FTTH/FTTP self cabling

Hi there - I currently have a FTTC VDSL connection which is fine but I am looking forward to my exchange being enabled for FTTH/FTTP.

I am in the middle of doing some renovations to my house which involve moving all my media/internet equipment into the basement and distributing via LAN cables throughout the house.

I am burying cables from the outside of the house down into the basement including Ethernet and co-ax but ideally I'd also like to incorporate a fibre cable so that, when the service becomes available, the ISP would just need to connect their drop cable from the street to the cable that I had already run into the basement.

The problem is that there appears to be a large number of cable types (http://www.fibrefab.com/products/cables/) and ideally I'd want to choose the cable that BT Openreach/other ISPs actually use.

Does anyone here have any experience of this?
thanks!

Won't work. Openreach won't just tag onto the end of something you've installed.


The best thing you can do is to put the ducting in place with a rope so that cabling can be pulled through if needs be if and when Fibre to the home becomes available to you however I wouldn't get your hopes up of it happening any time in the next decade if you already have FTTC.

Lee

That (your suggestion of putting a cable/rope down the ducting to help with pulling though a future cable) is actually a great idea. It's less expensive and I can do that straight away.

I will however delude myself and ignore your pessimism about FTTP (although you're probably right)!

thanks

LOL maybe I can do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abPDWi9i1SQ

Just leave the pull rope there.

Complete waste of time putting in a fibre cable, hoping that OR will connect it up to their network - they won't for a whole list of reasons...

Have a look at this as it may help and be of interest - https://www.ournetwork.openreach.co.uk/resources/sit...

May I suggest a pull wire.

I put a pull rope into a long 50mm duct, with other cables, about 8 years ago.

When I came to need to use it to pull an additional cable through it had been eaten through by mice!

I still haven't solved the problem, but it looks as if I am going to have to dig a new trench.

NJSS

if you can blow a very thin string through with a vac in reverse you could use that to pull a bigger rope through . but only when ready as you may just feed more mice!

And if your duct has mice problems they have been known to eat through fibre too

In reply to a post by NJSS:

May I suggest a pull wire.
...
When I came to need to use it to pull an additional cable through it had been eaten through by mice!

Its probably wise to install a seal/plug at each end, as well as having the draw rope.

Openreach certainly mention them in the developer's guide.

I bought some small tapered bungs on ebay to do just that.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

The best thing you can do is to put the ducting in place with a rope so that cabling can be pulled through if needs be if and when Fibre to the home becomes available to you however I wouldn't get your hopes up of it happening any time in the next decade if you already have FTTC.

I would make sure that the trunking is large enough to accept any connectors that may be on the end of the cable.

If the lead in has an end fitted, then just put the other end through ?

Yes, but certainly in the case of Gigaclear the cables have connectors on both ends. That way the installation can be done without special tools.

How long is the duct?
I've managed to push a bit of nice stiff coax through 30m of similar sized duct or as already suggested, blowing air through duct it's amazing how far it will carry string which you can then use to pull in a bigger rope. Have also seen people using vacuum cleaners to suck string through a duct and that can work well too.

Tie a piece of cotton wool or even kitchen roll to a piece of string and then suck it through with a vacuum cleaner, it works very well.

Edited by R0NSKI (Sat 07-Jan-17 20:05:15)

If you do put in some form of draw rope/wire; and you may after FTTPing, want to draw in additional cables, make the draw rope.wire about 2.25 times the length of the duct/pipe, so that it can be drawn back, before attempting the next cable.

If you make it significantly less, you can't pull it back to the starting position for the next cable - except by pulling back the (first/previous) cable.

Or just pull in a new draw rope with the new cable , thats what our guys do.