BT Full Fibre supplied equipment.

Evening all.

After an absolute nightmare with BT and Openreach, they have both finally agreed that Fibre is actually available to us since the cabling was installed in the street a couple of months ago.

This will me, they turn up, rip out the copper cabling and install the fibre direct to a port in the house. What they are not telling me, is what equipment is going to be installed in the house.

We are still on the FTTC but only hitting 29-35Mbps at the moment, and we've been told 1650 Mbps is to be expected (happy with that!)

I have a Billion 8800AXL at the moment doing the Modem work, with that hopping over to my Asus RT AX88U which is dealing with DHCP and alike.

Anyone know what "Smart Hub" I'm likely to get, or ONT and which will be the better method of routing in the house?

Happy to wave bye to the Billion, not so the Asus.

Many thanks in advance.

Rick.

The fibre, if/when ordered, will be fitted without, in the most part, removal of the existing copper.

There WILL be an ONT fitted giving you an ethernet connection to which ever router you plan to use.

In reply to a post by mr2gti:

We are still on the FTTC but only hitting 29-35Mbps at the moment, and we've been told 1650 Mbps is to be expected (happy with that!)

They must be referring to the future trial of 1.8G service.

In reply to a post by mr2gti:

I have a Billion 8800AXL at the moment doing the Modem work, with that hopping over to my Asus RT AX88U which is dealing with DHCP and alike.

Anyone know what "Smart Hub" I'm likely to get, or ONT and which will be the better method of routing in the house?

They will install an ONT which takes the role of the modem, and the router plugs into that. The ONT is owned and managed by Openreach.

Whether you can keep using your existing router or not depends on who you are buying your FTTP service from and exactly what service you're taking.

If you are buying from BT, *and* you are keeping your phone number through BT, then you will have to use the BT-supplied Smarthub. This is because the voice service can *only* provided through their router. It's locked down so you can't get it any other way.

If you don't care about the phone service, or you're buying FTTP without voice, then you can just plug in your existing router, and leave the smarthub in its box (I have a vague memory of a change in T&Cs that it is not your property any more, and you'll have to return it at the end of the contract - but I'm not sure if that was BT or some other ISP I was reading about)

If you are buying from BT and want to keep your existing phone number but *not* use the Smarthub, then you'll need to port your number to a third-party VOIP provider. It then becomes independent of the broadband and can be used anywhere (including elsewhere in the country, or even abroad). But to do that, you have to get the sequencing right, to avoid losing either your phone number or your FTTP service. What you have to do is:

1. Order FTTP without voice, from any provider of your choice, as a separate service. That is, you must leave the existing FTTC+voice running in parallel.
2. At the same time, set yourself up with a VOIP account and test it. They'll generally provide you with a temporary number for this.
3. Once this is all working, instruct your VOIP provider to port over your original number
4. Once the port completes, it will automatically cease the FTTC+phone service on the copper. You don't need to notify the provider.

It might be a pain, but once you've done it once, you're set for life - all future broadband migrations won't have any effect on your voice service. The important thing is, *don't* give notice of termination to BT, and don't order FTTP from BT as a migration of your existing service.

Yep if you go with BT, the smarthub isn't your to keep anymore and needs to be sent back at the end of the service.

In reply to a post by mr2gti:

We are still on the FTTC but only hitting 29-35Mbps at the moment, and we've been told 1650 Mbps is to be expected (happy with that!)


Rick.

its upto 1000/110 for consumers(currently in 40/80/150/330/500 and 1000 tiers - theres probably a few more too) and if you want the 1000/220 product you would need need to go with business orientated isp/package. There is 1.2gbps and 1.8gbps packages coming .

Some fantastic info in here. We're getting the phones so it will mean the Smart Hub too, but that'll be where the fun begins I guess as want my Asus to deal with the traffic.

It all happens on the 26th, so the fun starts there.

In reply to a post by mr2gti:

We are still on the FTTC but only hitting 29-35Mbps at the moment, and we've been told 1650 Mbps is to be expected (happy with that!)

Ah that might be how they are selling Openreach's 1800 Mbps service. Thanks for the heads up!

This.

Just had my FTTP 900 installed on Friday. Engineer arrives and as soon as he gets out of the van he notices our pole doesn't have fibre fitted to it.

Walks down to the next one on the opposite side of our house (both are equidistant) which is fitted for fibre.

End result, I now have two cables from two different poles going to my house. The old copper line may be reused in the future by the next resident, he said.

Take FTTC on the copper and you have full redundancy with diverse routing! (*)

(*) Unless the fibre from the cabinet goes to the same fibre aggregation node as the splitter on the other pole

Currently I also have VM 1gig running simultaneously while I evaluate the FTTP.

Here's a thing (related to the above mention of a 1.8g service). Is the ONT's port capable of delivering more than one gigabit?