Fibre to the premises in an apartment complex

Hi Folks

Ive moved to an apartment complex with FTC only at present- the nearby exchange is due a FTTP upgrade soon but how technically is FTTP managed in an apartment complex?- does fibre replace copper wiring only to the complex's 'switch room/ switch panel' with normal cat 5 cabling remaining in place to individual apartments or does fibre even replace this cabling ( which is all internal). I guess even if the former there would still be a substantial speed increase?

What are the options/ limitations? - will be seeking landlord permission in due course

Grateful for any advices

For Openreach (and many other fibre networks - there are around 100 other AltNets in the UK) they will bring fibre right to the door of the apartment. In some case they may leave it in the riser and then run out to individual flats at a later date. At one point, early doors, companies like Hyperoptic delivered FTTB (fibre to the basement effectively) and then reticulated to individual apartments using UTP (Cat 5e and the like) structured copper cabling.

Either way these days you should get fibre delivered directly right into to your individual apartment.

Fibre completely replaces any services delivered over copper. Openreach currently deploy a GPON-based FTTP network which allows them to deliver an end service of up to 1600 Mbps in the downstream direction. Other providers utilise XGS-PON which enable them to deliver currently services in the UK of up to 8000 Mbps symmetrically (both downstream and upstream).

Your landlord / building owner / managing agent - whomever holds the freehold rights will have to agree to a way leave agreement for any fibre to be installed. this is typically the thing which takes the longest to negotatioate and agree, so if you have any degree of leverage or powers of persuasion - start now!

Good luck 🤞

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Your landlord / building owner / managing agent - whomever holds the freehold rights will have to agree to a way leave agreement for any fibre to be installed. this is typically the thing which takes the longest to negotatioate and agree, so if you have any degree of leverage or powers of persuasion - start now!

Is this not the most crucial part of the process and which should be the first item of interest for the OP when the factors to be resolved are concerned? Would it be better at the top of the explanation as the technical points cannot be addressed without that being addressed?

The only difference I suppose between houses and MDU buildings is that you won't get point to point fibre installations in apartment blocks.

What you will get is PON (Passive Optical Network) and with Openreach it will be GPON and with the other Altnets it will be XGS-PON. This will be installed in the building somewhere in a control/care taking room. The rest of the Fibre cables will travel across all the apartments and floors.

As soon as you sign up to one of the Altnets an engineer will come and install a Fibre drop cable that enters to your flat and you have a choice where you want to install your ONT (Optical Network Termination) usually up to 10 meters into your flat. There is no copper and your existing Openreach copper cable is completely separated.

However, if you do get Virgin Media Nexfibre you won't get ONT but more of a Fibre cable directly plugged into a Hub 5X router.
Most of the Altnets will have 10Gbps symmetrical support though, they aren't yet offering such packages. But that Fibre will push speeds much higher than that in future if the PON gets upgraded. For example, if it was upgraded to 25G-PON you'll get 25Gbps and if it is 50G-PON you'll get 50Gbps. There is always room for such upgrades in future.

The only current limitation with the Altnets such as Community Fibre and Hyperoptic is that you are stuck with them only. You can't choose another ISP on that network. You are also stuck with CGNAT where if portforwarding is required you won't be able to open them. Perhaps, only in Community Fibre above 3Gbps has CGNAT removed. Not sure about the latest 2.5Gbps offerings.

Hyperoptic in the past were building only until the basement and the rest of the flats were fed with Cat5e cables. This gives a 1Gbps limitation. But nowadays Hyperoptic do install Fibre directly into the flats.

You will need to seek permission from your landlord and often you may have no say on what they decide to choose. I am a Hyperoptic Champion of my building here in Central London but my management did not agree with Hyperoptic but only agreed with Community Fibre and most recently with Virgin Media Nexfibre. I'm hoping to get Openreach in future but again, it doesn't entirely depend on me.

The choice you get is not dependent on your desires. You may want one provider but your landlord might agree for something else that you are not interested in.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

The only difference I suppose between houses and MDU buildings is that you won't get point to point fibre installations in apartment blocks.

What you will get is PON (Passive Optical Network) and with Openreach it will be GPON and with the other Altnets it will be XGS-PON. This will be installed in the building somewhere in a control/care taking room. The rest of the Fibre cables will travel across all the apartments and floors.

Hyperoptic in the past were building only until the basement and the rest of the flats were fed with Cat5e cables. This gives a 1Gbps limitation.

Don't get them in houses besides B4RN, Grain and a very few others including legacy Gigaclear. Almost everyone uses PON throughout.

Building installs usually go closer to units than a room in the basement or wherever. Often at least a distribution box on each floor fed by a higher fibre count cable then Invisilight or similar to each unit on demand or to the outside pending unit entry.

Cat 5e is not limited to a gigabit. Certified to 2.5 Gb at a hundred metres and often good for 5 Gb at that range.

Yeah P2P versus xPON wouldn’t be the key point of difference I’d raise between MDU and SDU installs either.

