Getting FTTP in a flat

My block has just had FTTP installed and i'm due for installation on the 21st July

I have a small white box which is outside the front door which they will run fibre from I'm assuming. My ONT needs to go in the living room which is some distance away from the entry. I assume the cable will need run along the skirtings and then drilled through into the living room as it won't fit through the door? Is the cabling unobtrusive? I've gone to great lengths to hide cables in walls etc so will be disappointed if it looks like the old telephone cables.

Can the cable be run to the living room via the outside wall as I think that would probably be the engineers first choice.

A MDU (multiple dwelling unit) next to me was wired over the last few days. They used "invisiwire" which is very thin and unobtrusive .Make sure the Openreach engineer uses this--the engineer next door told me it is often utilised in MDU's

Best
Phil

In reply to a post by ian72:

Can the cable be run to the living room via the outside wall as I think that would probably be the engineers first choice.

That would be my first choice but it's absolutely not a possibility. The cable terminates outside my front door and there's no way our factoring company would allow the cable to be taken back outside and directly into the living room. Also not convinced it would be any less work actually. Certainly the distance travelled would be greater and would probably involving them drilling through an external wall to take it outside, running the cable right round the block and then back in through the wall where my living room is.

The installation of fibre to our block was overseen by open reach and involved access points being fitted at the entry to each of the flats.

Edited by deleted (Fri 09-Jul-21 16:11:01)

In reply to a post by westlodge:

A MDU (multiple dwelling unit) next to me was wired over the last few days. They used "invisiwire" which is very thin and unobtrusive .Make sure the Openreach engineer uses this--the engineer next door told me it is often utilised in MDU's

Best
Phil

Yeah i'd looked up MDU installations and I'd hoped it was invisiwire they would be using. It looks very thin and can be glued in place?

‘Invisilight’ surely ?

The installation of fibre to our block was overseen by open reach and involved access points being fitted at the entry to each of the flats.

A multi fibre cable is run from the floor DP node, or direct from the splitter. As this cable passes through each of the little junction/splice boxes outside each flat, the cables sheathing is removed to provide access to the multiple fibres inside which are individually coloured for identification purposes. The routing information on the install will identify the colour to be used, and the invisilight is then either spliced on, or in some cases has a nasty s/c to s/c coupling affair. The fibre is then glued into position on top of skirtings and door frames to reach its final location by the ONT. Discreet formers are used for bend radius protection, and premade micro tubes can be used where the fibre passes through walls to stop the risk of sagging in voids.

So, for instance, flat one gets fibre 1/blue, flat two/fibre 2/orange etc, etc so all fibres pass through the junction boxes, but they may not all get back to the next node.

If not already lit, then a light source will be applied at the ONT end, and this iced though to the splitter.

At least that’s how it *ought* to work.

Experience of some flats round this way, where Openreach had provided the fibre to the splitters, but the rest had been done by contractors working for the developers was far less satisfactory.

The common issue was that the invisilight fibre into the flats had been fitted by ham fisted morons … with multiple breaks in the fibres, or such high light loss readings, you couldn’t get a steady PON light.

The usual fix was to re run in eezee bend, often from ONT all the way back to the splitter. Not pretty, but at least it worked.

I feel sure/hope that things have improved .

Thanks for that info. They’ve done things a little bit strangely in our flats. There’s some wood panelling at the end of one of the corridors in each stairwell which can be removed and all of the junction boxes for every flat on each floor are placed behind that. They’re all within a couple of feet of each other.. They’re numbered so they know which is which. Luckily the boxes are all just outside my flat but for other flats there would be a bit of travel before it gets to their front door. I can’t see the fibre coming into the block so assume everything is fed through an entry point and up the risers.