactly this service which saved on digging and meant a quicker install for the school.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Wubbalubbadub]

@Mrpowerit is normal practise to pay for ECC's and these will be given to you once a site survey has been done. With BT Openreach it is about £2.5k which they'll pay towards the cost and then you have to pay the rest.It's different for Virgin though. The amount of ECC's you pay is dependent on the status of the partner (unless you go with Virgin direct). Some partners get £0 contribution, some £5k contribution. Because we spend a 7 figure sum with Virgin pa we get a £10k contribution from Virgin so if you came with us then these would probably be wiped off completely.Everyone is correct, you are at liberty to cancel your order should you not accept the ECC charges.If BT has already instead a line historically then it's likely there would be no ECC charges but rental charges are normally higher than Virgin based fibre.If you'd like me to take a look to see if we can get you off the ECC's from Virgin do let me know :)Thanks and good luckDave

10K! That explains why I feel lucky with no ECC's coming up on my orders then! :DThanks, Dave!

[jmak]

10K! That explains why I feel lucky with no ECC's coming up on my orders then! :DThanks, Dave!

Always disappointing when you get hit with them, but if you've ever tried getting quotes for groundworks, you'll understand why ECC can be so high...

[Wave9_Lee]

Always disappointing when you get hit with them, but if you've ever tried getting quotes for groundworks, you'll understand why ECC can be so high...

 

Worth saying that some EDU ISPs will spread the costs of your ECCs over the term of the broadband contract, which helps with the pain slightly.

[supportman]

7K seems quite resonable to me, I think we paid 10k when ours was installed for the first time but worth it if you look at it long term. We had road closures and all sorts

[ITGURU]

You have to view these costs as a one off as part of infrastructure (if the school do not have a lease line already), so even if the cable needed changing in future, Virgin would re-use the duct.

 

The only other gotcha is BT and Virgin for example will not share the same ducts, despite being on school land.

 

BT and Virgin can use same ducts and fibre. We took on a school that has Virgin Media broadband, have migrated to a BT leased line and they used the same fibre cable to make the new conection.

[FN-GM]

It's a shame that the companies are not government owned.

 

Here the Australian Government own the Infrastructure. We had just over 4km of Fiber Optic cable installed and it cost us nothing. The only term was a minimum 3 year contract for the service.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Here in the UK the government and the council have paid for lots of schools to have fibre connections installed. The most recent deployment was for about 550 schools getting fibre via the RGC scheme.

 

There's loads more with LFFN and some new schemes coming too which are upgrading schools without fibre to fibre.

 

The only one balmy thing that is happening is that some councils are spending more money having installed one carrier some years ago and are now paying to install another carrier years later which personally I think is mad and a waste of tax payers money...

 

Dave

[Maxtgw]

OP, you'll likely always have this problem if you're installing a leased line. Assuming you don't currently have one in place if you you don't have any existing ducting?

 

You won't get away from the ECCs so what I would suggest is taking a looking at aggregating multiple FTTx connections if you have that available to you, lead times for installation will be much quicker and the costs for installation on broadband connectivity like that will be fixed.

 

Have worked with alot of schools in the past and this kind of solution does the trick for so many, you can get the same amount of bandwidth as your leased line and abit more resilience too as you're not placing all your eggs in one basket.

 

Happy to make some recommendations if you want to explore that option!