There’s fibre outside - how do I get FTTP?

[somouk]

Grayedout said:

Wish I could find the right person at OpenReach to speak to!

Watched them lay fibre on the far side of my road last year and if I enter the details of the house across the road it says fibre available. Enter my details and it says fibre not available in the area !!!!!!

Try EE, the same happened to my boss, EE would install it though.

[scjgreen]

somouk said:

Try EE, the same happened to my boss, EE would install it though.

EE don't install anything. They use Openreach's Network so would just farm any work out to them

[somouk]

scjgreen said:

EE don't install anything. They use Openreach's Network so would just farm any work out to them

I'm aware of this, EE and BT are the same company really... but BT wouldn't acknowledge the existence of fibre at his house and EE would. They just put an order through and the openreach engineers turned up and installed it.

[vladcjelli]

As I type this, there are a pair of Full Fibre Heroes vans doing something on our street.

Quick search reveals I can get 900mbps via one of their partners, one from this list -

BeFibre
Link Broadband
Squirrel
Gigabit Networks
iDnet
Octaplus

I’ve never heard of any of them and don’t want to end up with a load of rubbish.

BeFibre website is tempting at £30 pm for a two year contract at 900mbps.

Anything I should be wary of?

[somouk]

vladcjelli said:

As I type this, there are a pair of Full Fibre Heroes vans doing something on our street.

Quick search reveals I can get 900mbps via one of their partners, one from this list -

BeFibre
Link Broadband
Squirrel
Gigabit Networks
iDnet
Octaplus

I’ve never heard of any of them and don’t want to end up with a load of rubbish.

BeFibre website is tempting at £30 pm for a two year contract at 900mbps.

Anything I should be wary of?

They are installing fibre by me too apparently. They are in very early stages and doing surveys, I spoke to one of their team the other day and they are basically the hardware installers and operators and then they have a bunch of ISPs that sell access to that chunk of the network. A bit like Openworld are to TalkTalk etc.

Never heard of them before I saw them the other day so will be interesting to see what the prices are like when they get it all installed and configured.

[rednotdead]

vladcjelli said:

iDnet

Anything I should be wary of?

i've been with iDNet for a number of years with their SoGEA 76MBit/s service. No complaints at all, not the cheapest but it's been a rock solid service.

[vladcjelli]

Two nice guys in work boots and hi vis turned up today. A pre pull survey.

Not looking good. Can’t pull the cables through as our existing line is just buried.

Would need to dig a trench about a foot and a half wide across our front garden or drive to fit the ducting.

May end up being too expensive for the supplier or too disruptive for the wife.

Looks like we’ll have to stick with the dribble of bandwidth we have now for a while longer.

[ladderino]

I had FTTP installed last year. I jumped at getting FTTP due to existing FTTC being pretty slow - 20 Mbps. However, we were with Zen before and never had a single issue with our connection other than it being on the slow side.

Don't want to name and shame, but it's an ISP that uses F&W Networks as the infrastructure.

My advice would be to think carefully if going with a non-Openreach network, as we've had a lot of issues since it's been installed (some due to network, some due to ISP):
- Re-purposed Non-UK IP addresses assigned, preventing any access to UK streaming services over Christmas
- Frequent speed drop outs and frequent losses of connection
- Prolonged outages due to lack of redundancy in network (once lost internet access for 8 hrs when they had a full network outage for an entire day)

After the full day outage I tried to abort my contract but was unable to so stuck with this for another year (2 year contract).

[Actual]

camel_landy said:

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADS...

Captain_Morgan said:

https://bidb.uk/

These are great links with so much more informative than the usual consumer sales pages with some real technical data shown on the BT Checker.

We are moving and I already know that Gigaclear FTTP is available but if I only used the BT Checker I wouldn't know. The Better Internet Dashboard correctly identifies Gigaclear FTTP and also has a useful mapping mouse hover for mobile reception.

[somouk]

ladderino said:

I had FTTP installed last year. I jumped at getting FTTP due to existing FTTC being pretty slow - 20 Mbps. However, we were with Zen before and never had a single issue with our connection other than it being on the slow side.

