Quick one - anyone know if full fibre installers will bring the cable in somewhere else in the house? Currently the phone line comes in at one end of the house, assuming I can persuade my wife it would really be better in the living room which is in the middle.
Openreach or smaller provider? Makes a big difference. But at the end of the day since it terminates in a little box with an ethernet cable between it and your router, you could just run your own ethernet cable to the living room.
Supplier TBD.
If running cables inside the house was an option, believe me, I'd have done it already.
When we had ours done they said "within reason" - which applies both to where the external termination is, and how much internal cable they'll run. Ours had to come in at roof level (otherwise would be tractor food) and we wanted it downstairs. I ran a conduit / route for them and they fed the cable down and terminated it. It was around 30m but I think some providers specify a max of way less than that.
Worth asking and making sure tea and biscuits are available:)
Openreach did this for us. The cable box is on the back of the house and the router is in the living room at the front - they ran a cable along the skirting in the dining room and through the internal wall.
I realise that doesn't actually answer the question. With us there was not real option but have the cable come into the back of the house.
I've been wondering similar. We are booked in with open reach for fttp upgrade next week. Wondering if they'll just pull the fibre in as a direct replacement for the existing copper or will they end up house bashing? We've got the required 2 x 3pin sockets next to it.
They usually don't want to remove the copper as if they fail to connect the new fibre you still have the old service operational.
We've got the required 2 x 3pin sockets next to it.
What do they need two sockets for? As it happens this isn't a problem where I'd like to bring it in...
When we had ours done they said "within reason"
Similar to us.
FTTP via Virgin installed a couple of months ago (after giving up with EE/Openreach after 10 months of trying). Previous copper line was overhead into rear of property, to router in hallway in middle of house. A previous occupant's Virgin cable terminated at an external box under our front lounge window. Virgin person arrived, had a good chat and he was happy that I'd peel back carpets and lift floorboards in the hallway and help fetch and feed cables, generally lending him a hand. Mid/late-1800s house build.
Think we got lucky with our person being willing to go the extra mile but I suspect he'd not've been as willing if I wasn't there 'helping'. Be nice and see what happens.
Locally it very much depends on which Gigaclear subcontractors turn up. The usual lot have made some awful connections locally- of our four neighbours who have had it installed two ended up damaging the house- one managed to drill into a ring main and then made a complete cock of trying to sort it out. Think of Father Ted’s attempt at sorting a dent in his car. One was very happy to alter the positioning of the box on the outside wall and do some internal wiring.To be honest it’s put us off making the switch to FTTP
Edit: part of the issue with the contractors is that they are only given two hours to make the connection to the property. In the above case they were there five hours and still left the house in a right state which required our neighbours to get an electrician and a plasterer in.
When I first got fibre, and when I changed from plusnet to brsk, both times they wanted to drill a new hole in the wall even though there was already a hole for a defunct virgin box or BT line/ whatever was there before..had to convince them to use the existing hole rather than drill a new one right next to it. 🙄
I had this done the week or so before Christmas. I told them where I wanted it so in the living room rather than into my office and they drilled a new hole and added all new cabling. However, I warn you she did an awful job and went from the inside to out so blew out one of the house bricks and the cable is 'secured' using two cable ties to a drainpipe, it looks bloomin' awful and they've had a complaint.
Mine weren't all that open to where it went, they picked a spot that was nowhere near the old BT entry point and actually seems to work really well for spreading a signal throughout the house. It was on the side of the house, further back into the house and yes, they picked a spot near a power supply for the ONT. CityFibre for reference.
I now use the same provider as before, but for £10 a month less at 3 times the speed and it's been stable as a rock for 15 days I think, my old copper connection would go for a while then dropout for no obvious reason other than BT. I can also use my own router with ease, the only problem was picking a wifi6 router and having Android phones, there's a bug/disagreement on active app times between the 2 that means that no content loads in apps while everything else seems fine. Took me a couple of days to get to the bottom of and I now have a wifi6 capable router with it forcefully configured off.
