Diary of the Day ISPreview Finally Got FTTP Broadband Installed
Alas, as the editor of ISPreview.co.uk, I don’t have a magic wand for making full fibre networks appear outside my door. Just like everybody else, I was forced to wait.. and wait. But the day did finally come and from an operator that, like so many other alternative networks these days, didn’t even exist for consumers until a few years ago.
Until now, yours truly has been somewhat hobbled by our local choice of broadband infrastructure. Openreach has traditionally covered this area with their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) network and, some years ago, I counted myself lucky enough to be able to receive a download speed of 58-65Mbps (variable). Prior to that, we had a c.16Mbps ADSL2+ line. How times change.
However, these days I often find myself using a 5G based mobile broadband link via Three UK for big downloads, which easily hits 100Mbps+ most of the time. The catch being that latency is not as dependable as on our fixed line – a key consideration for somebody who does occasionally partake in the odd bout of fast-paced multiplayer gaming – and the local network does seem to be having various issues of late.
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In theory, it might have been possible to have a Virgin Media line, but I need a Static IP address (VM Business doesn’t have the best history here) and IPv6 for the work I do. Not to mention that their post-contract prices were a fair bit more than what we currently pay, which in a cost-of-living crisis is a tougher sell for my better half, even if the result is a faster speed. The limited choice of router, some concerns with latency on their local Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network and the need to dig up the driveway were also discouraging factors.
Elsewhere, Openreach does have this area on their rollout plan for Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology, but all their website is capable of communicating is that this rollout will vaguely occur sometime between “now and Dec-2026“, which didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Not to mention that, until it’s actually built, you can never be 100% certain that your house would even been covered.
An Alternative Solution Arrives.. Slowly
I’ve started to lose track of how many different ISPs I’ve used over the past few decades (hint: it’s probably a lot more than most people) and in various different locations. But one commonality is that they’ve always been based on either Openreach or Virgin Media’s national networks. But in a sign of the times and the rapid rise of alternative networks (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds), this time would different.
You see, sometime ago last year CityFibre’s engineers finally came down our street, using a mix of trenching and pole delivery. Our house has traditionally been served by poles, which are a common sight in this area, so I was more than a little pleased to see the operator erecting a new one on the opposite side of the road from our house (including their own multi-port secondary node at the top).
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Like many other people in this situation, I crossed my fingers and patiently waited for the service to go live. And I waited. Then I waited some more. Winter ended. Spring came and went. I was stung by a Wasp. Summer passed by, and then Autumn, Winter again, Spring again.. but finally, mercifully, Cityfibre dropped an email to say that our street was finally “live“. Hurray!
The only problem was, none of their ISPs agreed. “We’re expecting it to be live in the summer,” said one. “Coming soon,” said another.. and another. A few months later, Cityfibre dropped a similar email, but the end result was unchanged. Finally, our preferred choice of provider informed us that they expected Cityfibre’s network to be live within the next month.
However, it is important to point out that ISPs often blame the network operator for delays like this, but that isn’t always the full story. In this case, we noted that one of Cityfibre’s ISPs had actually gone live a few short months before the others, which is of course not something that your chosen ISP will tell you (i.e. they don’t want to lose you to a rival on the same network).
Whether due to historic exclusivity agreements (e.g. Vodafone) or the ISPs own slow pace in adapting their network to the local infrastructure, it is thus always worth remembering that some ISPs may go live on Cityfibre’s network sooner than others. Consumers often won’t be aware of this, which can result in mixed and conflicting messages. So if you aren’t as fussy about ISP choice as I was, then keep checking them all!
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Installation Day
So after a long wait, the day finally came. Our chosen ISP furnished us with a timeslot between 8am and 1pm for the CityFibre engineers to turn up and deliver us into the optical fibre age. An age I’ve written more than a few column inches about over the years. Suffice to say, the excitement in the house was palpable, at least for me, since my better half is about as interested in the world of telecoms as a pigeon is in nuclear reactor design.
