Infinity install - engineer visit?

Fibre is finally here, 9 months late but due to the BT black Friday offer, i couldn't refuse. I only went with the 38Mb service but i'm wondering, does the install need an engineer visit?

It seems to suggest they will just send me the home hub 5 and i just plug it in.

I am switching from sky's adsl LLU service which gave me around 17-18Mbit.

I've read other posts about engineers visiting to set up the service and install a VDSL plate?

I noticed a new green cab going in during the summer, right next to the old cab. I looked on google maps and the cabinet is 600-650metres walking from my house. Does this give any indication of speed and will i sync at the highest possible speed on day 1 so i can see what is going to be possible for the future?

thanks

Infinity installs via bt retail are usually done without engineer visit.

My Infinity install (11 months ago) did have an engineer visit. I'd done a lot of preparatory work, so he really didn't have much more to do some line tests and install a vDSL interstitial faceplate to replace my ADSL faceplate. Almost certainly her didn't have to do even that as an ADSL plate (which is only a passive low pass filter) would probably have been fine.

I would certainly pay some attention to your internal wiring to optimise it for VDSL. In particular, I'd recommend central filtering of any voice-only extension lines. Hopefully they send a vDSL interstitial faceplate with self-installs, although I think the previous ADSL types will do the job too. If you do need an (unfiltered) extension for locating the router away from the master socket, then use twisted pair wire. I use a pair from a cat6 cable for that purpose (and I use three wires in the same cable for a filtered phone socket too). The latest interstitial plates have unfiltered connections for that very purpose.

nb. you are about 50-100m further from the cabinet than I am, and I sync at about 58mbps down, and 11mbps up. Strangely, it's about 1mbps faster now (in both directions) than a few months ago. Theory would say that it would go down in time as cross-talk increases with more users, but maybe there have been minor firmware of power masking tweaks at the cabinet end (my HH5 software hasn't changed since April).

It's very wise to go for the slower speed service in your case, as you might not have gained much with the faster. However, once it's installed, you will get a much better idea of what your line might achieve from the HH5 stats, especially the noise margin and attainable rate figures. Then you can judge if it's worth the upgrade. Also, if/when vectoring is rolled out, then you might well see the attainable download rate increase by perhaps 15mbps or so (very uncertain of the real world benefit at the moment).

In reply to a post by TheEulerID:

Hopefully they send a vDSL interstitial faceplate with self-installs ....

They don't.

That's a shame. Although I think they are readily available. I hope they provide advice on how to clean up any internal phone extension systems as just sticking microfilters on all the voice extensions hardly gets the best of things. Well, it's not great for ADSL either, but I think the impact is magnified with VDSL which (in my experience) is a bit more vulnerable to interference than ADSL2.

They don't

I assume they provide some advice. In fact it should have been done years ago for ADSL as it can make an enormous difference. I suppose if they mention the i-Plate it might go some way.

Have you noticed the Clean and Impacted lines on the BT Wholesale estimator? Self-install is almost guaranteed to be Impacted. Any complaints about speed, so long as it is above the minimum impacted gets a "Tough!"

Right, this is the ideal time to chip in (although it's slightly off-topic) - my mate has Infinity, and he had (whilst he personally was out) an engineer install, about a year ago. I think he had his girlfriend tell the engineer not to do anything, just ask if "his line was wired up" (i.e. the PCP and DSLAM), and he'd do the rest.

They'd previously got ADSL2+, and so would have had the stock microfilters fitted to all extensions... but I don't know exactly what the end arrangement was. What I do know is that he's always banging on about his broadband dropping out, and up until now, I've tried to ignore him. I also know that he moved his master socket... or at least, he re-wired his internals to a configuration which he understood meant moving it. Several of our mutual mates do work for BT so he may have had help; but none of them are installers, they work for whatever BT Exact is called now (Christ knows).

So; one fact we do know is that he has FTTC, specifically Infinity. If he has no IS but ADSL filters at every possible point, will that "work", but in a slightly sporadic way? And of course, here's the main question: If that is indeed the case, can an i-plate be installed at what is definitely identified as being the master socket, and then all ADSL microfilters can be thrown in the bin? The electronics recycling section of the local dump, of course.

I'm still on ADSL2+ here, and so am still all microfiltered up, and hadn't thought about his situation properly.

Edited by deleted (Sat 06-Dec-14 01:57:21)