OT - Experience of OpenReach FTTP installation via telegraph poles

[Chris B]

I have recently been through this process using BT contractors (ie its BT broadband being installed)

In my experience no they do not remove the old line. In my case they don't even come off the same pole. Old analogue line is off pole at front of house, new fibre is off pole at back of house. They would not go round to where the old line entered the house "as the fibre cable wont bend round the corners of the house". Its minimum bend radius is quite large.

Your current master socket will be redundant. A new one will be installed (a modem) which has to be close to a power point as it will need mains power. And in my case they insisted that it must be on an outside wall.

OpenReach have previously moved the Master socket from where it enters the property to the new location and put connectors (in the old box) and used my cat6 cable to do it.

In my case they were very keen to install the modem on the ground floor

- but the wall where they wanted to put it luckily had no power. (the fibre termination box has to be at ground level for future serviceability - to save climbing ladders to get to the cable terminator)

So they brought the fibre from the pole to the eaves of the house and down the outside wall to a termination block, then from the fibre termination block a cable goes back up the wall and through the wall on the first floor to the modem (which connects to the router).

My fitter was adamant that the modem must be fitted on an outside wall. (you can then put the router wherever you like if you have a suitable network cable).

(Make sure you put some carpet dust protector where they will drill the hole in the wall).

[The Natural Philosopher]

My experience with IDnet over the last 3 years. after moving back to my house post divorce:

ADSL: 6 or 7 support calls moving speed up from 2Mbps unreliable to

6,5Mbps reliable.

FTTP: 1 support call to tell me how to set up the router PPP interface to them..

Now am not saying that FTTP has given me smooth seamless uninterrupted internet access, but none of the issues have been with the last 15 miles.

In short FTTP has been a total 'fit and forget' experience - far more so than neighbours' FTTC, where VDSL routers fall over lock up. etc. Mind you I bought my own router and paid a lot for it.

And I am getting a pretty rock solid 34-38Mbps with actual download speeds >4Mbps from it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well you can get it from IDnet if you want.

If you have FTTP, that's what you can get delivered over it.

Why Vodafone didn't want to, is a different matter

And again, Openreach do not sell to ISPs or to BT retail, BT wholesale do...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Except that is simply not true. Other providers offer speeds over 160Mbps And Openreach are not the agency supplying. BT wholesale are.

[Andy Burns]

Then I suspect OFCOM ought to investigate openreach's lack of neutrality ...

[SH]

I confirm that City fibre do use BT ducts.

I watched then push fish tape down from my BT telephone copper cable install into teh BT duct that was installed back in 1985.

There is a inspection chamber down the road which then has two further ducts, one leadig to a BT cabinet and the other to a city fibre cabinet.

So they then pulled through nylon tubing from the CF cabinet right back to my house and there is a nice new CF termination box right next to the existing BT box.

The fibre was then blown through.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In my case the exact reverse happened. They did use the same pole and they did remove the existing cable. and use te same run.

same here, except I retained copper circuit back to original master socket

same here

They refused to do that for me... well that's not true. they didn't mention the possibility, and since I had a power socket next to a cat 5 socket on a ground floor, going back to my 'machine room' it was a no brainer to stick the modem there, since I wasn't using it for VOIP.

My master socket, and router stayed in the same place.

I think that is the key point

you can run as long a CAT5 from the modem to the router as you like, which allows you to have what becomes the 'master phone socket' on the router and your wifi hub on the router, in the most convenient place.

And cat 5/6 can be run externally round the house if you must. Out through the wall and in again. Or up through the eaves and into the loft area and down into a top floor room.

:-)

slate floor in my case.

30 seconds with (one of the) the Henrys...

[SH]

bear in mind that if the cable between the ONT and the modem is too long, the line speec will drop dramtically....

How do I know this?

I once ran a 10m ethernet cable between the ONT in garage to loft to allow me to move modem/router to loft. Line speed dropped to well below

100 Mbit/s

So I ended up extending the fibre so the ONT went into the loft and the original short cable repurposed for the PPoE connection between ONY and Modem/router

[Mark Carver]

Copper Ethernet doesn't do rate adaption, does it ? It'll either be 10,

100, or 1000 Mb/s. or are you suggesting something else ?

