Just wanting to understand a bit more about how the whole system works...

The Wholesale product essentially directs customer traffic to an ISPs gateway? Are there additional bandwidth costs payable for this leg? And what physical connection to the OR network does the ISP have to have to receive that traffic? And are there other links in the chain I have missed?

I understand that from the point of hitting the ISPs network the traffic becomes their responsibility with costs etc.

This is purely for curiosity.

Hi 'Account Manager',
To confirm how genuine you are, can you confirm

1) Will you honour my FTTPOD quote- for £90/month (3yr contract)- I have the PDF quote
2) May I pay the installation charge (£4200 inc vat) via credit card (I actually offered just to pay £100 on card and rest via transfer but the account manager spoke to 'directors' who said this is not possible- I have the emails)

I am a business user.
I happy for TBB admin to see the quote/ verify this transaction.

I don't mind posting a review of the process for TBB and its users.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

throw in a suitable ONT SFP and you could in theory junk the Openreach provided ONT too. You don't get any WiFi but the Juniper solution does not have that either.

Whilst it may be technically possible, Openreach will not allow the use of a non-Openreach branded/supplied ONT on their FTTP service. Unlike xDSL services, the serial number of the hardware (ONT) is linked to your FTTP service - the Openreach Engineer scans the barcode on the ONT to activate it.

Sure somewhat similar to when ADSL and then VDSL where first launched. However you are now free to use your own modem for both those technologies. One expects that the same will apply to ONT's in the future. Who actually makes the Openreach supplied ONT?

Let's face it you can order them from FibreStore (the goto place for compatible optics at fractions of the price of vendor optics)

http://www.fs.com/c/pon-transceivers-2845

I an sure it won't be long before they offer one that can be programmed to emulate an Openreach ONT. However all the major vendors now do an ONT in an SFP product, so whoever does the the ONT will likely offer the same thing in an SFP format. Given a SFP based ONT's come in at under 2W power having a separate box is not good for the environment in addition to being an unnecessary clutter.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

throw in a suitable ONT SFP and you could in theory junk the Openreach provided ONT too. You don't get any WiFi but the Juniper solution does not have that either.

Whilst it may be technically possible, Openreach will not allow the use of a non-Openreach branded/supplied ONT on their FTTP service. Unlike xDSL services, the serial number of the hardware (ONT) is linked to your FTTP service - the Openreach Engineer scans the barcode on the ONT to activate it.

Sure somewhat similar to when ADSL and then VDSL where first launched. However you are now free to use your own modem for both those technologies. One expects that the same will apply to ONT's in the future. Who actually makes the Openreach supplied ONT?

Let's face it you can order them from FibreStore (the goto place for compatible optics at fractions of the price of vendor optics)

http://www.fs.com/c/pon-transceivers-2845

I an sure it won't be long before they offer one that can be programmed to emulate an Openreach ONT. However all the major vendors now do an ONT in an SFP product, so whoever does the the ONT will likely offer the same thing in an SFP format. Given a SFP based ONT's come in at under 2W power having a separate box is not good for the environment in addition to being an unnecessary clutter.

One of the main reasons why Openreach won't let you use a third party ONT is because the installed ONT is usually in a fixed location (typically a wall) where the fixed EZ-bend fibre cable terminates at. You can't just place the ONT on any surface and have the fibre cable all over the place willy nilly like you can with a RJ11 cable. The fibre connector terminating at the ONT is NOT designed to be repeatedly removed and reconnected, ie its a lot more delicate than your typical RJ11 lead. I have the Huawei HG8240 ONT installed by Openreach, though I believe OR also install other models of their ONT.

I guess you *might* be able use a third party ONT if someone managed to hack into the existing Openreach one to get all the settings which you can then transfer over to the new ONT but as very few people have Openreach FTTP installed, this hasn't been done.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

I guess you *might* be able use a third party ONT if someone managed to hack into the existing Openreach one to get all the settings which you can then transfer over to the new ONT but as very few people have Openreach FTTP installed, this hasn't been done.

Yea, I guess you would need to be able to hack your own modem for your personal settings due to gpon transmitting/ONT receiving, all users data, AES encrypted and the ONT de-crypting just your own subset.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

You can't just place the ONT on any surface and have the fibre cable all over the place willy nilly like you can with a RJ11 cable. The fibre connector terminating at the ONT is NOT designed to be repeatedly removed and reconnected, ie its a lot more delicate than your typical RJ11 lead.

In Spain they don't seem to mind - in the villa I stayed in last month the yellow optical fibre cable came out of a hole in the wall, trailled along the floor and then plugged into the Huawei hg8247h ONT sitting on a kitchen table. Needless to say the yellow cable had cuts in the covering and parts of it were taped up! Still worked fine though.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

One of the main reasons why Openreach won't let you use a third party ONT is because the installed ONT is usually in a fixed location (typically a wall) where the fixed EZ-bend fibre cable terminates at. You can't just place the ONT on any surface and have the fibre cable all over the place willy nilly like you can with a RJ11 cable. The fibre connector terminating at the ONT is NOT designed to be repeatedly removed and reconnected, ie its a lot more delicate than your typical RJ11 lead. I have the Huawei HG8240 ONT installed by Openreach, though I believe OR also install other models of their ONT.

I have been working with fibre optic cable now for over a decade in my job. The idea that your Kevlar reinforced patch cable is some ultra delicate snowflake is simply nonsense. It just is not the case, period. The sensible thing to do would be terminate the incoming fibre into a box with say an SC or LC coupler (though for some reason ONT's seem to have standardized on SC). If Openreach are not doing this then they need their heads examining, followed by a thorough beating with a clue stick. I would never dream of terminating any structured fibre with a plug so it can be plugged directly into something in a data centre so why you would do it in a customers premises is completely beyond me.

Personally I would just coil the EZ-bend fibre cable up and terminate it in a box with a SC-SC coupler and then if one where to damage the patch lead, I could swap it out for a new one. Heck a 10m simplex single mode SC-SC cable is £1.80 at fibrestore and the single mode SC-SC simplex coupler is 18p and marketed for FTTH. This stuff costs buttons, in fact less than buttons these days.

I also notice that fibrestore for less than £10 will sell you a splitter for your FTTP connection. Admittedly you would need to blow some more on LC-SC adapters, but if you know what your are doing you can easily snoop on all the other downstream traffic on your "branch" if you wanted so hopefully it's all encrypted.

Oh and while FTTP might be rare in the UK the ONT's are using standards that are also used elsewhere in the world, and a quick Google suggests that hacking the serial number of a SFP ONT is already going on. Looks like these SFP ONT's are running embedded Linux Like I said it won't be long before some vendor provides an SFP ONT that you can easily change the serial number on so that SN or SN+password based authentication is can be hacked to other devices. The reality is that people with the skills to do this are going to be among the first to actually get FTTP, so trying to be restrictive about it is not going to get you very far.