The Lemon Fool

Im after general timescales from the contractors digging up the path in your road to actually getting fibre to the home broadband connected in the property. The first part has been done, contractors said "a few months" that was last year.

Signed up for updates but nowt! Although it says "soon" for the area

So what was your actual results?

Gerry557 wrote:Im after general timescales from the contractors digging up the path in your road to actually getting fibre to the home broadband connected in the property. The first part has been done, contractors said "a few months" that was last year.

Signed up for updates but nowt! Although it says "soon" for the area

So what was your actual results?

It took 2 years from them installing the junction box on the telegraph pole in the road, specifically for our property, until we could get it connected and then only Zen acknowledged it was available and installed it. We were with Sky before and they, like others, refused to accept it was available for our property.

Good luck!

We signed up with Openreach who are using the government Gigabit voucher scheme. They lodged the vouchers in October 2020. Contractors are working in the village at the moment. They have to complete the installation by October 2021 in order claim for payment using the voucher scheme.

newlyretired

I think it's pretty much impossible to say. Is it Openreach, Virgin, Cityfibre or someone else? Is your street the first in the area around you to be dug up or the last?

I think at the property it was City Fibre. They have been and gone. As far as Im aware they have done the area as the dug up bits of pavement standout. I suppose I could follow the tracks!

In Exeter Openreach put fibre down the ducts to the poles in our street in December.
Anyone who was with BT had it to the house by end of Jan. Other providers wouldn't pay to connect their customers.

Paul

That typically sums it up. It's there but you can't have it.

Why was it so expensive for others I wonder. A good connection time though for those on the BT side of things

City Fibre are/were TalkTalk so you might eventually get connected but have to spend week's of your life wasted with their useless customer service

VM...(its NTL or some other name back then), were excellent
it was 20+ years ago and they installed cable in our road just 2 weeks after the council have 'finally' redone the pavements
so along came NTL and ran a trench along pavements on each side of the road

connections to houses were within weeks
pavements remain as they were left!!

Gerry557 wrote:That typically sums it up. It's there but you can't have it.

Why was it so expensive for others I wonder. A good connection time though for those on the BT side of things

City Fibre are/were TalkTalk so you might eventually get connected but have to spend week's of your life wasted with their useless customer service

I suspect the difference was connection fees. Whilst Openreach are independent from BT and AIUI controlled by OFCOM regarding selling access to the infrastructure, BT may get a preferential rate on connections. I know that BT are far more willing to send an engineer than most of the other suppliers, which suggests to me they pay less for the visit. For us we had to sign up to a 2 year contract, which with 50MBPS connecctivity was £2/month more than using the old Aluminium cables which gave between 2 and 3.6 MBPS.

Paul

Openreach finished laying the cables in our lane yesterday. I am with Plusnet so I hope I will be connected at the same time as BT customers. The workmen said they didn't know when the links to the houses would be done.

Gerry557 wrote:City Fibre are/were TalkTalk ...

That's not quite correct I think. Back in 2018 they (CityFibre) sold themselves to a consortium backed by Goldman Sachs (https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252 ... d-for-538m)

In January 2020, they acquired FibreNation from TalkTalk and added TT as a strategic partner along with the existing Vodafone partnership (https://www.cityfibre.com/news/cityfibr ... -premises/)

The usual CityFibre arrangement is that when you initially sign up you actually do that via the partner ISP for your area (either Voda or TT I think) - at some point after a certain capacity has been reached, CF open up the area to other ISPs so you aren't tied to the original partner.

Well whoever City Fibre partner with, hasn't raised their head up yet and said pick me so no chance of anyone that's not a partner.

It could be a ploy, keep us all waiting so we all sign up at once, negating the options for all the others to aquire customers as the limit isn't approached gradually

Yesterday a chap from Virgin Media knocked on the door. They are about to dig up the street and install fibre and wanted to gauge interest.