The engineers, all clad in Cityfibre’s bright new branding, arrived just after midday, at which point they proceeded to conduct the installation in stages. The first few stages seemed to occur almost in tandem, with one engineer working to install a weatherproof wall box a few feet up the wall, while another was busy drilling from inside-out through the wall to position a new Optical Network Terminal (ONT – Pictured Top).
Picture of CityFibre’s Wallbox – Post Install
Following that, both engineers focused on running the new optical fibre to a pole (telecoms or telegraph pole, if you prefer) on the opposite side of the road, which involved a very brief disruption to traffic flow before it was raised and clamped overhead to a high point on the house. The pole was a new one and only occupied by Cityfibre’s kit, while our existing copper line came from a different Openreach pole, positioned on our side of the road.
Sadly, I didn’t see the fibre splicing take place myself due to other distractions and some fairly unpleasant weather, but it was clearly very quick – as is fairly normal these days. After that, the focus turned to ensuring the network was powered and could talk with the new ONT.
After about one and a half hours from the start, it was all over and the lights on our ONT lit up green. The engineer then proceeded to test the router, but contrary to what we had been told, they didn’t wait to test that the internet connection was fully working before leaving and instead suggested it might take a bit longer. Sadly, the connection still wasn’t live the next day, yet a quick email to technical support soon resolved that. The result..
Speedtest Delivers 500Mbps+ (Symmetric)
Why didn’t we opt for the full 1Gbps, you may ask (this was the original plan)? We took time to assess our real-world usage and the 300-500Mbps bracket seemed like a good fit, for now. Ultimately, we decided that this speed was the best balance of price and performance, since at present not all of the online services and WiFi devices that we use could actually harness the full 1Gbps.
On the subject of our home phone service, which might as well not even be connected for all the use it gets, the decision was made to retain our existing FTTC line for redundancy (it’s nice having this as an option). But at the same time we’re planning to switch that to a different ISP to save money and will, at roughly the same time, also use the opportunity to move our phone number to a DEDICATED VoIP provider (summary of home VoIP providers).
I should add that our installation was relatively straightforward and simple, partly because that’s how I’d intended it to be for the engineers. But projects that require more work, such as longer cable runs or digging up driveways, will naturally take longer and some may even attract excess construction charges (ECC). So have a think beforehand and discuss with the ISP if you’re unsure.
I don’t intend to touch on the question of ISP choice today (partly due to an ongoing issue – see below – and the desire to be treated like any other user), but we did like the fact that they bundled a fairly unrestricted WiFi 6 router. However, like most included routers, it’s far from being the most advanced or feature-rich of devices. Not that it matters, since it’s fairly easy to use a third-party router on CityFibre’s network.
Overall, we’re very happy, and it’s quite telling that this was all achieved via an alternative network, rather than one of the established incumbents. I now need to do my bit for local awareness by highlighting the new service to our neighbours, even though that might result in a bit more competition for local data capacity.
One Final Caveat
Sometimes, things go wrong. In our case, CityFibre’s engineers did cause some accidental damage and water ingress into the property, albeit nothing that hopefully can’t be repaired with relative ease (I did a temporary patch myself). But as we’re still assessing the extent of this, then it’s a topic I’ll probably come back to write about in the future, once we’ve gone through all the usual motions and seen how the ISP responds to such issues.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Congratulations, is your CityFibre network utilising XGS-PON as it’s a newer build or GPON? Out of a matter of interest, had you wanted the ONT further inside the property what are CityFibre’s charges for a longer internal fibre run? Would be really interested to see what happens with network performance as uptake increases. Would also, at some point be very interested in hearing which ISP you chose and of course reasons behind the choice.
When I had my City Fibre install 2 years ago they advised against a long internal cable run as it can easily get damaged and then it is hard to get it repaired. The preference being using your own Ethernet cabling inside which is a lot strong and you can easily replace it if an issue occurs.
Fairly sure this one is GPON. The build itself was completed a while ago, before the XGS-PON announcement. As for the cable run, what Shaun said is fair, so it’s better to have a long external than internal run around your house if you have no choice.
My preference was to keep the external and internal run as short as possible, which was possible because I’ve already run Cat 6e cables under the floorboards some years ago. I can also hide the ONT very easily.
