CityFibre install: Can fibre be routed via existing Openreach duct to avoid surface cabling?

kg87

Agree on all those points @iniltous and had the same concerns. Everything I’ve seen from Trustpilot and friends who have Toob have been positive. There are even cheaper deals with 4th Utility / Rise Fibre which are around £17.50 a month but the experiences I’ve read and heard about have been really bad. So you do get what you pay for but this feels like it is very good value with Toob. And to be honest at that cheap a rate if the worst is to happen then I have an open OR connection that I can surely just utilise at the same time if push really came to shove (which I wouldn’t expect it to).

daveyjp

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

kg87

daveyjp said:

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

Sounds like a great deal on the 1.2. Which ISP is that through?

brewerdave

kg87 said:

daveyjp said:

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

Sounds like a great deal on the 1.2. Which ISP is that through?

Fascinated to know WHY any home user would want or need a 1.2Gb connection ? 

prowla

dnpark38 said:

That's same speed up and down and I've never seen that offered or required, so learnt something today.

Is this feature not offered by Providers who use OR network  but Providers who use your Alt. Network do?

I'm with Sky normal domestic BB on OR network, if today I was new to BB and signed up for Sky BB Sky would say which of the two available networks they were going to use and not allow me to choose as they would go for cheapest to them.

Can you educate me a bit more please? 

My CityFibre service has the same up & down speeds (in fact, it typically gives slightly faster on uploads).

iniltous said:

The website shows 900mb at £25 , but that is still an impressively cheap price , personally I’d always be a little suspicious of a really cheap price compared to others offering on the face of it , the same service , although the XGPON equipment from CF is the same regardless of the ISP connecting you to it  , but the ‘backhaul’ etc is a place where money can be saved  by ISP’s , the policy may be to under provide this , in part to enable the ISP to offer such a cheap price , the over utilisation only noticeable at busy periods , but hopefully that won’t be the case, and their service will be comparable with other more recognisable brands 

It's Mb (Megabit) not mb (millibit).

iniltous

prowla said:

dnpark38 said:

That's same speed up and down and I've never seen that offered or required, so learnt something today.

Is this feature not offered by Providers who use OR network  but Providers who use your Alt. Network do?

I'm with Sky normal domestic BB on OR network, if today I was new to BB and signed up for Sky BB Sky would say which of the two available networks they were going to use and not allow me to choose as they would go for cheapest to them.

Can you educate me a bit more please? 

My CityFibre service has the same up & down speeds (in fact, it typically gives slightly faster on uploads).

iniltous said:

The website shows 900mb at £25 , but that is still an impressively cheap price , personally I’d always be a little suspicious of a really cheap price compared to others offering on the face of it , the same service , although the XGPON equipment from CF is the same regardless of the ISP connecting you to it  , but the ‘backhaul’ etc is a place where money can be saved  by ISP’s , the policy may be to under provide this , in part to enable the ISP to offer such a cheap price , the over utilisation only noticeable at busy periods , but hopefully that won’t be the case, and their service will be comparable with other more recognisable brands 

It's Mb (Megabit) not mb (millibit).

I’m usually the pedant pointing out the difference between Mb and mb , so mea culpa

prowla

iniltous said:

prowla said:

dnpark38 said:

That's same speed up and down and I've never seen that offered or required, so learnt something today.

Is this feature not offered by Providers who use OR network  but Providers who use your Alt. Network do?

I'm with Sky normal domestic BB on OR network, if today I was new to BB and signed up for Sky BB Sky would say which of the two available networks they were going to use and not allow me to choose as they would go for cheapest to them.

Can you educate me a bit more please? 

My CityFibre service has the same up & down speeds (in fact, it typically gives slightly faster on uploads).

iniltous said:

The website shows 900mb at £25 , but that is still an impressively cheap price , personally I’d always be a little suspicious of a really cheap price compared to others offering on the face of it , the same service , although the XGPON equipment from CF is the same regardless of the ISP connecting you to it  , but the ‘backhaul’ etc is a place where money can be saved  by ISP’s , the policy may be to under provide this , in part to enable the ISP to offer such a cheap price , the over utilisation only noticeable at busy periods , but hopefully that won’t be the case, and their service will be comparable with other more recognisable brands 

It's Mb (Megabit) not mb (millibit).

I’m usually the pedant pointing out the difference between Mb and mb , so mea culpa

Cheers - that got a LOL from me! :-)

kg87

brewerdave said:

kg87 said:

daveyjp said:

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

Sounds like a great deal on the 1.2. Which ISP is that through?

Fascinated to know WHY any home user would want or need a 1.2Gb connection ? 

“Need” is a bit subjective. A 1.2Gb connection isn’t just about max speed for one device, it can be about headroom. Multiple people working from home, cloud backups, streaming, smart devices, gaming updates, and large downloads can all happen at once. Higher bandwidth means none of that competes or degrades the experience.

Also, if the price difference is small, it’s perfectly reasonable to choose the faster tier for consistency and future-proofing rather than raw necessity.

prowla

kg87 said:

brewerdave said:

kg87 said:

daveyjp said:

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

Sounds like a great deal on the 1.2. Which ISP is that through?

Fascinated to know WHY any home user would want or need a 1.2Gb connection ? 

“Need” is a bit subjective. A 1.2Gb connection isn’t just about max speed for one device, it can be about headroom. Multiple people working from home, cloud backups, streaming, smart devices, gaming updates, and large downloads can all happen at once. Higher bandwidth means none of that competes or degrades the experience.

Also, if the price difference is small, it’s perfectly reasonable to choose the faster tier for consistency and future-proofing rather than raw necessity.

That's my logic; I have the 2Gbps connection, so sharing bandwidth across multiple devices isn't an issue.

For my work I use a Mac which reports something like 1.5Gb over WiFi.

Some of the tools I use are quite chatty and I can run things in parallel without noticeable impact and even whilst on a video call.

Other colleagues with lower speed connections find themselves having to do workarounds to be able to perform tasks I take for granted.

On the flipside, I do a lot of my activities via a secure VPN; it appears to have a limit of around 200Mbps, so the extra headroom there is of little value, other than giving confidence that the speed of my connection to the ISP is not a bottleneck.

Rob5342

brewerdave said:

kg87 said:

daveyjp said:

I've just been offered 900 meg for £25 a month fixed for two years (no inflation increase) through Cityfibre.  1.2 gig is £29.

Sounds like a great deal on the 1.2. Which ISP is that through?

Fascinated to know WHY any home user would want or need a 1.2Gb connection ? 

Lots of people work from home, and now that everyone streams tv it wouldn't be unusual for a house to have four tvs streaming at once.

The full 1.2Gb speed probably wouldn't be fully used very often, but an increase over the standard 65mb can be quite useful, and it's often not that much more expensive, and can sometimes even be cheaper.