BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[Type_R]

Where you want it. How should we know.
My outdoor one (grey box) is next to the gas meter.
My ONT is next to my network cabinet under the stairs where I fitted it as I asked the engineer of I could do it, I just passed him the other end of the internal cable.

Exactly this. There were some permutations that weren’t possible when installing at my house, for example I wanted the fibre to go behind the garage wall (flat roof) and openreach weren’t willing to put it there. In the end we compromised and it runs across the front of the house slightly more conspicuously than I would have liked.

 

[mikehhhhhhh]

I have a BT engineer coming tomorrow to install our BT line and ONT, where do people recommend installing the main fibre line?

I don't think there's a simple answer to that, other than somewhere with power.

Mine was overhead, so it was largely decided by where he could tie it to the building - he only really had one choice due to path being blocked by a lamp post one side, and porch blocking ladder access the other.

In the end, my consumer service point went out the way - in the corner by the ground with a built-in cupboard with power on the other side, which was the perfect location for the ONT. But I chose that knowing I'd route it back to where I originally wanted it in the garage with Ethernet which goes back up the drain pipe where the main fibre comes down and into the loft before going back to the network cab in the garage.

That said, he was willing to run the fibre to the garage, but it would have run a fairly thick back cable across the width of the property, ~50mm off the ground and it would have looked aweful.

I ended up with the ONT not quite where I like it, but the installation is much, much tidier than running fibre all over the place and the end result was the same.

If I was your average consumer, I'd have just got him to put it in the easiest place that was suitable for a router.

 

[Temi_D]

Is the day you get the engineer visit the same day internet starts working?

 

[robj20]

Is the day you get the engineer visit the same day internet starts working?

Mine started working the second it was all connected up.

 

[MissChief]

Is the day you get the engineer visit the same day internet starts working?

It certainly should, yes. If it doesn't then something is wrong, but the Engineer should leave you with a working service.

 

[GuruJockStrap]

Have a really annoying issue with my BT FTTC.

Recently moved house and re-signed up my services with BT.

At my old house, I was getting around 32Mbps down and 6Mbps up and the VDSL connection would remain up for 2 weeks (before doing it's typical reconnection).

Connected same BT Hub at my new house (built 10 years ago) and the VDSL would never remain up more than 24 hours. Would typically drop randomly a couple of times during the day. I suspected that the external NTE point and some dodgy wiring by the original builders of the telephone ports to the NTE were to blame.

Openreach came out and concluded the same and fitted a internal NTE master socket (on internal wall other side where external NTE is, so hardly any cable run), which the Hub is connected to. He did a load of line tests and said the line is perfect. Sync speeds went from 45Mbps to 55Mbps down. Uploads remain around 10Mbps.

VDSL remained up for 2 days (a record) but then went through a 4 hour period one evening of constant drops and reconnects. Since then, lucky for VDSL to make it beyond 24 hours with dropping.

BT are going to send out one of their "Tech Broadband" people, to primarily check things internally but given the simplicity of my set up, I don't know what that's going to reveal.

I don't believe it to be a faulty Hub as I never experienced this problem at my previous property.

I'm loosing faith with BT so have ordered a Fritzbox 7530 to see if I get any better stability with a change in hardware (was connected to an ECI cabinet at old address but a Huawei one at new house, so clutching at straws thinking there might be a compatibility issue with Home Hub chipset and the FTTC cabinet).

Anyone have any suggestions or come across something similar?

 

[Caged]

I've had 90+ days FTTC uptime from a Smart Hub 2 on a Huawei cabinet (rebooted to do a firmware update), so I wouldn't consider a compatibility issue.

 

[GuruJockStrap]

The only other thing I can think of is that the maximum data rate for my line is 12328/56060 (according to Home Hub 6), so I'm syncing at 10000/55000 profile. So my synced download is right on the edge of what my line is capable. So I have very little headroom if line becomes unstable. Would syncing at say 10000/40000 provided better headroom and make the connection more stable if something externally caused the line to become unstable?

 

[GuruJockStrap]

Well, the Fritzbox has been connected and no dropped VDSL connection in coming up to 3 days now.

Would be lucky to go a day and a half with the BT Hub.

Quite a nice bit of kit. Nice OS, loads of stats and monitoring and settings galore. Max on the upload is the same but Fritzbox is telling me the max attainable for my line on the download is 59Mbps, so a 3Mbps increase from a router swap.

 

[robj20]

Got an email from BT today about Digital Voice. Says soon to unplug the phone from the master socket and plug it into the Router.

This is all well and good but what if you don't use their router? Now it wont affect me as i haven't used a landline phone for years, and asked them not to bother connecting the copper line when they installed my optical line. But what about people that do but want to use a different router?

 

[the-evaluator]

This is all well and good but what if you don't use their router?

You're stuffed in that case. BT don't publish a SIP endpoint (or similar) so if you're not using the BT Router then you won't have access to the telephone number.

It's a bit of a ball ache, we get very few calls on our landline but try asking a 92 year old grandmother who doesn't have a mobile to call on your mobile. I've not used the BT router at all so I pre-empted the switch to digital voice and setup a Sipgate account and told people that number instead.

I would like to get my parents moved over to digital voice, the quality of the copper into their house is awful, and it's direct buried so replacing it is far from trivial. They've had FTTP since late last year so digital voice would be superb for them.

 

[rG-tom]

Has anyone here successfully managed to use the gigabit voucher scheme?

Currently in the process of buying a house that is pretty rural (only 500 residents in the village and ~5 miles from nearest "town"). It currently has FTTC, and estimated 70mbps connection. I currently have gigabit each way and this will be like regressing to dial-up for me

https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/

This says that the new postcode is eligible for a voucher, but unless I'm reading incorrectly, the next step is to literally just message one of 79 suppliers who could potentially install in the area - seems really like it'd be INCREDIBLY hard work to get this moving? I assumed that I could just rally ~50 people to say "yep i want better internet please", present the list to the scheme and they could just crack on and get it sorted, but it doesn't seem remotely that easy?