Yes, that is the Calix 801Gv2 which is for their GPON deployments. Glad you’re one of us now!
Happy days 🙂
Im also researching what the best isp to go with might be with cityfibre so far the 2 most appealing choices based on reviews and hints are giganet and vf. there is one which offered a full year of prime in to the bundle so thats also a tempting offer. When today passes mind updating us on which you went with theres just too many cityfibre providers to choose from.
TalkTalk offers their internet over DHCP. This means you don’t need to put any username and password in. It just works. You can easily use your own router. And if you use PFsense/Opnsense you wont be hit by the PPPOE single thread issue. This means you can use a very low spec router and get full GB/s speeds.
Mark, glad you joined the FTTP club. One small niggle with this article. The CGNAT on three is entirely avoidable by changing the APN to “3Internet” instead of “three.co.uk”. I’m very happily port forwarding to my ssh and wireguard server, also on three 5G.
Fair point there Bingo, I only use it for pulling data and so keep forgetting that.
Congratulations on getting FTTP…
One minor nit pick, you probably weren’t ‘bitten by a wasp” but rather stung by one. Or if you prefer the Viz magazine style you were “stang off a bee”.
True :). In any case, the offender didn’t last long.
Sorry Mark,another minor nit pick,CF call their pole mounted boxes ASN’s,Aerial Secondary Node.May i also extend my welcome to the world of superfast broadband.
Out of interest, what’s the black rectangle hiding? Was the cable entry point really *that* bad? 🙂
Most likely popped a brick as drilling in to out!
That’s more of a data protection thing, nothing to do with Cityfibre.
Ah, I’ll assume you have one of those blue plaques on your wall then 🙂
What happens if it’s a overhead Aerial SN install and it’s at the rear 1st floor? Is it just tough luck?
I presume you’re in a flat, Steven? If so it becomes an mdu install which takes a little longer for the first install to the building. There are buildings Cityfibre can’t do but not very many
No I live in mid terrace, the pole is in the back alley.
Grain connect have had the road up in early December and installs are starting in April but I’ll only have the option of one fttp with them.
We’re on 500MB with Sky which is perfect for our needs
Openreach upgraded my local streets to FTTP in Late December 2021 to Late January 2022 and it was live in March 2022. I had it installed in May, however Cityfibre did the same streets a few months before around October 2021 and they’re still not live. The postcode checker still says “WE’RE STILL BUILDING OUR FULL FIBRE NETWORK IN YOUR AREA”
Same here… Looks like cityfibre is losing a lot of customers with that strategy… Around 30% of all houses in our area already have the new openreach fttp box outside their house
Your comment about redundancy piqued my interest. We finally had Gigaclear FTTP installed on Monday ~2 years after they dug up the road. All was well until Thursday evening when the Internet dropped. To be fair to Gigaclear they texted and e-mailed within minutes to day they were working on it and it was back on by 2am but it wasn’t a great start. FTTC was slow but it was reliable. For now we have kept the old FTTC and I was going to give it a month before I served my notice however I’m now wondering about hanging onto it and implementing an automatic failover. I’d be interested in seeing a follow up article about how you’re doing this as so far my research has only extended as far as the fact that I can do it with one of the more expensive Draytek routers. BTW I do hope your wife doesn’t read your articles, mine would take issue at being compared to a pigeon! 😉
I have had Fibre (FFTP) for over a year and no fibre outage. The only problem was last January’s power cut for 12 hours, but that is another story.
When I had a leased line put in I had the choice of a free EoFTTC line which I took. Not used it in the year and a 9 months I’ve had the line – but always good to have.
2 providers on different backhauls is the ultimate setup if you ask me – redundancy all the way (unless a car takes out the cab – which will be a thing of the past when FTTP is everywhere)
Congrats Mark on your recent install. My friend had a far worse experience trying to get Vodafone via Cityfibre. He was told that if he wanted his fibre entering the rear of the property that his speed could impact due to the extra distance of about 50 yeards. Poor excuse for a lazy contractor.