He was quite surprised that we hadn't gone with Talk Talk after a year and expected to be approx 6 weeks after finishing the digging that we might get connected.

Does this mean constant digging in the future until everyone provides???

We planned putting some Amtico flooring in the hallway and stalled as this would affect fibre to the property as the fibre would need to go under the floor. In fact we just installed some new carpet as a temporary arrangement.

Initially I thought that would be us sorted but it sounds like we would be limited to just Virgin. A situation I don't want to be in. No wonder it's so expensive and time consuming if each company does the works and won't share.

Maybe I need a fibre switch box outside so they can all connect and I can select which user without having to pull up the floor

I was chatting to an Open Reach guy working in my road a couple weeks ago
I commneted on the absolute mess of wires he had to work with and he said this should be fibre by now
I asked when that would happen
Incredibly his response was 2025
This is in North London

I must add that the reASon I was talking to him was my router HAD stopped working and I had opened the door to see if Open Reach were working in the road as they often break it, owing to previously mentioned mess of wires

I told him my router wasn't working (bracing myself for what his response would be)
BUT
what a star he was
"Here you go take this" (some sort of gadGet with lots a cable coming out of it)
"Plugin it into your socket and come back here"
When came back he identFied my line and fixed it there and then
What a gent !!

newlyretired wrote:We signed up with Openreach who are using the government Gigabit voucher scheme. They lodged the vouchers in October 2020. Contractors are working in the village at the moment. They have to complete the installation by October 2021 in order claim for payment using the voucher scheme.

Openreach were due to complete our community fibre project by mid-October. In mid-November they notified us that the project was complete and accepting orders. I think that it wasn't actually complete at the time, but they certainly started installing fibre to properties in the village in mid-December. Ours was installed in early January.

Here is the list of available ISPs for Openreach fibre broadband:
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadba ... -providers

newlyretired

I have to say that Openeach were unexpectedly efficient in getting fibre in our area. No digging up required, just a few men with large reels of fibre (I assume) by manholes and then BT connected us up quickly afterwards.

MM

An Openreach chap was inspecting the telegraph pole outside Watis Towers a few months ago. I asked him whether we were about to get fibre to the property - he said that he didn't know, he was there to assess the pole for decay.

Since then, a coil of blue rope has appeared at the base of the pole, along with others up and down the road. Google suggests this is used to pull the fibre along the conduit between posts. So, DAK how long it typically takes to get fibre once the rope has appeared?

Also, DAK whether the fibre will be routed to the property overhead, alongside the existing phone cable, or must it be underground?

TIA,

Watis

looks like overhead is possible
but this is a link to a forum
https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Fibre-br ... -p/2110590

Yes
https://www.airband.co.uk/technology/fi ... ises-fttp/

Watis wrote:Also, DAK whether the fibre will be routed to the property overhead, alongside the existing phone cable, or must it be underground?

If the existing phone cable is overhead, then the fibre will almost certainly come in overhead

newlyretired

newlyretired wrote:

Watis wrote:Also, DAK whether the fibre will be routed to the property overhead, alongside the existing phone cable, or must it be underground?

If the existing phone cable is overhead, then the fibre will almost certainly come in overhead

newlyretired

I think that is correct. Some properties in my road have phone lines via overhead cables and some come in underground. The fibre companies always use existing routes. At present my road is being wired for fast broadband. My local fibre company inform me it will take around 9 months from the laying of the fibre in my road to being available in the home. However, the actual timing will depend on where on their contracted network the fibre is being laid. One of the problems the contractors have in my area, and the reason for the delay, is that they have to lay cables along the main road before their contract is finalised and that will take time because of the various permissions required from the Highways and Utility bodies.

In other words each area is different and the time it takes from cable laying in the road to the home varies according to the contract. From the cable entry point into the home new wiring will then be required to the new modem which will also will be required. That is a job normally undertaken separately by your broadband provider.