FTTP Install

I am considering upgrading to BT Full Fibre and have a few concerns about the installation.

My house is 25 years old, I am at the front of estate and all the services are underground. Across the street from me is the BT green box, it had an additional box added to the side of it a few years ago.

How would BT get the FTTP cable into my house? Under the stairs is my BT master socket and also my fuse box which has a conduit coming up in it (i.e. all in the middle of my house). Can BT push another cable through somehow and bring it out at the current master socket? I want to have some idea of how much tearing up BT would have to do prior to signing up for anything. The one potential good point is that the master socket is on a wall that backs onto an integral garage and I expect that would be an easy route to come in from.

I am also quite precious about my landline phone number, a friend who worked for BT years ago got me an easy to remember number. If I do migrate to BT FTTP I believe I can take that number with me but what I am concerned about is if I subsequently leave BT will I be able to move it back to a normal phone line again - I realise this is a bit of a 'what length is a piece of string' question but maybe it is a case of once I start on this path there will be no coming back!

Thanks

Wasn't clear if the existing telephone cable comes in under the stairs via a underground duct or if it was your electric supply that comes through that duct.

Can you clarify? do you have links to any pictures?

Edited by deleted (Sat 28-Nov-20 12:09:55)

If the phone cable is in a duct, then that existing cable can be used to pull through the fibre which may also have a copper pair attached to it.

Whether the voice moves from the copper to digital voice depends on BT Consumer

I guess I could post a picture but there is nothing to show. The master socket is standard on a wall but there is no visible cable.
I vaguely remember when the house (and other houses around) was being built that a number of ducts came up close to each other, I suspect the phone duct came up straight into the master socket.

Ducts terminating inside buildings should be plugged to prevent liquid and gas ingress, if there isn't one visible I suspect the cable may not be ducted but direct buried. If you enter your details in the wholesale checker https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com there is usually a description of the FTTP connection method below the speed table when native FTTP is available.

As copper voice circuits are being phased out, supposedly over the next 5 or so years, there probably isn't much scope for going back in future. However you may want to consider separating voice (via VoIP) and broadband delivery as BT currently have no mechanism to migrate out the phone number whilst maintaining a broadband service, and I don't think all providers yet have systems in place to do FTTP to FTTP migration, let alone FTTP + digital voice.

Also with BT Residential you have no option other to use their Superhub2 as the analogue + DECT phone adapter is integral.

I had fttp installed at the start of this year. I had an existing (long unused) copper line coming into my wiring/coat cupboard, disappearing behind some skirting and presumably emerging into a wall mounted master. The copper emerged from a black pipe ducting ~5cm in diameter. House was built/refurbed ~15 years agor

I had a two stage installation (both with the same OR engineer). On the first visit he pulled fibre directly from the outside node through the ducting and left a spool of fibre. On the second he installed the ONT and provisioned the fttp service. (I subsequently had various visits from other OR people to provision the existing copper line.)

Neighbours of mine who had fibre installed at around the same time had a similar experience - fibre pulled though existing ducting

I use the wiring cupboard as a mini home lab housing router/NVR, server, music server, NASs etc, with cat 6 going around the house from there

In reply to a post by tallseabird:

I guess I could post a picture but there is nothing to show. The master socket is standard on a wall but there is no visible cable.
I vaguely remember when the house (and other houses around) was being built that a number of ducts came up close to each other, I suspect the phone duct came up straight into the master socket.

Are you sure there are no BT type box connections on the outside walls of your property (maybe hidden behind a large bush), Its true that ducts need to be sealed if they come up inside a property to prevent gas/water ingression but if you can't see where the cable enters your property its hard for us to comment on how Openreach will provision your fttp service. Has anyone you know on your estate got fttp? if so would it be worth chating with them to see what Openreach did for them.

I lived in a couple of new builds (2004-ish) on an estate and the master sockets were in the middle of the house, but there was still a grey BT duct coming out the ground and terminating by the front door - it's just that the cable ran inside the wall from this point to the master socket.

At a guess your install would involve drilling through the wall and then clipping the fibre cable internally to the point where the ONT was to be installed.

but if you could manage to run some 20mm trunking from any outside connection box (if fitted) then i am sure OR would thank you and use it

FTTP doesn't connect to any external green street boxes like the copper pair would.

Odds are you will have some grey external capping on the outside of your property like this here https://i.postimg.cc/G20b83wN/20180105-101756.jpg There will be a 2.5 inch duct there and like in that picture they'll pull the fibre cable through this as you can see in this picture.

They will then install a new ONT (white box on the wall) inside your property. This is totally independent of your existing phone sockets and can be installed at another location, as the fibre has nothing to do with the phone points, which are copper.

With the current Covid-19 restrictions, the new ONT will need to be on an external wall and near power. The Openreach engineer shouldn't be running any cables through your property right now, as they are only doing minimum work within the property itself. If you are in a mid terrace property, and the feed is at the front of the house, they won't run it all through the house to get it to a rear room, it would need to be installed in a ground floor front room. They won't work upstairs right now or in lofts etc either, unless you are very lucky to get an engineer who decides to do this. This might vary depending on the current Covid tier your property goes into next week.

There is nothing stopping you running a good quality ethernet cable from the ONT location to your preferred location of the router if you wanted to do so however, as your router will connect to the new ONT via a standard ethernet cable only.

Hope that helps