Thank goodness I live in Wallasey on the Wirral, somehow they snuck Wallasey on the original pilot rollout so we had FTTP/PON back in 2019/2020, at the time I wondered why, my guess? Wallasey is an old town/collection of towns mostly served via aerial (that is telegraph poles) hardly any new builds with underground ducting and the like. Openreach must have wanted to trial FTTP at scale via aerial route…
Congratulations, I had mine installed yesterday, an upgrade from sogea with BTs digital voice service, as we still use a phone number.
Was your install Broadband only or do you have a voice service/landline number to go with it?
The article answers that Jeff, since we’re swapping the FTTC/copper phone to a separate IP phone provider.
I hope that this lives up to your expectations Mark.
In my position, I am wondering when “promises” made by BT become false advertising ? For three years, when I log into their website, I have been promised a free upgrade to Full Fibre “when it becomes available” in my area. It has not become available in those three years and doesn’t seem to be in the pipeline. Hence, I appear to be paying for a promise that BT have little intention of fulfilling.
Have any readers challenged BT about this and what was the outcome please ?
If they’ve never told you a date that it will become available by then I can’t see what agreement they are meant to have broken.
It’s an implied agreement. I just feel that it would be fairer if they hadn’t mentioned it at all. Legally they haven’t done anything wrong but I feel that morally it’s sharp practice. Fair enough if its’s a year or two down the road but three years and still not even on the horizon is a bit much.
You’re absolutely right, that’s misleading. Like, three years is longer than the minimum contract length.
Like any contractual dispute, you first need to go through an internal complaints process, before you can go to an Ombudsman.
I’m afraid you don’t have a leg to stand on, so please don’t waste your time or Ofcom’s by complaining.
“When it becomes available” is perfectly clear, and neither states nor implies any timescale.
You’re not “paying for a promise”. The promise is only that *at the time* fibre becomes available at your property, if you are still within your BT FTTC contract and wish to upgrade to BT FTTP, you will be permitted to do so immediately without having to buy yourself out. This is a potential benefit to you and doesn’t cost you anything – although of course there is no benefit to be had until such time as FTTP does become available.
You might have preferred the message to say “If and when it becomes available”. But that would imply that it might *never* occur, which is almost certainly not the case, given sufficient time (maybe decades for some properties).
If you’re unhappy with BT about this, then at the end of your current contract, you can always move to a different FTTC provider. Some may give you the same benefit of being able to upgrade to FTTP mid-contract – and some may not. Your choice.
Congratulations Mark. As someone who has been through a similar journey, your website has been one of the few places to find any sort of data about what is happening where.
Can I suggest you avail yourself of the 50£ Amazon voucher scheme that Cityfibre do and please look into Giganet, who offer 30 day monthly contracts with no price rises (you can leave with 30 days notice even on 12 month contracts). They also do a 3 month free deal which allows you to choose *ANY* speed package that you can change during those 3 months.*wink* 900Mbps.
Enjoy and welcome to a latency free world.
“Enjoy and welcome to a latency free world.”
Even I get 11ms and I am on a private circuit
Congrats, just don’t waste your AAISP monthly allowance on speedtests 😉
Alas, they hadn’t even announced their CityFibre plans at the time we placed our original order.
Hmm. Might’ve been safer to describe your partner’s interest in optical networking as comparable to that of a nuclear scientist in pigeons.
One well-known nuclear power station in Cumbria – Windscale (latterly Sellafield) – actually had a staff pigeon racing club some forty-odd years ago. It was run under the auspices of the Civil Service Sports Council (CSSC).
Go Gb or Go Home
I had mine installed on Friday. Very similar install to yours. Two YTS lads from Cityfibre turned up to install it and took about an hour.
Interestingly when I asked them about splicing , they don’t do it anymore. They use pre terminated fibre cables of differing lengths and just wind up the excess inside that brown box on your wall. It’s a very thin fibre, barely hairs width. Only the external part has Kevlar Armour sheath.
They’re not trained to splice, just drill, plug and power up. Just like you, they didn’t hang around for a test. Four green lights on the ONT and they were on their toes. Not the neatest of installs, and a chunk of brink now missing on the outside of my house.
