Finally, we're getting FTTP, woo-hoo! (it was installed in June 2024)

I walked over the road to get my ears lowered this morning and an Openreach van was parked up near by. On my way back, the chaps who had been working on the pole in my road were there and we had a chat. They finished all the work at the pole late on Friday evening and it's been light tested and confirmed good. They expect it to be commissioned in the next 'few weeks'. They also said that once it's commissioned, someone normally wanders around dropping leaflets in the houses shortly after but also said that as soon as it's live, they'll knock on my door to let me know.

They said again how there's a huge push to get it done so 'a few weeks' may even be just a few days.
 
nst68 said:
Lightspeed is available on some of the houses on the new build estate I'm hoping to buy on.

On a house 6 doors away it's now saying "LightSpeed is not yet available at CO13 xxx but it's coming to your home soon!".
I hope it's there by the time we move in, otherwise I'll have to slum it with BT FTTP, the shortest contract I've found is 18 months with Zen.
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That's really interesting. Lightspeed is the one that appeared near me last year and who I expressed brief interest in until I discovered that they're CGNAT, although as @andy_mk3 mentioned, they're now starting to offer static IPs.

I only re-signed earlier this year with Plusnet so it would be tricky to move to Lightspeed but frankly, I'm happy with the service I've had from Plusnet so I will stick with them.
 
I don't care about voip, dumping the landline was something we did as part of re-signing with Plusnet a couple of months ago. I was with Sky before I moved to Plusnet and really didn't like the way they tried to force you to use their own router. I'd been with them for years so had been able to extract my login details from the very old box they provided but I got a much better deal (and a static IP) with Plusnet.
 
Caged said:
You do not have to use the Sky router with Sky's service.
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Mcnumpty2323 said:
Feek I thought sky allowed using your own
Router nowadays
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I've just looked back, I joined Plusnet in 2017 from BT and I moved to BT from Sky so it was probably at least three years prior to 2017 that I was with Sky. Clearly things have moved on, so that's a good thing.
 
Feek said:
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A few days after the last bit of work, the date on this planned work changed from 7th to 9th May.

Today, it's disappeared which I guess means it's now completed.
 
Every day, I've been looking at the Openreach fibre checker.

This morning, it said this.

FXFpYvP.png


I got straight on the blower to PlusNet and at 11:13 I had confirmation of my new 900/115 contract. It's being installed on the 10th June some time between 08:00 and 13:00.

At 11:23 I had an email from Openreach telling me that FTTP is now available in my area! I was already signed up :cry:

mingeroonie said:
Be interesting to see who gets connected first :D
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Do I win? ;)
 
We've got high winds forecast tomorrow morning 24 mph gusting to 30 mph. What's the betting this gets postponed due to the weather?
 
I know we all know how tiny fibre is but even looking at this makes it even more incredible. This is the actual fibre itself from the centre of the cable.

sloFZ5m.jpeg
 
Another benefit of FTTP that I'd not really considered before is that my internet speed when I'm away from home is much faster as well. I run my own VPN on a Pi on my network and my phone and laptop are set up to automatically connect to it when I'm out and about.

This means that my home upload speed is effectively the maximum download speed I can ever get through the VPN.

Looking at the speedtest history on my phone, I used to average around 13-14Mbps download and anything between 5 and 10Mbps upload. Upload can always be a bit hit and miss as it also depends on the 4G/5G connection.

I've just been out this morning. I did a test while parked in the local BP car park with a 2 bar 4G signal, I got 67Mbps down and 2.4Mbps up. When I disconnected from the VPN, I got 112Mbps down and 4Mbps up.

In the car park at Morrisons with a decent 5G signal I got 83Mbps down and 15Mbps up. Disconnected from the VPN and it was 116Mbps down and 22Mbps up. My EE data speed is allegedly capped at 100Mbps.

I'm happy with that, it's a significant increase over FTTC.
 
Bubo said:
So a basic question first, where does the necessary cabling initially route from? The street is typical with standard telegraph poles with normal phone spider web cables going to each house, is the fibre run along the same up in the air route to the poles, or does it run completely separate, or underground? Not seen anyone doing any work outside prior to the card to be honest, though maybe its a five minute job for them?
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If your phone line comes in from an overhead telegraph pole then the FTTP will come in the same way. This is what he did here:

Inside the house.
Cut the copper about six inches from the master socket.
Fitted the ONT (which is the box inside) exactly where I wanted it, fed the fibre out through the same hole the copper had come in.
Tacked the fibre nicely where the copper had been.

Outside the house.
Climbed the pole, attached the fibre and dragged it over to my house. He loosely attached it to the bracket thing at the top.
He then spliced the two ends together and we tested it.
Then he tidied the two lengths of fibre, tacked them to the wall, tested all again.
Fitted the splice box, trimmed the fibres so they were the right length, respliced and tested.
Removed the old copper from the house to the telegraph pole.
Wound the slack fibres into the space space in the splice box.

Inside the house.
Fitted a blanking plate in the old master socket.

General tidying up. He didn't leave any waste or mess anywhere.

Total time was about 2 1/2 hours.
 
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