BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

It's different property though isn't it. Digging a trench down the pavement and putting a little box outside the boundary needs permits from one local council. Trenching into everyone's front gardens/driveways needs a separate agreement from each homeowner and then dealing with hundreds of complaints about how the grass died or block paving wasn't quite put back perfectly. Much easier to just get the network to the boundary and then install the fibre if/when a service is ordered and figure the route out on the day, whether that's clipping it around a garden wall or shoving it into a slit cut into the grass.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I would have thought they’d put in a duct at the same time if they are going as far a digging the trench to lay the fibre in your lawn.
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There was no ducting in the pavements outside. They dug up the pavements to place ducting going past everyones properties then installing the grey pipes because when the houses were originally built, telephone cables were put into the pavements then buried.
Caged said:
How do you mean? Openreach aren't going to be converting that fibre to copper, regardless of where the black box is installed.
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I'm asking how would one go about to get that last part completed to get that 10ft of cable replaced to fiber right into the house. So you have fiber all the way right into the home like it was America. That last piece of cable is over 40 years old.

Caged said:
It's different property though isn't it. Digging a trench down the pavement and putting a little box outside the boundary needs permits from one local council. Trenching into everyone's front gardens/driveways needs a separate agreement from each homeowner and then dealing with hundreds of complaints about how the grass died or block paving wasn't quite put back perfectly. Much easier to just get the network to the boundary and then install the fibre if/when a service is ordered and figure the route out on the day, whether that's clipping it around a garden wall or shoving it into a slit cut into the grass.
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The boxes isn't in anyones gardens, it's at the very edge of the pavement to the lawn flush to the surface of the pavement.
 
V F said:
I'm asking how would one go about to get that last part completed to get that 10ft of cable replaced to fiber right into the house. So you have fiber all the way right into the home like it was America. That last piece of cable is over 40 years old.
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You place your FTTP order when it shows as available and then somebody runs fibre from that box to your house
 
Caged said:
It's different property though isn't it. Digging a trench down the pavement and putting a little box outside the boundary needs permits from one local council. Trenching into everyone's front gardens/driveways needs a separate agreement from each homeowner and then dealing with hundreds of complaints about how the grass died or block paving wasn't quite put back perfectly. Much easier to just get the network to the boundary and then install the fibre if/when a service is ordered and figure the route out on the day, whether that's clipping it around a garden wall or shoving it into a slit cut into the grass.
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The point is that they’ll only do that last step when someone actually orders fibre. They aren’t going to dig up every front garden for the sake of it and when someone orders it they’ll get that permission…

The issue with fibre is that it’s really quite fragile. You can break it by bending it and it isn’t very robust at all. Unless they are putting in a thick armoured cable, they’ll want it in a conduit 60cm below ground level so one one can’t stick a spade through it. Being in a duct or conduit makes future repairs and upgrades significantly easier and cheaper.
 
They may well duct it, I don't know. They don't hook it up to an old copper cable though, and they don't do anything until a service is ordered.

There are some pretty tough fibres available now, you could probably put a spade through a duct easier than you'd damage one of the overhead drop cables.

If it's a hard surface I'd expect the default to be a fibre cable clipped around the boundary on a fence or wall or whatever, with the homeowner responsible for anything more advanced like lifting paving to install ducting.
 
Caged said:
They may well duct it, I don't know. They don't hook it up to an old copper cable though, and they don't do anything until a service is ordered.

There are some pretty tough fibres available now, you could probably put a spade through a duct easier than you'd damage one of the overhead drop cables.

If it's a hard surface I'd expect the default to be a fibre cable clipped around the boundary on a fence or wall or whatever, with the homeowner responsible for anything more advanced like lifting paving to install ducting.
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From what I've looked below the house, it doesn't look like ducting but a somewhat hole in the foundations that they could somehow, I don't know, tape the cables to the old and pull it through into the house? It aint far. 10ft.

It's coming through the wall of the house while in the ground.
 
If your current phone line is direct buried armoured then it's irrelevant for how the fibre is coming it. That will (likely) by shallow buried across your front garden and come in through a new hole drilled through the wall. If you want something specific then you'll need to plan that yourself.
 
Shawreyboy said:
Sorry if this is a little off-topic, PSN used to have a throttle on it - took ages to download anything on the PS4 irrespective of ISP and connection however, on the PS5 even I have noted it takes next to no time. Downloaded the 10GB Siege of Paris DLC last night on my VM500 (gets 550Mb) connection and it took 4 minutes. Can only imagine what that would've been on 900Mb+ FTTP. I am guessing Sony are elevating traffic or something for PS5 users.

