FTTP is being rolled out by Openreach across the country, amongst other Altnet service provider (such as CityFibre). This article aims to answer some of the questions you may have about the installation and use of the FTTP services.
Installation / Lead Time
FTTP installs seem to go one of 2 ways;
- If you or a previous tenant of the property have/ had FTTP service previously, you can have a new service very quickly, even within 48 hours. If you have service now, there’s usually a 10 working day minimum time to transfer you.
- Even if your property is a ‘1-stage’ the install typically takes longer to install than copper-based ‘Fibre’ services. This is because of the additional cables and infrastructure required, specialist access equipment sometimes needed etc. The best cases we have seen the install completed on the first visit around 10 working days from the order. In some cases 2, 3 or more visits have been needed to complete works such as unblocking ducts.
Openreach will install a new fibre cable to the property, and terminate it at a Customer Splice Point (CSP) usually located on the exterior of the property. From here a customer-side cable is run to the Optical Network Terminal (ONT). The ONT can be thought of as a media converter – it changes the fibre cable signals to copper for your router to understand.
Installation location
Throughout the pandemic Openreach have been pushing to install the ONT on the reverse-face of the CSP, or within 1 metre of the point of entry. Officially they are supposed to run cables up to 10m internally (see here)
You should consider where the best location is for you. Often the ‘master socket’ for the old copper telephone services is in the hallway or in the extreme corner of a property – not the best place for Wifi. It may be necessary to run a Cat5e data cable from the ONT to the router’s best Wifi location. We recommend:
- Near a power socket – obviously – near a double socket if the router will be in the same place
- The fibre cable should be run where it isn’t going to be damaged; by feet, by furniture, by vehicles etc.
- If you will have only 1 router providing Wifi, it needs to be in the middle of your property. If you property is old (thick walls) or large (or you want coverage in the garden etc) then you’ll probably want additional Wifi transmitters (Access Points) to cover the larger area
Presentation
As mentioned you will connect to the ONT. This is where Openreach’s responsibility for the connection finishes. You’ll need a router with an ‘Ethernet WAN’ port, and it will need to be capable of making a PPPoE connection – which means it has a username and password to login to the service.
FTTP does not by default include a telephone service. If you still need a telephone service we can supply you with a VoIP service, and if necessary an analogue adapter.
Our services do not include a ‘free’ router, but we can supply a suitable one for you on request.
Speeds
Older ‘fibre’ services have often lead to disappointment with customers when they find out there is still a copper element (between the cabinet and your property), so the speed you sign up for isn’t necessarily what you will get. With FTTP this isn’t an issue, you should at worst get within 10% of the speed you pay for – e.g. you pay for 1000Mbps download service you should get at least 900Mbps download at the ONT. The speed of the router can make a difference, cheaper and older routers may not be able to cope with NAT throughput at that speed, even if it has a gigabit WAN port. If you are using Wifi for the test you are very unlikely to achieve anything near 1Gbps from 1 computer doing a speed test – so watch out for that when testing.
Don’t forget – if you need faster or synchronous speeds (same upload and download), guarantees of service levels and more complex solutions, have a look at Fibre Ethernet options.