FTTP Broadband Question.

[DanceswithUnix]

I guess the bundle of wires should be a bit neater with FTTP.

I would have thought that avoiding the current rats-nest of random wiring would be a priority for any new system, so I would hope so. If they can provision enough connectivity for each house at the cabinet so there isn't any patching once installed, then they wouldn't need someone to go poke in there all the time. We now have a fibre to the path outside the house, but I must admit I haven't been out to lift the access panel and have a peek at what's in there yet. Perhaps if I google it there will be a decent overview of how the system works somewhere.

There does seem to be a new cabinet down the road, and it isn't very big. I presume that's where the fibres all multiplex into a single feed.

[Jonatron]

Backup mobile is becoming more of a necessity, my wife just teathered her laptop to mobile which got her stable, harder with desktop. Don't really want another contract so not sure what the best option is - might be a Bluetooth dongle for simplicity (or I switch to my laptop).

USB tethering is a thing for windows+android at least. A USB wifi stick or PCI-E wifi card in your desktop would give you more options.

[jimbouk]

USB tethering is a thing for windows+android at least. A USB wifi stick or PCI-E wifi card in your desktop would give you more options.

I'd forgotten about USB tethering, that would solve the problem with a single cable! I will investigate. All stable again today so they must have finished what they were doing

[MrJim]

Mine went down at 2:00, came back up around 13:00, went down again around 15:00, came back again around 16:00 then was off until about 19:30 then was very ropey until later in the evening.

We're moving ISP next Friday and I can't wait!

Good grief! I'm on BT FTTP. Much as I dislike BT as a company, I've had an amazingly stable connection for the past two years. As far as I'm aware, my router has only lost sync once in all that time, & it resynced almost immediately. I can't imagine dealing with constant disconnections like that!

[Apex]

I am looking at backup options for us at home after the last VM outage.

4G LTE Modem pluged into the pfsense firewall with some form of data sim - still expensive (only modem i have found is 140 quid Netgear)
4g/5g mobile mi-fi device thingies - really really expensive and i think overkill for what i actually need
Starlink - overkill but hands down best in terms of speed
fibre - still waiting on city fibre to finish the street and ISP's to offer, been months now

[Jonatron]

Searching amazon 4g usb dongle from £30ish. 4g router from about £50. Mifi from around £40. Not sure what you're looking at?

[jimbouk]

We picked up a second hand one for the grand parents in law from CEX when they wanted internet not on their phone line (don't ask). £10 a month on Giffgaff for video calling from an old iPad was pretty good during the pandemic. It's just whether you want to be running another contract alongside your mobile contact just for backups.

[Apex]

We picked up a second hand one for the grand parents in law from CEX when they wanted internet not on their phone line (don't ask). £10 a month on Giffgaff for video calling from an old iPad was pretty good during the pandemic. It's just whether you want to be running another contract alongside your mobile contact just for backups.

I don't need a router being that i have a pfsense firewall/router, most of these 4g/5g mifi 'routers' have more features on them then needed for the task and also looking at the surface info won't integrate into the existing setup of just being a network connection. - the usb dongles might work if there is support for them in pfsense, the idea of running it off a usb stick out the back of the 1u server thats in a rack under my desk, i'll keep looking.

The netgear lte modem I am talking about is the lm1200 - prices are steep for it and it seems its the only one.

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't need a router being that i have a pfsense firewall/router, most of these 4g/5g mifi 'routers' have more features on them then needed for the task and also looking at the surface info won't integrate into the existing setup of just being a network connection. - the usb dongles might work if there is support for them in pfsense, the idea of running it off a usb stick out the back of the 1u server thats in a rack under my desk, i'll keep looking.

The netgear lte modem I am talking about is the lm1200 - prices are steep for it and it seems its the only one.

I got one of these for use with an Android car headunit that the wife doesn't want to have to enable phone hotspot to use fully:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B079P2BQMM/

Currently out of stock but cost me £40 when I bought it. Seems these dongles come in two firmware variants, either designed to plug into a Windows laptop or this one that just looks like a ppp network connection. Back when I got it ISTR I found instructions on how to re-flash a normal one to be ppp only, but that was three and a half years ago according to the Amazon order and I can't remember the details (and they were the same cost, I just had to wait a bit longer for delivery on the ppp one so I did that).

