Switching to full fibre

35har1old

iniltous said:

Chances are your existing cable , not least because it first appears inside the property ( rather than on the outside wall ) will be a buried armoured cable ( no duct ) .
If this is the case , OR would excavate from the ‘jointbox’ that houses the fibre CBT to your home , or intercept an existing duct or new duct that runs between boxes and ‘spur’ off it the curtilage of your home , then dig a cable to your house wall.
If Alt Net wants to use the power company poles, that’s upto them , but the DNO ( distribution network operator ) isn’t like Openreach who have to make access to their poles available to the competition, the DNO can say No if they want. 

I don't think if you are referring to electric poles that any supplier would permit the use of their poles being used for fiber cables.

littleboo

Why not? And historically, copper phones lines have co-existed on power utility poles in some areas for many years. 

iniltous

The point if my post was that Alt Nets can use Openreach poles , Openreach cannot refuse, Alt Nets can ask DNO’s , but have no right to use them , and the DNO has no obligation to allow access, when I said if an Alt Net wants to use power company poles that’s up to them , that’s about asking to use them….if an area has Openreach assets on DNO poles, that doesn’t also give Alt Nets automatic access….allowing Alt Nets onto power poles ( as with Openreach ) is up to the DNO

rubble2

I am thinking of going full fibre when my existing contract ends in May (Plusnet).

As things stand the copper cable emerges underground just by the front door (House built about 20 years ago), the duct that supplies the cable has been 'corded' so presumably the installation process would be pretty straightforward?

Anyway, a I say the copper line emerges from  the duct via an OP BT cover 101A by the front door and is then run along the wall under the living room window and is fed into the far corner of the living room via a small hole drilled into the outer wall. I am a bit concerned that having read above that optical cable is restricted in the radius it can be bent to if it will prevent the new optical cable following the route into the house that the current copper cable takes (which would be my preferred option).

Any opinions on the above please?

matelodave

As far as I can see from the BT installation guide the minimum bending radius would be around the edge of a £2 coin so its a lot tighter than it used to be. 

Generally it was around ten times the diameter of the cable unless it was being pulled around a pulley or sheave when the radius was about 20 times.

Mine is around ten times, but it was installed five years ago as an overhead hybrid copper/fibre cable so probably a lot more protected than the stuff they are using nowaday, especially for underground or internal wiring but its still pretty neat and a lot neater than SKY cabling.

I cant think that there would be any problems running the optical cable along the same route as the existing copper, even that would have had a minimum bending radius.

My ONT is located on the inside wall directly over the cable entry point so we dont have any internal optical wiring. I've run Cat6 ethernet cable from the ONT, up the outside wall, across the loft and down behind the kitchen cabinets to the router which is in the hall (we have a bungalow so its was pretty easy to do.) 

I suspect that had I done a bit more preparation (like tacking trunking to the rafters in the loft I could have had the optic cable run through the loft and then located the NTU in the hall as well.

However I'm more than happy with the way its installed and working but I wasn't sure what they were going to do as we were the first house in the street to get it, so I went for the easy option.

[Deleted User]

Best decision I ever made. I have had full fibre for a year and I would never go back. Consistent speeds, the work to install it was minimal and it is very reliable.