However after setting everything up myself, now Getting a solid 950 symmetrical and anywhere between 450 -700 on WiFi, probably dictated by local channel congestion.
how could they get wire through the hole in the wall without splicing?
Exactly as he said – they use pre-made length of cables and tie the excess up in a loop either at the point it reaches your house and/or in the external box. This is how Toob did my install.
WEll the wall hole would have to be very wide to accommodate a plug on the end
1Gbps and this is the best I have sene – done today
https://ibb.co/fMQwV7F
@clive I Used an 8mm drill bit to make the hole as I planned a route for them to use – this was wide enough for their pre-terminated fibre lead (the connectors are roughly 6mm wide from what I measured)
Don’t forget, the fibre end that connects to the ONT is bigger than what connects in the external wall box, so the cable can be fed from inside the house to outside with only the smaller end needing to pass through.
@haha you’ll never achieve full speeds (900mb) on WiFi. Run that speed test on a LAN connection and you’ll get a good result.
As I understand it, they blow a fibre down the thin purple conduit that runs from the cabinet to your house (via the Toby on the street) – don’t they have to terminate this in the external box on your house?
Interesting that you keep FTTC as a backup connection. I am getting Community Fibre installed in 2 weeks and I am kaaping VM as backup me and my wife both do contract jobs and work from home so we can’t really afford to have no connection to the internet. I imaged this was very rare but I recently spoke to my neighbour and he also has two internet connections. I think internet connectiviy is becoming very critical for lots of people.
CityFibre’s engineers did cause some accidental damage and water ingress into the property
How? This is another thing does worry me, this is not my house, it is rented, while I am free to a certain extent to have things done, any damages I have to pay for, the cheap skate housing association won’t even fix a skirting board. I did have a smart thermostat installed which they allowed, and I do have two holes in the wall which does need to be filled, one for the Sky dish, got rid of sky after 12 months, the dish stayed up for years until I took it down last year, the other for the wireless broadband service I had, and they did some damage on the wall outside that they did fix.
I hope that the through the wall holes drop slightly from inside to outside, to discourage water running down the wall and through the hole to inside.
(Belt and braces with suitable sealant).
@MilesT, even I know that, when I was using CB radio years ago I made sure there was a loop in the co-ax so water would not run down it, but the cables in the photos looks ok, but you can’t see the over head cable.
He has still not replied, how on earth can he have water damage since the service have nothing to do with water?
The quality of their cleating is awful! Can tell its a rush rush installation especially given they left with nothing working .
Nice. Out of interest, why did they need to install a new pole and couldn’t just use the existing one?
Perhaps the exiting pole had too much retained equipment on it to stay inside its rating.
A lot of telephone poles either have the top envelope full from existing equipment.
Sometimes a new pole is required to avoid digging up a large are of a street and run the new cable overhead instead, this avoids road closures and reduces issues to the general public.
I was fortunate enough to have a double speed for free – I am only paying a few quid over what BT want for 200/200 and I get the full 1Gbps. 500mbps/500mbps is a good fit too
“Ultimately, we decided that this speed was the best balance of price and performance, since at present not all of the online services and WiFi devices that we use could actually harness the full 1Gbps”
Good call. I have seen 700mbps on new kit and about 600 up – so you are right
Glad to see people using our network and in general having a positive experience.
I hope you resolve the water ingress issue, Kelly sometimes want to be onto the next installation a little to quickly.
I take pride in my job and making sure that everyone has access to our FTTP.
Kelly install CityFibre?
That’s me out when the time comes – Kelly are rubbish!
@haha, yes i have not heard good things about Kelly to be honest
Good news, we’re getting FTTP from Lothain broadband this coming Saturday dug a little track for them running the fibre cable to the house to make life easier for the guys. More looking forward in cutting the drop wire from the house from Openreach unsightly things dangling over our garden
I don’t think you should be cutting anything, it doesn’t belong to you.
My property do what I want
The Openreach drop cable isn’t… but you know best 🙂
Sadly Decan it may be your property, but you have stuff in there that don’t belong to you, like your energy meters, Water meter if you have one, the phone lines and master socket. Damage them and Openreach could take you to court.