[Robin]

So you reckon (a) OR & BT decided to wreck the agreement that stopped BT having to sell Openreach and (b) none of BT's competitors ran to Ofgem about it. I can just about imagine insane middle managers doing (a) locally. I find (a)+(b) just plain incredible.

[leen...]

I have just spoken with a neighbour who had his installed the other day. His was also from a telegraph pole in the street to the gable end of the house. For his installation, there were 2 parts.

1. the fibre was run to the gable end and then down the outside wall to a small grey box which apparently OR said this was for easy diagnostic access and had to be outside and below waist height.
2. the fibre was then run from this point to "wherever he wanted it" - in his case they run the return cable back up the wall to the gable end and into the loft room where they fitted the ONT and ISP router.

In the discussions about needing to be on an outside wall and ground level above, does this distinction resonate? i.e. the requirement is for the "diagnostic box" rather than the ONT? Although I thought you were saying that the ONT needed to be inside the house but on an external wall so maybe not the same as this?

[The Natural Philosopher]

My installer said they don't like to run a long fibre from the box to the ONT/modem.

And my router etc wasn't on an outside wall..so it seemed easiest to put the modem where there was cat 5 and power on the ground floor on an outside wall

[leen...]

Seems like that might be to do with the level of installation the ISP has agreed with OR (

Standard is up to 10m and premium up to 30m. The details don't mention anything about outside walls only within 1m of a plug

Did you get to the bottom of the outside wall requirement? I can't see any logical reason other than they don't want to put on a stud wall for ease of fixing or something? The need to have an accessible diagnostics box seems sensible but another neighbour said they didn't do that on their house!

[John Rumm]

They certainly won't feel constrained to using the current locations if there is an easier or better option available. They brought my fibre in to a new bracket a few feet away from the copper lines. The did use the same path to get into the house, but that was only partly because I had already rerouted the wiring from the point of landing from the pole to trunked CAT5e round the other side of the house and into the place I had my comms cabinet.

Don't know if they will actually take out old copper though.

There is no master socket as such. They will mount the ONT somewhere and plug the fibre into that.

If going VoIP as well, then the phone master socket would now be on the router. (which could be wired back to the house extensions if desired)

See what happens on the day. IME the guys doing the work are usually more flexible and accommodating than the people managing them would lead you to believe.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think it would probably have been a bit more than 30m and a lot of hassle to get the fibre from ground level up into the loft, and down the wiring trunking to where the router and so on is. So really the best fit between HIS requirement for a short drop fibre, and a local mains point and my requirement for it not to be in a living or dining room. and to be on the crap side of the property AND near a CAT5 cable, meant it ended up where it did.

I think it is *probably* because short of running the fibre in trunking, there is a distinct possibility that long internal fibre runs = damage from people and pets. Fibre is fragile. Cable clamps may well upset it. Outside, the fibre is tough, but the drop cable is a different beast

The problem is that the whole network up to and including the modem (or NTE if you must) is openreach's problem : and given the issues of supporting premises you can get into and your kit inside in an environment you can't control, their attitudes is simply 'we wont support internal fibre runs'

[Robin]

Ahem, for Ofgem please read Ofcom.

[Roland Perry]

In message <sj1p88$3cr$ [e-mail], at 14:21:11 on Wed, 29 Sep

2021, Chris B [e-mail]> remarked:

Sounds just like BT ADSL 20yrs ago, and living in a terraced house the only suitable place for their substantial modem/router box was in the front bedroom.

[Roland Perry]

In message [e-mail], at

10:03:50 on Wed, 29 Sep 2021, " [e-mail]" [e-mail]> remarked:

How does this work if you live in an upstairs maisonette?

[Pancho]

In my case the cable went telephone pole to soffit and then directly to an upstairs cupboard. Never got within 3m of the ground.

This was a normal house, but the area does have a high proportion of houses converted to flats so maybe OpenReach relaxed this rule in the area.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think that they run longer drop fibre to the modem from a ground floor access point

But I am not betting the farm on it