New Build with Older ONT

Hi all
Seen a new build apartment that was completed last year that I may be moving to next month and surprisingly it had the old style ONT with Battery Backup unit.
Will this affect my ability to upgrade to a new 1G Down and 1G Upload product once they start to roll it out?

If the development took a few years to complete, then its possible the developer obtained some of the last BBU style ONTs from Openreach. I have one of those with a 1+1 Huawei ONT. Not long after my service commenced in 2019 they were officially retired.

In any event they wont support symmetric 1G/1G service. No Opnearch ONT supports this as Openreach FTTP network is purely GPON based, not symmetric and only offer up to 1000/220 service.

If and when Openreach decide to upgrade their network to XGS-PON only then will symmetric services be offered - and a replacement ONT would be needed for any properties in an enabled exchange erea - again not that there is currently any known timescale or any announcements on that, bedside a limited trial which completed a while ago.

I suspect they might skip XGS-PON all together and move to the 25Gbps PON standard going through the standards process right now. Would give them the option of a very lightly contended symmetric 1Gbps or more likely a slightly more contended 2.5Gbps symmetric option.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

If and when Openreach decide to upgrade their network to XGS-PON only then will symmetric services be offered - and a replacement ONT would be needed for any properties in an enabled exchange erea.

And only those properties taking XGS-PON based services need a replacement ONT. GPON and XGS-PON (and 25G for that matter) can coexist happily on the same fibre and splitter, so users who are served sufficiently by GPON will not be affected.

I don't expect GPON to be retired for a very long time, so long as the vast majority of users are on baseline 40/10 or 80/20 products.

Ah makes sense.

Agreed and if Openreach can figure out the least disruptive way to migrate those on the speed constrained ECI based OLT estate, is likely more of an imperative.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

I suspect they might skip XGS-PON all together and move to the 25Gbps PON standard going through the standards process right now. Would give them the option of a very lightly contended symmetric 1Gbps or more likely a slightly more contended 2.5Gbps symmetric option.

Indeed all possible but very much crystal ball stuff and dependant on mass volume price points. At some stage XGS-PON cards and ONTs will hit the same price point as GPON which is now dirt cheap.

The complimentary GPON, XGS-PON family (ITU-T G.984/G.9807 based) standard for 50G-PON is currently going through ITU ratification. When that’s done Nokia will no doubt show that off to their customers as the 2.5 -> 10 -> 50 upgrade path.

Then Nokia were lab testing single wavelength 100G-PON with Vodafone back in February...

Did it have the battery pack installed, or was it just a larger Huawei ONT in the case with space for the battery pack?

In reply to a post by jpm:

Did it have the battery pack installed, or was it just a larger Huawei ONT in the case with space for the battery pack?

and surprisingly it had the old style ONT with Battery Backup unit.

It would seem to say that the BBU was already there. It might even be an elusive Huwawei four port ONT

In reply to a post by jpm:

Did it have the battery pack installed, or was it just a larger Huawei ONT in the case with space for the battery pack?

Didn't get time to open it but the case was the standard cases with space for both. You're right could be just older ONT without BBU as they no longer provide digital voice like that.

That's what I got for FTTPoD in 2019: a 1+1 ONT, which the engineer installed in the large square outer case for neatness (it has space to curl up excess fibre), but with no BBU inside.

The front is in two parts, both of which are hinged: you just pull on the right hand side and it swings open.

If in one of those cases, it won’t be a four port jobbie, and as mentioned, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s a BBU in there either

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

If in one of those cases, it won’t be a four port jobbie, and as mentioned, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s a BBU in there either

Yeah maybe.
Wont know for sure until I move in haha

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

If in one of those cases, it won’t be a four port jobbie, and as mentioned, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s a BBU in there either

Even if there were, it wouldn't make much difference. No new services are being provisioned on the ONT telephony ports, and your ONT isn't really any use without a router (*). If you have a UPS for the router, you may as well power the ONT from it as well.

(*) OK, technically you could connect your laptop directly to the ONT and run a PPPoE client. I don't think many people would be bothered with that in the middle of a power outage.

Its annoying that majority of FTTP is OpenReach as CityFiber in some places do symmetric speeds.

It’ll come in time. It’s hardly like current FTTP upload speeds are anaemic; why would you need faster at this moment in time? Would you rather they pause the rollout and say they’ll star again when XGS-PON is the cheaper option or have the service now with an upgrade path in the future?

In reply to a post by nekr0mant1k:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

If in one of those cases, it won’t be a four port jobbie, and as mentioned, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s a BBU in there either

Yeah maybe.
Wont know for sure until I move in haha

If there's no actual BBU unit installed in the larger case, the larger case is pretty much redundant. So if you want a smaller neater thing hung on the wall, you can carefully remove the ONT from the larger case and mount it on its own on the wall.