If I went onto FTTP I would want to get rid of all phone sockets and also the awful connection box in the hall which have to be 40 years old or older. The amount of times it has been knocked when moving stuff into the house, the last time was when I had a sofa delivered.
The first thing I did when FTTP was installed was to remove the master socket and any internal wiring. If I could reach the drop cable to chop it I would – it’s pretty unsightly having 2 overhead cables to the house.
I can’t see Openreach caring at all about what you do when you’re not even using their equipment
Welcome to the exclusive club, Mark. Hope you enjoy your ultrafast connectivity. Keep us updated on your experience, whether it’s the service or mist important, customer care. Calix is a great vendor. You should enjoy using their CPE.
The install looks much tidier than what Openreach subbie did for my install last month and the external brown box is more camouflaged that the grey Openreach one that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Unfortunately there was a little over 3 weeks between the service being installed and it actually going live due to some additional works that needed to be done elsewhere due to low light levels but since it ‘woke up’ it’s been solid, also chose 500Mb/s as it was the same price I was previously paying for 50Mb/s FTTC, the 900Mb/s was an extra tenner more so not really worth it. Luckily I didn’t cancel the FTTC until the FTTP actually went live otherwise I’d have been without service, the automatic compensation for the delay however will cover that additional cost and more.
Interestingly, BT still are unable to offer me with FTTP despite TalkTalk, Sky, etc. being able to offer it (and clearly it is available as I have it), none of the BT support team were able to advise why this is and suggested that I wait for a few months…
That’s an interesting use of “engineer” to describe the people who installed your connection.
What’s your point?
@B1n
That it’s an interesting use of “engineer” to describe the people who installed the connection.
Was it not clear the first time?
Well that is their job title, I guess I needed to be clearer for you in asking what you found interesting in Marks use of their occupation?
@B1n
Because it’s not an engineering position.
Glad I’m not the only one who’s needed to wait and wait and wait for an altnet to finish installing! I’ve had trooli (since Jan last year) and Giganet (since April last year) installing in the area. Every time I ask for a completion date its been extended by 3 months from the date I ask (was supposed to be October). Got to be honest I shouldn’t complain as I know others aren’t even on the radar yet but I’m now on month 30 of a 24 month contract for FTTC – I could have saved a lot of money by switching to a new contract at this rate…
Oh and no sign of Openreach even though they’ve got all the other villages and towns in the area on the map – just not my town (even though its the second largest in the area!)
Dissapointing to see Mark went for 500mb and not 1gb. For a man that lives off broadband, ISPs, news, etc you should have gone for 1gb to support your Altnet. This comment “not all of the online services and WiFi devices that we use could actually harness the full 1Gbps” is also not really relevant. Most devices will not be able to use 1Gbps even if they could as most web services do not give you that kind of speed. You will need to download from multiple sites or use things like BitTorrent to use all that bandwidth in a single machine. Having said that 500mb can be saturated by a single device. That’s where 1gb comes in handy, by having extra bandwidth no single device can usually max out you assure there will be always be bandwidth available to all other devices.
I dunno, they aren’t a charity and 500Mb is plenty for most. I have 900/900 but only because my provider (Toob) has no other tier. If they offered 500Mb for cheaper (or even something like 300Mb) I’d likely go for it.
Gigabit broadband is great but as you say I rarely saturate it and when I do, it’ll be for 5 minutes or so with a game update. Even saturating it doesn’t seem to affect others in the house who are online at the time – I’ve not had any complaints since being installed unlike my 80/20 FTTC line where saturating that during working hours would result in my better half complaining about jittery Zoom calls etc.
Having used gigabit myself I’ve found I seldom going over 500Mbps, unless you have multiple users or sites start actively allowing downloads at that speed (I have not seen YouTube 4K 2x speed use more than 400Mbps), it’s just not worth it especially in today’s financial environment.
How often do two devices need 500Mbps of bandwidth simultaneously? Evidently Mark already understands his usage requirements and went with the correct package for him.
