POTS

[Another Dave]

Bugger.

[David Wade]

Its worse. It will come from the same pole, but they will only feed it into the building in the ground floor. My phone line used to enter on the first floor, so I had to run a cable from the fibre back to the router and hubs on the first floor...

Dave

[mm0fmf]

That's sounds a reasonable case for a landline. Or at least another line.

It's easiest when your ISP provides the phone and you just plug something into the socket on the router, a la Virgin.

You may want to consider the following...

You can get an unlimited voice/texts SIM from 1p Mobile that lasts a year and costs £36. You get 250MB data / month. Uses EE ISTR. Stick it in a old phone (that does 4G) and put that in her study/office etc. and Use it and it's voicemail for the church business.

[Andrew]

And provided that the number being called is not ex-directory, you can find the number quite easily. Bit tricky with mobile numbers (is there, or was there ever a 'directory enquiries' for mobile numbers ?)

[Theo]

I'm not sure if that's a hard and fast rule. They want a termination point at ground level, so they can diagnose faults without having the householder being in or needing ladders. But you may be able to convince them to run the cable from the termination point back up to ingress on another floor. In particular, if they're fixing a run down from the pole, it's not a big deal to run another cable up in parallel with the first. Especially if the internal install is easy - eg power available close to where it comes in.

That may be a time to deploy the fabled tea and choccy biccies...

Theo

[Owain Lastname]

It seems an even better case for VoIP, where the number isn't tied to the address of an individual, and where potentially multiple people can answer calls on a duty rota, or retrieve (or be emailed) the voicemail messages, with no disruption when roles or locations change.

And other people can make outdoing calls using the church office CLI.

Owain

[Vir Campestris]

So who was it said a Raspberry Pi is a Single Bard Computer?

But as I said on the other thread this doesn't agree with what we have here. They took the entire village to FTTP (at least I think it was everyone) and the POTS port on our router has never worked. Instead they gave us a VOIP phone.

(Since then we've gone internet only, and use our mobiles with Wi-Fi calling.)

Andy

[SteveW]

Hmmm, I wonder what will happen if I choose to go down the FTTP route. I currently have Virgin and when that was installed, they were terminating the co-ax in a box on the front of the house and then running a co-ax from there to the router.

In my case, I planned ahead and ran my own co-ax for them to connect to, as I wanted the the cable to go into the house at an air-brick and run under the floor to the conservatory, where I have a cupboard with mains sockets, UPS, router, network switch and home server.

I do not want to have to find somewhere at the front of the house for their ONT (possibly with BBU, as my wife is disabled and may need an emergency pendant in the future), when everything else is at the back.

Do they run their fibre as one length or is it joined outside, perhaps allowing me to pre-run a length of fibre in the same way?

[Bob Eager]

I was very lucky. We were in the same situation (the line comes in right next to the network panel/equipment rack) and he did an incredibly neat job, terminating 20cm from the rack.

[Theo]

They run fibre from the pole/duct/etc to their external termination box. It's then jointed to a different bit of fibre that comes inside and connects to your ONT.

Depending on what you can negotiate with them, I might be tempted to accept an install at the front, and then do your own relocation to the back. Kits for that are available:

If it's Openreach, they also have a 'premium install' option for an extra £40, which means they'll do a lot more internal work. Well worth it IMHO: Your internal cable run might be covered under that option.

Theo

[Theo]

Who is 'they' here? Assuming you're talking about Openreach taking the village FTTP and not an altnet, you don't get your phone and router from Openreach, you get it from an ISP. Was your ISP BT or somebody else?

Theo

[SteveW]

I find that people text or call mobiles at any time of the day or night, but avoid ringing landlines at night, except in an emergency. I much prefer to have a landline, so that I can turn my mobile off overnight.

Plus, I tend to have do not disturb on on my mobile, with only selected people able to cause the phone to ring.

[SH]

The incoming fibre is terminated into a connector and then a joining splice is inserted into the outside wall box.

The engineer usually has a range of pre-terminated optical patch fibres with connectors pre fitted at both ends in the van, usually in lengths of 5m, 10m, 15m, 20m and 25m. They then use one to run from the wall box to where the ONT is being installed and then a short length of ethernet from the ONT to the Router.

So you can either tell the engineer that you want the ONT and Router in the rear room, and they will usually run the patch fibre from the wall box around the outside of the house.

Main criteria is that it all has to be at ground floor level and that the route from wall box to ONT is clear and free to access.

You can buy the same optical patch fibres with connectors fitted which is what I did as I moved the ONT and router to the loft as that is where the headend is.

The original engineer fitted it all on a shelf in the garage (I had fitted the shelf) and also ran the fibre in a 20mm conduit I had laid years ago that ran between the front room ceiling and bedroom floor between the wall box on teh porch wall and the garage!

[David Wade]

It appears to be the case.

The also don't want to use a ladder if the fibre from the termination point needs replacing...

I tried, I failed. Others report similar intransigence....

Dave

[David Wade]

i think you are lucky. mine seems to get rung at 08:00 when I am still asleep.

My mobile automatically switches to do-not-disturb between midnight and

09:30 which caused problems as Openreach tried ringing at 09:00 and were ignored.

I missed a hospital appointment like that....

Dave

[Robin]

Again, not me. But I noted it, with approval, and trust you are not implying it is anything but a fit and proper phrase that will roll trippingly of the tongue of even rude mechanicals.

[alan_m]

Around my way they just replace the copper with fibre - fibre from the top of the pole to the house.

[charles]

I've still got the copper - as well as the fibre.

[Bob Eager]

So have I. But probably because I ordered the FTTP without ceasing FTTC, just in case. Two days of tests (on a temporary account the ISP gave me) and then they switched me over, routing my public IPs to the fibre.

I just paid for two extra days of FTTC.

[David Wade]

Well when they put my Fibre in they were very keen to remove the copper but I said it was still needed. However after asking OpenReach have just come and removed the copper, no charge...

Dave