Makes me question whether I should've just bought the digital PS5 instead :p
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I've noticed a massive difference when downloading games/updates on the PS5. Speeds are always always maxed out, also just general browsing and uploading content, Sony at least are doing something right!

Happy I went with the 900 FTTP not every device I own takes full advantage of the service but I moved from VM 200 and was fed up of the constant disconnections on the VM Hub. Moved to normal Fibre 50/20 and couldn't cope with the speeds :D

Happy with the BT Hub, don't feel I need to change it.
 
Caged said:
If your current phone line is direct buried armoured then it's irrelevant for how the fibre is coming it. That will (likely) by shallow buried across your front garden and come in through a new hole drilled through the wall. If you want something specific then you'll need to plan that yourself.
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It is armoured cable. So you're saying when it's time to order they don't hook up the armoured copper to the box outside the house? They install the remaining fiber into the house?

I'm not talking diverting, I'm talking only pulling the fiber through to the existing cables route that is already there. No digging. Pull the new cable through, connect both ends and done.
 
That box is just a box to have something on the end of the duct that isn't an open hole, there is no product in the Openreach portfolio where something to convert fibre to copper to use an existing lead in for ~10m is used.

If the existing cable can be used to pull a fibre through then they might use that, it's very engineer specific on the day and depends how much prep work you're able to do yourself.
 
You can’t pull a cable though if there is no duct. The new one will need to be buried or run round clipped to another structure.

They’ll also not want to disconnect the copper in case they mess it up and leave you with nothing. They just leave the copper line in place when installing FTTP.
 
I thought it was too good to be true. The brown sheath cable.

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Caged said:
At a guess they are doing something new that hasn't been widely publicised for properties that had direct buried phone lines, where they duct it to your boundary and then just run a fibre through your lawn for the last little bit. I think before they would just put poles up so this new method seems preferable.
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That's what they did at my parents place. They installed a duct under the pavement that stopped at one corner of their garden and then ran the fibre through a semi rigid black plastic tube which they buried at the back of the flower beds. The tube then ran into the customer termination point and from there the fibre ran under the door frame and into the house.

I was amazed at how neat the install was. They even went as far as removing some of the turn and laying it back down adterwards rather than just digging straight through it.
 
Openreach are some piece of work. For the past week for a work day they roughly do 3 hours of work and even then it's very little. These guys spend so much time standing and talking for hours or sitting in their vans doing nothing.

Today the head guy left to sit in his van for lunch at 11:50am vaping and playing on the phone, then got out his van at 13:50, brought some stuff back to pack up then sat in his van at 14:00 until 14:30 then all left. Everyday they pack up about 13:30/45 waiting until 14:30 to leave for the day.

A few of them threw hissy fits throwing signs to the ground last week when they were kept back waiting on the tarmac vehicle as they were kept back until 16:00 on a Friday. It was so amusing watching some of these manchilds.
 
I have to admit, I've been absolutely blown away by my experience with BT/Openreach.
I've just moved into a very rural farm cottage. Broadband is available but due to the distance from the exchange I'd be getting below 2mbps. FTTP was available so I ordered that at 10pm on Monday night. I was given a provisional install date of 11 days later which I was quite happy with.
On Tuesday morning I missed a few calls from a mobile number I'd not recognised and called it back at around 10am. It was an Openreach engineer at my flat doing a site survey. He'd spoken to my neighbours already and had an install plan.
Today I came home at about 3pm and saw an Openreach van on the main road. The engineer then came round to the flat and proceeded to install the new fibre with his oppo. While he was drilling the access hole for the fibre he asked if I'd received the router yet, which not even a full working day after ordering I'd obviously not. "No problem" he says and fetched a spare router from his van. On the promise that I called him when my router came so they could be swapped and he got his spare one back, it was plugged in with a promise that he'd do his best to have the line activated the following day.
I glanced at the router earlier this evening and noticed it was showing a connection. Added my PC to the router via wifi and I was online!

So from ordering to online, including running new fibre from the roadside into the property was under 46 hours. This is not the Openreach I've known in the past!
 
Must admit my engineer said the same thing to me. Must get a bonus for the line to go active at the point of install? I'm not sure why they would offer a spare router and come back in there own time to pick it up. I declined as mine was due to be deliver the next day. Took around 14 days from the order date for mine to be live. Overall it was a pleasant experience.
 
The router I have borrowed is a couple of generations old, so it works fine but isn't current. He offered it to me to get going straight away until my own arrives. Very nice of him regardless of the motives. I've today put in a compliment form to Openreach for both engineers.
 
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