Fibre Internet, how do I get it up a long private driveway?

tom 2000

At the time of my first FTTC package I believe my local "cabinet" was about half a mile down the road. I do not know if the "Cabinet" is the pole at the end of my 300m lane now.

Abacus

Openreach just controls and maintains the infrastructure (It is not an ISP) that ISPs use, and unless the speed is throttled by the ISP (Or there infrastructure is rubbish) you will get the same speed from all ISPs that use the Openreach infrastructure. (This means anyone except Virgin Broadband that has their own network in various parts of the country)

Get back onto your ISP as fibre 2 unlimited should give you up to 67Mbs with the average in tests being 60Mbs.

Bill

tom 2000

They have always said that mid teens is acceptable. The BT Speed Test says it is acceptable. Projected Service Speeds come up mid teens. When it first went in 18 was achievable.
It’s not just the speed. I strongly suspect that at times the service stops. The diagnostics do not suggest that though.
I have sat down and tried to log faults with BT and end up in an endless loop of tests, FAQS and tips. I managed to report a fault once. It stayed open for a week and was then reported closed.
I just feel I want to rip the whole lot out and start again.

BrynTeg

Im in the middle of a nightmare here, i have 2 meg broadband and its a new build bungalow, i can get up to 300m fibre so i ordered it a week after moving in, the guys came out, subcontractors, spent about 5 minutes and told me they cant do the job as my pipes are blocked
So a dig team must come out, this was a month ago, so last week there was a Bt engineer on the site and he was a nice friendly guy , i asked him about the pipes and he kindly had a look and sent his rods down, no blockage at all, the subbies just didnt bother.
Im now getting no sense at all from Bt about when the fibre is going to be installled, the nice Bt chap left a length of rope in the pipes so no excuse next time!!

EndlessWaves

14Mbps is definitely possible on FTTC, it's about 2km of cable from the nearest cabinet. Openreach did float an 18Mbps FTTC package for a while for this sort of situation but I don't think it was very successful. The price list shows it's not available for new installs so I guess they've given up on it.

I'm not sure of the situation in Northern Ireland.

Where the people laying cable definitely from Openreach? There are several additional FTTP providers, not just Openreach and Virgin.

It could also have been nothing to do with landline internet, they could have been laying fibre to feed a mobile network tower or something else entirely.

Chester

Could very well be FTTC.  We've seen less than 4Mb on some services because of massively long lines.  In fact they were better behaving ADSL services beforehand, but got worse because it's a much sharper drop-off over distance with VDSL.

As others have said, FTTP will currently have high install costs attached, but they should be coming down in some areas across the country soon; others to follow.  It takes volume sales to bring the cost down and availability up, but availability requires a reasonable adoption rate.  A bit self-defeating initially!

tom 2000

This box appeared in the pole. It does not appear to my connection which is mounted on the other side.  My service cable rises out of ground one pole away, comes overhead to my pole then goes underground to the house 300m away.                                                                       

Abacus

Could be just a junction box, or possibly a local mobile phone transmitter/receiver extension, or there may be something else on the way, (It is not unusual to see a black box appear before a green box appears on the pole for FTTP connections) but I am afraid you will have to ask BT if you are curious.

Regarding your connection, initially I would have said BT is giving you the run around, however previous post explaining that this speed can happen, then perhaps not, but if are not getting the speed you are paying for (Its unusual to ever get  the max speed quoted) then you definitely need to keep badgering BT to do something about it.

I presume you are using either a Home Hub  or a separate BT Openreach modem plugged into your router, in either case make sure it is plugged into the main socket (It will have 2 connectors, one for the modem and one for the phone) for it to work correctly. (You cannot plug it into secondary socket with a filter)

NOTE: while you may not have enough speed for 4K streaming you have ample for HD streaming, which can still give a high quality picture and sound.

Bill

tom 2000

Yup. HH5 direct in to master socket.

george1976

Notice that warning triangle there?
That is proper fibre there, currently there are fttp connections with a cable from top of the pole to property also, not necessarily underground.