CityFibre FTTP install

[Peter Johnson]

Two men (and two vans) from Kelly Communications, on behalf of
CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.
They rodded through the BT duct from the house to the BT chamber,
there was some muck in it but they got through. Then they installed a
CF microduct in the BT duct and connected it to an existing microduct
running from the camber to the adjoining CFcabinet installed last
year. At the house end a short length of brown duct, external grade
presumably, was attached to the microduct and run to a junction box
mounted on the wall, after which a fibre was blown through.
To get the service to the back of the house where it was needed
required a 25m cable, but they were supplied in 20 or 30m lengths, so
5m had to be 'lost.'
I didn't see the ONT being installed. I'd have preferred it to have
been next to, or over, the cable inlet but the guy obviously thought
he was being helpful by putting it next to the ethernet outlets. At
least there's now a desk hiding the cable run along the skirting.
It took just short of two hours and was the eighth install they'd done
that day. They were pleased that they'd been able to use the BT duct,
otherwise they would have had to have trenched the block-paved drive.
Apparently there's a larger external wall box being released but I
don't know if it's large enough to lose another 5m of cable.
Download some pics from
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkhvgPvXD0_1ouktMVtodRRD_XNI5g?e=XdtIYa

Now I just need to sort out why I can't get my Asus DSL-AX82U router
working with the FTTP.

[Andy Burns]

Peter Johnson wrote:

> CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.
> They rodded through the BT duct from the house to the BT chamber

I thought you showed photos of CityFIbre installing their own ducts locally last
year, so they're sharing the last few hundred yards with BT ducts?

Doesn't look much room in there, wonder if BT will regret allowing that when
they eventually fibre-up the area and can't fit their own fibres in there ...

[Tweed]

I think Open Reach now have to share their ducts, for a fee.

CityFibre are digging near me on the main roads. They seem to go quite
quickly with the minimum of fuss. Laying purple pipes that look around 4 to
6 inches in diameter. Once they are at my house I think I’ll go with Zen.
Assuming Zen maintain their no price increase policy it will be well worth
it in the long term. Everyone else seems to want to impose a hefty annual
price increase. I’ll be looking forwards to telling Virgin Media that their
cable service will no longer be needed.

[Koopa]

On 04/03/2022 12:18, Peter Johnson wrote:
>
> Now I just need to sort out why I can't get my Asus DSL-AX82U router
> working with the FTTP.
>

Exciting times, I've had FTTP since 2018 now and currently have a
gigabit service...

https://www.speedtest.net/result/12847574268.png

Not many things make full use of the connection speed but I'm only
paying £ 46.12 a month for it at the moment with a landline rental.

Will go back down to the 500mbit/s service I'm paying for at some point,
been on the gigabit service since everyone was working at home due to covid.

[Andy Burns]

Tweed wrote:

> I think Open Reach now have to share their ducts, for a fee.
>
> CityFibre are digging near me on the main roads. They seem to go quite
> quickly with the minimum of fuss. Laying purple pipes that look around 4 to
> 6 inches in diameter. Once they are at my house I think I’ll go with Zen.

Quite encouraging that en can connect over city fibre, I seem to remember
hearing virgin are going to open up their network (possibly only the project
lightning bits, not the hybrid coax bits) to other ISPs?

If not, I suspect it'll only be a few years before the plethora of minnow
regional fibre ISPs start getting swallowed up by someone else ...

[Andy Burns]

Andy Burns wrote:

> Quite encouraging that en can connect over city fibre

^^^

Sorry, I keep forgetting that my Z, 4 and \ keys have gone dicky

[Woody]

Not quite as easy as that. AIUI the only users on City Fibre at the
moment are - or will be - TT, VF and Sky. I asked Zen and they said that
once CF have plant in place they may negotiate with them but ATM they
are not using CF.

[Tweed]

So this is fiction?

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/zen-internet-set-to-extend-cityfibre-fttp-availability-nationwide.html

https://www.zen.co.uk/blog/posts/zen-blog/2021/04/23/zen-cityfibre-a-real-world-experience

[Woody]

I suspect the Zen 'agent' was being selective when he gave his answer
although it is still not available here even though CF more or less
completed install in this area last Autumn.

[Tweed]

So they’ve done the digging but you can’t get service yet? Gives me an idea
that I’m probably a year or more away from service. I presume all the
digging has speeded up to take advantage of the super tax allowance, civils
being presumably the most expensive bit.

Looking at CF’s deployment plans, it looks like BT/OR is going to be stuck
with the rural areas, with CF putting a superior technology into the urban
areas. (CF offer symmetric up and down speeds, unlike BT/OR).

[Andrew]

On 04/03/2022 12:18, Peter Johnson wrote:

> Two men (and two vans) from Kelly Communications, on behalf of
> CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.
> They rodded through the BT duct from the house to the BT chamber,
> there was some muck in it but they got through.

Your house must have been built in the last ?20 years then.
A million houses built in the 70's have swa-protected phone
lines direct buried under the front garden and in many cases
jointed into multi-way swa buried under the grass verges
and very little in ducting.

[Andrew]

Could make it tricky to contact Zen then :-)

[Peter Johnson]

House built in 1988, but others in the area, built at the same time or
later, will need some sort of excavation between the footpath and the
property.

[Peter Johnson]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 12:56:19 +0000, Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk>
wrote:

>Peter Johnson wrote:
>
>> CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.
>> They rodded through the BT duct from the house to the BT chamber
>
>I thought you showed photos of CityFIbre installing their own ducts locally last
>year, so they're sharing the last few hundred yards with BT ducts?
>

CF are installing their own ducts where they can't get into BT's.

>Doesn't look much room in there, wonder if BT will regret allowing that when
>they eventually fibre-up the area and can't fit their own fibres in there ...

The picture is probably deceptive. There is certainly space for more
cable to come in.

[Peter Johnson]

On Fri, 04 Mar 2022 12:18:22 +0000, Peter Johnson
<pe...@parksidewood.nospam> wrote:

>Two men (and two vans) from Kelly Communications, on behalf of
>CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.

Having looked at the photos again I think that what I called microduct
would be better called mini-microduct.

And after a lot of digging around in the settings of the Zen-supplied
Technicolor DGA4134 router I got the service working through the wan
port of my Asus AX82U router.

[Peter Johnson]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 16:32:35 +0000, Woody <harro...@ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>
>Not quite as easy as that. AIUI the only users on City Fibre at the
>moment are - or will be - TT, VF and Sky. I asked Zen and they said that
>once CF have plant in place they may negotiate with them but ATM they
>are not using CF.

I think Zen were the first to sign up with CityFibre.
And Vodafone, fibrehop, TalkTalk and iDnet are also offering service
over CF. Nover heard of fibrehop and iDnet.

[Andy Burns]

Peter Johnson wrote:

> Having looked at the photos again

Was it the australian branch of cityfibre?

[Woody]

iDnet is Carphonewarehouse.

[Woody]

If its anything like round here they will probably bring it in overhead.
In this area they are only taking DTTP (duct to the property!) where
overhead is impractical or there is insufficient kerbside space. What is
more they are using BT telegraph poles!