[Jonatron]

I'd be surprised if you couldn't get a 4g router to do what you want eg: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003WK62OS/
Turn off DHCP server, turn off radio, then I guess it turns into just a modem?

[b0redom]

Before everyone gets really excited about BT FTTP. I ordered it as soon as it was available in my area. That was August. Still waiting......

Openreach came out after a few months and were unable to get a fibre down the existing ducting - they reckon it may have rusted and collapsed since my house was built in the 1950s.

After a few more months of waiting, Openreach came out and dug a trench from the end of the road to around 2m from my actual ingress point and then buggered off.

BT turned up to fit the fibre and went. "Well how am I supposed to get fibre from there to your house?" and buggered off again.

It's been sitting in escalations since... for months.... I was promised that they'd be with me definitely on 31st March. Definitely. I contacted Zen (who I've been with for years) and was told, "Yeah. Definitely still coming."

No one ever arrived. It's been re escalated within BT and OpenReach who just shrug their shoulders and go, "Dunno why no one turned up. We're busy. No we can't tell you when we'll get around to it. No we can't explain why we didn't turn up."

I'm sure 900Mbit will be great when it arrives. If it arrives.

[AGTDenton]

Before everyone gets really excited about BT FTTP. I ordered it as soon as it was available in my area. That was August. Still waiting......

So nothing has changed in the last 30 years of the Internet, BT ill equipped and chaotic.

This is why these small companies are walking all over BT doing the jobs that BT won't. How ironic today that living out of the way in somewhere that didn't get FTTC until 5 years ago I now have better internet than my nearest town...

[MrJim]

Before everyone gets really excited about BT FTTP. I ordered it as soon as it was available in my area. That was August. Still waiting......

Openreach came out after a few months and were unable to get a fibre down the existing ducting - they reckon it may have rusted and collapsed since my house was built in the 1950s.

After a few more months of waiting, Openreach came out and dug a trench from the end of the road to around 2m from my actual ingress point and then buggered off.

BT turned up to fit the fibre and went. "Well how am I supposed to get fibre from there to your house?" and buggered off again.

It's been sitting in escalations since... for months.... I was promised that they'd be with me definitely on 31st March. Definitely. I contacted Zen (who I've been with for years) and was told, "Yeah. Definitely still coming."

No one ever arrived. It's been re escalated within BT and OpenReach who just shrug their shoulders and go, "Dunno why no one turned up. We're busy. No we can't tell you when we'll get around to it. No we can't explain why we didn't turn up."

I'm sure 900Mbit will be great when it arrives. If it arrives.

I had a very similar experience. I ordered FTTP as soon as it was available from Openreach. When they came to connect to my house, I was told that the fibre connection was live at the bottom of the phone pole, but for whatever reason, it wasn't connected at the top (!). So I waited, and waited...eventually BT told me that they would have to dig a trench outside my house, including the diversion of traffic, which would mean applying to the local authority for authorisation. So I waited...and waited. Over a YEAR later, I finally got a call from BT to say that they had got it all wrong, and that no road works would be necessary! So they came out, spent about three hours up a ladder, and I was eventually connected up. So all that time waiting was completely unnecessary. Fortunately I still had my ADSL connection during that time, but it was an utter cluster...

Anyway, there was a financial benefit for me in the end. Firstly, I was prepared to buy my way out of my remaining ADSL contract in order to swap over to FTTP, so having waited over a year, the cost of that was substantially less than it would have been. Secondly, BT agreed to give me in the region of £1200 in compensation because the delay was entirely their fault, which meant that I've (almost) had a free 900Mbit FTTP connection for the past two years.

As you say, I'm sure you'll love your FFTP connection...when you eventually get it.

[Jonj1611]

I checked and apparently its available between now and 2026 :/ Think I will stick to Virgin 1 gig for the moment!

[neonplanet40]

I'm luckier because when FTTP became available, I ordered straight away.T eh downside was migrating my FTTC from Talktalk to Talktalk FTTP. They missed a number of appointments so I just canceled (the worst company in the world....).

However, I ordered with BT and everything went smoothly. I now get 900mb, despite living in a small village. My house was built in 2004 - SO I guess all ducting etc was still fine when Openreach put in all the fibre etc and created a new access point.

[Hoonigan]

I don't even know what to do with all of my new speed.