Don't want to name and shame, but it's an ISP that uses F&W Networks as the infrastructure.

My advice would be to think carefully if going with a non-Openreach network, as we've had a lot of issues since it's been installed (some due to network, some due to ISP):
- Re-purposed Non-UK IP addresses assigned, preventing any access to UK streaming services over Christmas
- Frequent speed drop outs and frequent losses of connection
- Prolonged outages due to lack of redundancy in network (once lost internet access for 8 hrs when they had a full network outage for an entire day)

After the full day outage I tried to abort my contract but was unable to so stuck with this for another year (2 year contract).

I've had similar with Airband, although no the IP address issue. Their network went down for 2-3 days once, communication was poor, no apologies or anything back from them.

As soon as Openreach appear in the town I'll be straight on them, for now I have a 4G backup line that I fail over too when Airband are down.

[Grumps.]

vladcjelli said:

Two nice guys in work boots and hi vis turned up today. A pre pull survey.

Not looking good. Can’t pull the cables through as our existing line is just buried.

Would need to dig a trench about a foot and a half wide across our front garden or drive to fit the ducting.

May end up being too expensive for the supplier or too disruptive for the wife.

Looks like we’ll have to stick with the dribble of bandwidth we have now for a while longer.

Find out where your existing line comes in and install the duct yourself, or get someone to do it.

That’s what we did.

[vladcjelli]

Grumps. said:

vladcjelli said:

Two nice guys in work boots and hi vis turned up today. A pre pull survey.

Not looking good. Can’t pull the cables through as our existing line is just buried.

Would need to dig a trench about a foot and a half wide across our front garden or drive to fit the ducting.

May end up being too expensive for the supplier or too disruptive for the wife.

Looks like we’ll have to stick with the dribble of bandwidth we have now for a while longer.

Find out where your existing line comes in and install the duct yourself, or get someone to do it.

That’s what we did.

Looks as though existing wiring is installed in between pairs of houses on our street.

Wires actually come up on neighbours property so non starter there I’m afraid.

Living on the side of a hill is apparently a challenge as the drop and various bits of wall/terracing make it a bigger job than the survey guys reckon will be worth it.

[Riley Blue]

Thanks to this thread we've discovered we can now get FTTP from BT though they haven't been in touch to tell us.

Virgin installed their fibre a couple of years ago but we thought we'd let neighbours 'suck it and see' before we switched and opinions have been mixed so we stayed put.

There's two of us (one WFH) with three phones, three laptops, one desktop, two tablets and two smart TVs. Currently paying BT £36.67 a month for 72 Mbps Fibre 1 so that can be bettered. Cabinet is across the road about 150-200 feet away.

Now we have a choice but is it better the devil you know?

[Captain_Morgan]

Riley Blue said:

Thanks to this thread we've discovered we can now get FTTP from BT though they haven't been in touch to tell us.

Virgin installed their fibre a couple of years ago but we thought we'd let neighbours 'suck it and see' before we switched and opinions have been mixed so we stayed put.

There's two of us (one WFH) with three phones, three laptops, one desktop, two tablets and two smart TVs. Currently paying BT £36.67 a month for 72 Mbps Fibre 1 so that can be bettered. Cabinet is across the road about 150-200 feet away.

Now we have a choice but is it better the devil you know?

Kinda depends on who the isp’s you can chose from are.

[IJWS15]

For those looking you don’t just need fibre near you. You need fibre installed near you for the purpose of distributing “broadband” so it is connected to the right equipment in the exchange. Then you need a cabinet near you with the ftth distribution equipment in it.

Our area was done 18 months ago as I spoke to the Openreach contractor doing the work, BT connected us three months ago. Our feed was ducted (22 year old house) so it took them two hours.

BT’s biggest issue with broadband has been the size of the feed into the exchange, 30 years ago an exchange feeding 20k homes would need a 100k feed (20,000 voice lines at 5k/sec). Now think about how big that feed needed to be 15 years ago when we wanted 500k/s and how big it needs to be now. BT can only roll it out as quickly as they can support it and the link to your wall is a small part of the solution.