I’ve got Gigabit but that was largely just because I could, and to see what it’s like. It certainly wasn’t to “support” my ISP.
Congratulations!
I just checked Openreach and my address is now live and ready to order, approx 1 month late from the promised build time in R100 programme which is pretty good going!
It has been a long time coming but it’s good to finally see results, only other service in this area has maxed out at 1mbps ADSL until now.
Really frustrated to find that half my neighbourhood is already live on Cityfibre. Just a few streets down they can get Cityfibre installations upto 1Gbps. Yet on the last few streets (mine included), we’re still not live despite the fibre being laid in my street back in October.
Sadly this happens due to the way in which the network is being built.
Im in an MDU and all my neighbours can get Cityfibre FTTP and a few have had installs in the last few weeks, i work for them and still can’t get it but i fully understand why, the building owner won’t sign a wayleave.
luckily im moving to a new house with FTTP very soon through OFNL.
Nice one Mark, congrats on the new fibre line. let me tell you my story.
I went with the ISP (ZEN) and bought the 1Gbps or as they call it 900Mbps ultrafast broadband which is 900 down – 100 Up. I have a Nokia ONT in my flat installed and they shipped me a “Fritz box 7530” router manufactured by AVM. till this day for some mysterious reason I cant get anything past 600Mbps wired, and 300-something over the Wi-Fi.
testing speeds directly from the ONT with a PPPoE connection i couldn’t get anything above 600Mbps mark. does that mean it’s capped or something?
Zen are known to have had issues with capacity in some areas, so that would be my bet, although issues with the computer / LAN port you’re testing with are still a possibility. But you don’t say if this was an Openreach or Cityfibre based FTTP install under Zen?
Heard from some people that it’s their router… Do some googling – might be some setting that slows it down
Interesting pics. The Airband page at https://www.airband.co.uk/technology/fibre-to-the-premises-fttp/ shows much less external equipment, and the installer cuts the bare end of the drop cable once fed through the outside wall. Is that a fundamental difference in kit, or just a different installation practice?
I went for the 900mbps service with Vodafone, was hard to say no at £23pm. With my install they attached the anchor point for the cable from the telegraph pole to the wood cladding on my roof line which I wasn’t keen on (from a maintenance point of view) so I dropped them a message a week or two later on their website. The next morning the local install manager called me up to discuss, askeed me what was the issue was, I explained and 2 hours later someone was at my house and moved the cable from the wood cladding to into the brick, great service in my view.
I’ve been pleased with the service, I have tried my own 802.11ax router (Xiaomi AX6S/AX3200 and a Belkin RT3200 running OpenWRT) but I don’t think it’s quite optimised enough yet and ran a bit slower than the old AC router from Vodafone sadly (which isn’t great itself).
I had a similar good experience (the second time) with my CityFibre installation. I was so interested in discussing the technology with the engineer doing the work inside the house that I didn’t really pay attention to what was going on outside. When they had finished and it all worked fine I realised they had put the brown box on the outside wall in the shared entry between myself and my neighbour and as it was a narrow passageway it could be damaged when things are brought through there. I also wasn’t happy they had put the cable low down where it could be damaged.
I was going to drop them a message but the day after the installation a local manager came around anyway and asked me how it all went. He said they should have told me where the box was going before they fitted it, and that there was no reason the cable had to be so low. He asked me how I wanted it changed and said that was fine and within a couple of weeks they came back and fixed it.
If you can get things changed after a job is done and quickly then I consider that good customer service.
I am on the voda 900 service, and quite often find it wowfully slow, im currently getting 150 down and 450 up, happens quite often but not usually this bad
Info for everyone really, i bought these two items of amazon, and i can now run the ONT off my pppoe switch which is a bit tidier
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001PS4NWW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005KCGM96/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Congrats. Openreach still have a vague ‘sometime before 2026’ date for our area. And despite virgin being available in all the surrounding roads, they seem unable or unwilling to throw a cable our way and hook us up (despite ALL the nearby surrounding roads having it :/)
I can only hope openreach hurry up, as no sign of altnets either!