EDIT:

We have been stuck with this for well over ten years and we are not even very rural.



But fortunately after years of work and using the Fibre Voucher scheme to setup a Fibre community scheme down our road we now have access to FTTP which goes live next Friday.

So have gone full hog and ordered BT Fibre 900 (probably overkill!). Cant wait!

The increase in upload speed will be especially handy, I currently use my mobile 4G connection to upload anything sizable. So will be good to scrap that

Can you tell me more about your experience on this please @roccles ?

 

[Caged]

Start a community fibre partnership on the Openreach website, as it's rural they see if they can cover the costs with vouchers, then it gets built as long as enough people commit to contracts with FTTP providers on the Openreach network.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

You're stuffed in that case. BT don't publish a SIP endpoint (or similar) so if you're not using the BT Router then you won't have access to the telephone number.

It's a bit of a ball ache, we get very few calls on our landline but try asking a 92 year old grandmother who doesn't have a mobile to call on your mobile. I've not used the BT router at all so I pre-empted the switch to digital voice and setup a Sipgate account and told people that number instead.

I would like to get my parents moved over to digital voice, the quality of the copper into their house is awful, and it's direct buried so replacing it is far from trivial. They've had FTTP since late last year so digital voice would be superb for them.

A&A £1.20 a month for the cheapest SIP landline number. Gigaset IP phone and job done. Buy Gigaset phones for your parents and grandparents (and corresponding £1.20 a month SIP accounts) and enjoy super high quality calls amongst yourselves.

 

[the-evaluator]

A&A £1.20 a month for the cheapest SIP landline number. Gigaset IP phone and job done. Buy Gigaset phones for your parents and grandparents (and corresponding £1.20 a month SIP accounts) and enjoy super high quality calls amongst yourselves.

Great idea in theory (though I'd do what I did at my house and go for a Sipgate Basic number at £0/month) but my grandmother doesn't have an internet connection. My parents have no desire to changing their number. Digital Voice will come along for them eventually so they can wait.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Great idea in theory (though I'd do what I did at my house and go for a Sipgate Basic number at £0/month) but my grandmother doesn't have an internet connection. My parents have no desire to changing their number. Digital Voice will come along for them eventually so they can wait.

The Gigaset base station hooks into landline and IP, so your parents wouldn’t lose their current number. They would just get the benefit of calling you on the higher quality VOIP. Didn’t realise your grandma doesn’t have internet, not much to be done there!

I tried Sipgate Basic but the functionality is basically zero whereas A&A gives you loads of features like answering machine, call recordings, redirects, I can have mine and my wife’s mobiles start ringing if nobody has picked up the “landline” after 9 seconds (and whoever answers first gets the call). Plus I think Sipgate’s termination point is in Germany or the Netherlands (I could be wrong) whereas A&A is in the UK (so in theory there will be lower latency).

A&A also gives you a SIP address that you can dial (sip:[email protected]) so other voip services can call you without touching the PSTN. Sipgate may have all of the above, but I didn’t see how to do any of it from the control panel they give you.

 

[robj20]

I don't see why people still have landlines, mobiles are so common why not just use that.

 

[the-evaluator]

The Gigaset base station hooks into landline and IP, so your parents wouldn’t lose their current number. They would just get the benefit of calling you on the higher quality VOIP. Didn’t realise your grandma doesn’t have internet, not much to be done there!

Interesting, I haven't looked at Gigaset for ages because I had such a ball ache with crap firmware on a bunch of DE900 IP Pro's that I've avoided the brand since. There's little point doing anything for my parents, BT tell me that the town will be moving over to digital voice

I tried Sipgate Basic but the functionality is basically zero whereas A&A gives you loads of features like answering machine, call recordings, redirects, I can have mine and my wife’s mobiles start ringing if nobody has picked up the “landline” after 9 seconds (and whoever answers first gets the call). Plus I think Sipgate’s termination point is in Germany or the Netherlands (I could be wrong) whereas A&A is in the UK (so in theory there will be lower latency).

Sipgate Basic has all that same stuff except call recording. I've got the voicemail being sent to a distribution list so my other half and I both get the voicemail in an email attachment. Call forwarding and redirection was very useful when I had my home office number with Sipgate but since moving that into Teams it's not something I've used.

The latency is a none issue in my experience. What with the account I use at home plus the time I had my home office number with Sipgate I've been a customer for about 8 years and never had issues caused by latency. Doing a quick and dirty ping test I'm getting 12ms to the Sipgate SIP gateway and 9ms to A&A.

A&A also gives you a SIP address that you can dial (sip:[email protected]) so other voip services can call you without touching the PSTN. Sipgate may have all of the above, but I didn’t see how to do any of it from the control panel they give you.

Sipgate does that too.

 

[mid_gen]

Well, Sky are finally offering me ultrafast.....but at 40 pound a month for 143-150 down and 22-25 up, might as well get Infinity 900/100 for 59 a month.

Going to have to pay 11 months ETF on the Sky Superfast though, grumble.

 

[Aberfala]

Well, Sky are finally offering me ultrafast.....but at 40 pound a month for 143-150 down and 22-25 up, might as well get Infinity 900/100 for 59 a month.

Going to have to pay 11 months ETF on the Sky Superfast though, grumble.

If you do decide to go with BT sign up for the 150 service and then upgrade it to 900. Mine was installed earlier this week on the basic service, I checked the upgrade options via MyBT the next day and got the 900 service for £54.99.