One thing i forgot to ask about, once OR have swapped the cabling over for FTTC in the cabinet, will my old ADSL service still work? Logically i would have thought not.

Thinking of the worst case scenario, if something doesn't work as expected or doesn't happen will OR switch it back so that i can use my ADSL again?

Also if all goes to plan whats the quickest way of getting the plusnet account up and running as it looks like i will be without internet for at least a day. How does it work? Can you call them to speed up the process once OR have completed the work?

Not sure about PlusNet specifically however I can discuss both Sky and BT.
You get fibre, they post you a HomeHub / Sky Hub.
You plug this into the broadband line in the same way you connect your existing router.

Nobody comes to your house, changes any sockets, relocates the master, adds on a faceplate etc. If you want to use the Fibre in an extension go right on ahead.

It is recommended to use the master socket for both ADSL and Fibre connections because it gives the best speed.

Fibre installs for Sky / BT are at least definitely Self Install...

I have a feeling that PlusNet may still send out an engineer because they do not have a decent fibre router with a modem built in like BT and Sky... Due to this BT may need to come on site and give you a modem. This would mean 2 devices connected... At this stage they will also change the master socket.

Certainly with other ISPs you get one router which does everything and just plugs into the existing sockets. No separate modem and router. No changes to internal wiring.

In reply to a post by bIOforger:

One thing i forgot to ask about, once OR have swapped the cabling over for FTTC in the cabinet, will my old ADSL service still work? Logically i would have thought not.

Correct - it won't. There is a filter in the FTTC cabinet that blocks the ADSLx signals.

Thinking of the worst case scenario, if something doesn't work as expected or doesn't happen will OR switch it back so that i can use my ADSL again?

That did happen a few times earlier in the rollout. I haven't seen a case for a couple of years or so. Things can occasionally go wrong that aren't detected at the time but of course that then requires further engineer attention.

Also if all goes to plan whats the quickest way of getting the plusnet account up and running as it looks like i will be without internet for at least a day. How does it work? Can you call them to speed up the process once OR have completed the work?

What makes you think there will be that long a loss of service? Are you seeing "by midnight on Day+1" where "Day" is the date of the engineer visit? That's just a cockup in the information - the midnight is that immediately following 23:59 on "Day". In other words, "Day+1" starts at midnight and ends at 23:59:59.

Your service should stop at the point the engineer does the cabinet work. Once he finishes at your premises then as far as Openreach and BT Wholesale are concerned the job is complete. However the notification to Plusnet may be later. You may need to contact Plusnet to make sure the FTTC has been activated on your account. I think the phone will work throughout except when the engineer is doing the cabinet and master socket work.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What makes you think there will be that long a loss of service?

Because OR is booked for the morning of the 27/4 and +net are saying in my order tracker that it will be active the following day. Yep ok i will just call them after OR have finished, thanks.

Edited by bIOforger (Wed 22-Apr-15 00:08:59)

In reply to a post by bIOforger:

ok i will just call them after OR have finished, thanks.

You might not even need to do that, it might just work, mine did.

All done

The job was pretty painless all together, it took a couple of hours all in.

The OR guy turned up promptly, plied him with tea n biscuits, discussed all the options i wanted and he was open to them all. We both decided on option 2. So he relocated the master to the extension in the end with the new i-plate, pinned the data cable on some skirting boards and through a couple of walls to a new data socket in my PC room, so both the modem n router are located there. We both decided going external wasn't a good idea due to limited access down one side of the house, which i knew might be an issue.

Before all that he also tried plugging the OR modem straight into my existing ADSL extension which sync'd at 29/9 on his test socket kit, which as i suspected would be pretty bad as the extension is using cheap phone cable.

So end results are; I'm sync'd at 53/11. The initial ookla speedtest results are 43/11 which is a bit below what i expected (falls in between the BT impacted scale) but its good enough for me seeing as I've been stuck on 4.5MB ADSL forever.

Hopefully that will increase a bit in the "10 day" learning period. I'm approximately 4-500m from the cabinet, this is just a rough guess as i have no idea how the cabling is routed to my house, it could well be more. In which case i believe my sync speed is pretty good?

Kasg you were right, internet was immediately available as soon as we plugged the router in, i left it for 15mins as per instructed.

Thanks again to everyone on this thread for their advice and help.

The BT Wholesale estimator give connection (sync) speeds, not throughput (speedtest) ones.

Don't mess with the connection hoping to improve it until at least Wednesday. However, it is quite likely it will go slower rather than faster anyway. Even under the mythical 10-day training on ADSLx it was designed to start as fast as possible and decrease if necessary.

Yep absolutely, i'm not touching anything, its flying along nicely.

So do you think 43/11 is about right for 4-500m from the cabinet. Taking into account the copper into and inside my house is from the 80's.

5MB/s is just awesome Loving this so far.

In reply to a post by bIOforger:

So do you think 43/11 is about right for 4-500m from the cabinet. Taking into account the copper into and inside my house is from the 80's.

It's on the low side but not massively so. Your estimates are rather lower than for my (roughly 450m) line but you are still at the bottom half of even your "impacted" estimate so I'd be a little disappointed. As RobertoS says, it won't normally get any better, it starts high and goes down.

Edit: I've just seen your sync is 53/11, not 43/11, so not as bad as I made out. Have you checked your Plusnet line speed?

Edited by kasg (Mon 27-Apr-15 16:17:49)