Openreach - they were happy to move it. Original copper came off a pole and into house at first floor level. The fibre now runs along the same wire from pole to house then down a drainpipe, round and along the side of the house and into living room. So very different and they had no issue at all. I believe I read somewhere they like the fibre to enter the house at ground level as the equipment they need for something (crimping?) is XBOX huge and you can't really do it up a ladder - that might be complete BS though.
In contrast, when trying to get any info out of Gigaclear on how they would do the install at my Dad's house (and how much it would cost), they were so crap that I ended up going with a Starlink setup instead.
Yeah, there's a fibre optic splice in that grey box they fit to your outside wall. The splice machine can't be used up a ladder.
My splice box was put inside in the loft, but they had easy, clear access a boarded floor. So the FO cable comes from the pole, onto the gable end and in through a hole I had drilled for them beforehand.
Never had an issue without fibre and with. ADSL I asked to route around the back of the house via the garage, done. Full fibre 2 years ago asked to move from the front of the house by the door, to the living room instead. Recently changed provider and they used the same hole.
Yeah, there's a fibre optic splice in that grey box they fit to your outside wall. The splice machine can't be used up a ladder.
My splice box was put inside in the loft, but they had easy, clear access a boarded floor. So the FO cable comes from the pole, onto the gable end and in through a hole I had drilled for them beforehand.
I had that with plus net but when I switched to brsk that just got ripped out and it's just a fibre cable now.
Not sure why that is, as as far as I can tell the grey box is so you can have a spool of slack optic cable to feed through in the event you make a bad termination inside the house you can just unspool a bit more
BT did the fibre for work (Sub-contract for TalkTalk), they were happy to bring the ONT into an area of the office reasonably distant from the network gear. The technician was more than happy to run an ethernet cable around the walls for us before he disappeared to his next job. (We supplied the ethernet cable).
If your ONT is in a different spot to the router you'll only need one socket alongside the incoming box and another close to the router.
When I had mine done, the installer said "where do you want it then, chief?" The only prerequisite was that it must be near a power socket.
Of course, this is an anecdote not advice.
I think it depends on the installer at the time.
Mine said 'I can't touch other companies equipment'
'other companies equipment' being a gray open reach box on the exterior and a plus net ONT.
So I said "I can" and ripped it all out in about 20 seconds.
Problem solved, lol.
Not if you get a contractor that is desperate to ram a load of jobs in.
They're pretty sloppy.
Not if you get a contractor that is desperate to ram a load of jobs in.
They're pretty sloppy.
I've never know them to be in a rush, just scared of doing something that might reflect badly on them, so I took on the 'risk' lol, by ripping a bit of old kit out, enablling them to do an easier/faster/cleaner job the way I wanted it. Happy days.
Have you considered home 5G broadband, instead?
We were going to sign up for Three 5G bb, but it's a two year contract and cost per month goes up by £3.50 every April.
But we ended up buying a TP-Link NX200 5G SIM router for £190, along with a Three 5G SIM with 500GB quota per month until July 2028 for a one-off £90 fee from Scancom (been on hotukdeals regularly last year). Takes all popular SIM brands, as far as I'm aware, as data only use.
Saving us over £500 compared to our NowTV landline BB plus landline phone with free sub 60min calls (that we barely use to be fair), or ~£300 compared to Three home 5G bb, over the ~2.5 years.
Speeds much better than our landline (~60/30Mbps on a bad day, ~500/50Mbps on a good day vs 25/6 on NowTV), barely any different latency for gaming.
Plus we can simply take router with us if we move, or even take it with us for say a caravan holiday
Installers here put it the shortest possible route from the pit to the house. Box goes on outside wall. FO cable into there. Internally the NTD goes almost back to back with the outside box.
If you don't like it where they put it, you pay for a reg'd cabler to move the internal box, or a cheaper way is get a run of cat6 installed to wherever you want your wifi router.
At the mo we have the NTD and 1st satellite at the back end of the house, then a 2nd and 3rd satellite in the middle and other end of the house, but I am planning on 3x cat6 runs so each satellite in the mesh has ethernet backhaul and theoretically very good wifi speed from each access point.
We have a 1000/100 unlimited connection. The satellite furthest from the NTD still pushes 170-200 on the down and full speed upload minus overheads so 92ish.