The equipment has always been more capable than the network, we were selling equipment to BT 20 years ago that would support many multiples of the performance BT were offering to their customers as a trial with a certain video on demand provider in north London demonstrated.

[Riley Blue]

Captain_Morgan said:

Riley Blue said:

Thanks to this thread we've discovered we can now get FTTP from BT though they haven't been in touch to tell us.

Virgin installed their fibre a couple of years ago but we thought we'd let neighbours 'suck it and see' before we switched and opinions have been mixed so we stayed put.

There's two of us (one WFH) with three phones, three laptops, one desktop, two tablets and two smart TVs. Currently paying BT £36.67 a month for 72 Mbps Fibre 1 so that can be bettered. Cabinet is across the road about 150-200 feet away.

Now we have a choice but is it better the devil you know?

Kinda depends on who the isp’s you can chose from are.

True but I don't want to spent time on ISP comparison sites; I was hoping for opinions based on user experiences.

[thebraketester]

Miserablegit said:

Many thanks all-
No FTTP until 2025- there’s fibre outside but no chance of connecting to it.

I’m paying £70/month for a 50Mb connection which is rarely 50Mb and a phone line I rarely use.
I called Bt today as speeds had dropped again- they confirmed no fibre connection is available yet and have indicated I can get a cheaper package at about £50/month so the call was worth it.

You should be paying about 35 for that speed of connection with BT

[Captain_Morgan]

Riley Blue said:

Captain_Morgan said:

Riley Blue said:

Thanks to this thread we've discovered we can now get FTTP from BT though they haven't been in touch to tell us.

Virgin installed their fibre a couple of years ago but we thought we'd let neighbours 'suck it and see' before we switched and opinions have been mixed so we stayed put.

There's two of us (one WFH) with three phones, three laptops, one desktop, two tablets and two smart TVs. Currently paying BT £36.67 a month for 72 Mbps Fibre 1 so that can be bettered. Cabinet is across the road about 150-200 feet away.

Now we have a choice but is it better the devil you know?

Kinda depends on who the isp’s you can chose from are.

True but I don't want to spent time on ISP comparison sites; I was hoping for opinions based on user experiences.

Understandable, unfortunately I didn’t ask you to, I pointed out that it depends on what choice you have available to you, not all isp’s are available in all locations without knowing what your options are it’s difficult to do more than I use XYZ isp & there brilliant/crap.

Also you haven’t given any indication of what’s important in selecting a new isp, speed, stability, technical support, cost, U.K. call centres, etc.

[BigMon]

We have fibre on the path outside my property but my issue is that the fibre installs I have seen have been shoddy in the extreme (and not just in South Devon where I live). Cables exposed to the socket in the ground, exposed running up walls, etc, etc. It would be the work of an instant for a scrote to damage\pull them out.

An additional issue is that most of our front is flags or concrete and I don't particularly want a big channel chiselling across it then clumsily filled in.

I would be prepared to pay for a decent installation done so the fibre is securely and reasonably non-invasively installed but no-one seems to offer this service in a domestic setting.

[Sheepshanks]

BigMon said:

We have fibre on the path outside my property but my issue is that the fibre installs I have seen have been shoddy in the extreme (and not just in South Devon where I live). Cables exposed to the socket in the ground, exposed running up walls, etc, etc. It would be the work of an instant for a scrote to damage\pull them out.

An additional issue is that most of our front is flags or concrete and I don't particularly want a big channel chiselling across it then clumsily filled in.

I would be prepared to pay for a decent installation done so the fibre is securely and reasonably non-invasively installed but no-one seems to offer this service in a domestic setting.

Ours is overhead and having to bring the fibre to the ground level connection point then back up (socket is on first floor front landing) seems completely ridiculous. The Openreach girl who installed it drilled from inside and smashed half the face off the brick where the drill emerged. She didn’t give a toss. Luckily she was so brutal that it was three chunky pieces and I stuck them back but it’s far from ideal.

Annoyed with myself for not better understanding what was going to happen - could have had it done at the side of the house and the internal cable brought across the loft.