In reply to a post by bsdnazz:

If this is a residential FTTP product it's probably using GPON which can have contention ratios of up to 1:128 and each port is good for 2.5Gb/s

Nope. It's business.

In reply to a post by Josser:

In reply to a post by jpm:

That all sounds positive, hopefully you get a real Openreach engineer with a Nokia 4-port ONT. Don't sign off on the job being completed if they show up with the same one you have and it doesn't improve anything, push back so they mark the task as not completed and then maybe someone else can have a look.

Is it only the Nokia 4-port that will suffice? Are the Huawei and Nokia the only options they offer or are there others? I will certainly say no to another Huawei (and I was very clear on the phone to BT that an upgrade is needed, not a replacement) but are there other makes/models they might install that will also do the job?

Openreach have had 4 vendors for FTTP. They are ECI, Huawei, Nokia and ADTRAN.
They provide the ONT for the home and at the other end of the fibre the OLT in the exchange.

Most vendors want their ONTs to connect to their OLT's and the OLT's are configured as such.

They dropped ECI long ago and haven't installed ECI kit in exchanges for coming on a decade, if not slightly longer.
Did to political pressure they dropped Huawei from new deployments but there remains a very large proportion of Huawei kit in the exchange.

Nokia and Adtran are the 2 current vendors for new deployments.

They install Adtran ONTs for Adtran equipment (OLT's) in the exchange, and Nokia ONT's for Nokia OLT's.

Due to the large amount of Huawei kit already installed in almost every fibre exchange (aka head-end exchange) they cut a deal with Huawei where Huawei would do some kind of licensing allowing Nokia ONT's to be installed in customers homes to connect to Huawei OLT's.
AFAIK no such deal exists with Huawei and Adtran ONT's.

So new FTTP installs will be either...
Nokia ONT on existing Huawei OLT in the exchange
Nokia ONT on Nokia OLT in the exchange
Adtran ONT on Astra OLT in the exchange

If Huawei had remained an active vendor they would/could have delivered Open reach a more capable ONT but as it stands the only 4 port they provided Open reach was picked long before gigabit services were being sold.

So the only option for replacing a Huawei ONT is a Nokia ONT.

In reply to a post by bsdnazz:

If this is a residential FTTP product it's probably using GPON which can have contention ratios of up to 1:128 and each port is good for 2.5Gb/s

When testing both lines they may well be contending with each other!

GPON can have 1:128 splits but Openreach don't use above 1:32, usually deployed with a maximum of 30 lines on the 32 split with 2 kept as spares.

There's no difference in the splits between residential/business on Openreach GEA-FTTP.

Interesting. Presumably it's still a 2.5Gb/s port that up to 30 lines could be connected to. So self contention could still be an issue.

At work we have two 1Gb/s leased lines which are a lot more expensive than FTTP but we do get 1Gb/s on each at the same time as there is no contention on the fibers. It also helps that one fiber is with Openreach and the other with Virgin.

OK. Just when it was going so well...

Openreach engineer turned up but the job he'd been assigned was to fix a fault, not upgrade the ONT. So nothing has changed on the ONT bandwidth front.

Before I go any further, I'm not going to get into any BT or Openreach bashing because I have to say that everyone I've talked to has really tried to help. That's not always been the case with past experience of BT but, this time, I can't fault the attitude of all those involved. Without me asking, the engineer went away to get more information about the issue from his supervisor and other engineers and was then happy to speak to the BT person I had on the phone and enlighten him. The issue seems to be trying to get a slightly non-standard request to be correctly handled by 'the system'. In another life I was a BT employee so I know what sort of monster 'the system' is.

Let me give a bit more detail given to me by the Openreach engineer and BT; it might prove useful to others...

The only option BT seem to have for this issue is to raise a fault even though what is needed is an upgrade to equipment, not the fixing of the fault. As far as OR are concerned, there is no fault so when they turn up there's nothing they can do (unless you're lucky enough to have an engineer who has Nokia ONTs on the van, in which case he might install it simply to clear the job). The OR engineer told me that in my area - the south east - there are only 4 engineers trained to install the Nokia ONTs and they're the only ones with Nokia ONTs on their vans. He also told me that what the engineer needs to see is a B1 ONT MODIFY job (i.e. the provision of an ONT upgrade), not a fault fix. He also said that Openreach aren't making that type of job available to CPs (communications providers) - BT in this case - until mid May. Until that time, the only way you get your ONT upgraded in this situation is to be lucky enough to have an engineer who has Nokia ONTs and is willing to do a favour, or you can raise a complaint which might circumvent the normal process.

After the engineer had left, the BT person almost insisted on raising a complaint to get this fixed. So I'm expecting a call from a complaint handler next week.

So although BT sales might be offering services that 'the system' can't always provide, I'm not unhappy with the situation. I have 2 lines both running at 900Mbps, just not at the same time! That's a fair old jump from the 300Mbps I had a few weeks ago. And BT genuinely seem to be trying to resolve the situation. Once the new job type is made available by Openreach in May, this situation might cease to be a problem.

Anyway, I hope this proves helpful to someone. And I'll post an update when I hear back from BT next week.

David

In reply to a post by Josser:

The OR engineer told me that in my area - the south east - there are only 4 engineers trained to install the Nokia ONTs and they're the only ones with Nokia ONTs on their vans.

Nothing special about installing a Nokia ONT. Can't see why it would require any different training. Connect fibre, scan serial number barcode, register, ONT commissioned.

It's not standard for engineers to have 4 port ONT's in their van but they only install Nokia or Adtran ONT's now.

If only 4 engineers are installing Nokia ONT's what are the rest of them doing?

The ispreview article i saw on this, suggested that there was an upgrade fee to have the four port ont, i would if they do say there will be a fee to push back on it. As your install was a bit of a mess. The fact that the may install time and charge was known for at least three weeks shows lack of understanding from your account manager!

Another update...

BT have raised a complaint which, they say, will allow them to bypass the normal system and get the right job assigned to the right engineer. Appointment booked for 10th May. I'll let you know how it goes.

How easy ( or difficult ) would it be to provide a second fibre from the CBT to the CSP and from the CSP to the ONT location ? if relatively simple they may elect to re provide the second service independently of the existing multi port ONT , on its own single port ONT , maybe not as easy as swapping the existing Huawei ONT for a Nokia one , but may be the solution if trying to procuring a Nokia 4 port ONT proves to be impossible

The issue here seems to be that 'the system' doesn't allow a relatively simple Openreach job to be correctly generated. Swapping a Huawei ONT for a Nokia one seems to be a simple job if it's assigned to an engineer who carries them. BT's only option seems to be to raise a fault. However, that doesn't guarantee that the engineer who turns up will have a Nokia ONT because any engineer should be able to fix my 'fault' regardless of what ONTs they carry.

What the BT complaint guy told me is that the complaint system allows them to bypass the system to some extent. So the plan is to raise a fault and plan the appointment a little way in the future and then, in the time before that appointment, speak directly with Openreach to give them the necessary information to ensure the engineer who turns up knows exactly what the issue is and has the necessary Nokia ONT.

Sounds like a plan, and should be simpler than running more fibre to the premises and installing additional ONTs.

We shall see. The appointment is booked for 10th May. Watch this space!