To my mind the key differences (in no particular order 😅)

1. Dependence on OTHERS for wayleave / permission to install
2. Theoretically a more limited choice of physical networks - but the same can be said of SDU deployment. Key here is who decides what networks will be “allowed in”. See point (1)
3. Depending on network, differences in how the fibre is reticulated / presented inside the apartment i.e InvisiLight type solutions generally aren’t used outside of MDUs

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

The only difference I suppose between houses and MDU buildings is that you won't get point to point fibre installations in apartment blocks.

I would guess this a) depends on the size of the block and b) if the block has any sort of utility/equipment room or even risers. The UK has a lot of 2 or 3 story blocks of flats that have no central utilities, no central meters, no risers, no lift. The UK also has a significant number of 10 and higher story tower blocks that will have some sort of faciliities function.

MDU is such a broad term.

Blazing may have a different (personal) definition of 'point to point' aka P2P here.

Perhaps he actually meant fibre all the way to the apartment -rather like the old part fibre (leased circuit to basement) / part Cat5e copper solution to apartments (classic FTTB) that Hyperoptic used to install in some apartment blocks some 5 to 10 years ago.

Otherwise the classic definition of "P2P" in broadband networks, is as noted above, a distinction from PON networks in that the optical network is not 'shared' as is the case with GPON/XGSPON etc - P2P optical networks are better thought of as connected like metropolitan optical ethernet - a star network back to a concentrator. Instead of an ONT as per GPON etc each customer gets an optical NTE - effectively an optical ethernet converter.

The best examples of this P2P style ultrafast broadband as noted above by @XGS_Is_on are Grain Connect, legacy Gigaclear, B4RN and B4SH, TrueSpeed, VX Fiber and WightFibre.

I read the OP as the block already having the FTTC installed to a switch room, with internal ethernet to each apartment. Some previous responders seem to have missed that.

I suggest the main question is what standard of ethernet cabling it is .

Actually, indeed I meant the classic definition of "P2P" like the example that XGS_Is_On mentioned with B4RN and Gigaclear.

Gigaclear utilizes a point-to-point (P2P) fiber infrastructure, meaning each customer's property has a dedicated fiber connection directly to the Gigaclear network. This is in contrast to Passive Optical Network (PON) systems where a single fiber feeds multiple subscribers. Gigaclear's P2P network ensures a dedicated connection for each customer, offering potential advantages like higher speeds and bandwidth

That's what I had in mind where each house is fed with a dedicated Fibre optic cable. For example, if I am living in an MDU building and here we are 20 floors totaling 82 flats. We don't get 82 dedicated Fibre optic cables coming into our flats. What we have is a PON network and then this one Fibre cable is then split into 82 other separate cables that link to each flat.

Even though not all houses get that sort of privilege they are still more likely to have that opportunity. But block of flats are even less likely to have that option. We wouldn't even get that privilege even if we theoretically had FTTPoD because that will still require a wayleave process, which will be denied.

It is unrealistic to imagine that we will have 82 dedicated separate fibre cables entering our flats! It will probably never happen in our lifetime.

If we had multiple FTTP network overbuilds that would potentially mean multiplying 82x2 or 3 times fibre cables.

Theoretically if now B4RN, B4SH, Gigaclear, WightFibre, etc offered something higher than 10Gbps they could offer it straightaway if current computer hardware wasn't a limitation for the customer requesting such a service!
But most of us have to wait for this XGS-PON to be upgraded to 25G-PON or 50G-PON otherwise we will never get anything higher than 10Gbps.

Hyperoptic for the old builds of-course while may handle 2.5G at 100 metres, Hyperoptic still don't officially offer such packages because it is still not guaranteed that a customer will receive those speeds at the top floors of a building like South Quay Plaza or Landmark Pinnacle with Cat5e cables. Now it is highly likely that they will not install Cat5e in those buildings. But still even if they wanted to offer 2.5/5Gbps packages like Community Fibre then what will happen is that Hyperoptic will have to advertise their packages for specific premises only!

It will be embarrassing from a marketing point of view that their speeds can only be offered to those that don't have Cat5e. They will have to upgrade all their remaining buildings from basement to each flat with Fibre. I would not be surprised if back in 2015 my management denied Hyperoptic due to the Cat5e installation. A landlord may deny wayleave access due to reasons such as this. Openreach FTTP wayleave may also be ignored due to the GPON limitation.

Though, not always a Technical/Property Manager managing those buildings will tell you the reasons why they have denied one provider or another. They have reasons that they don't always tell you. Just like in my case my housing officer said on behalf of the Technical Manager "If we are going to agree wayleave, we will do it with another provider, not Hyperoptic".

Of-course I never bothered to question back then why. I simply ignored the matter until of-course 6 years later wayleave was agreed for Community Fibre and in 2023 service went live. Last year a wayleave was agreed for Virgin Media Nexfibre. Landlords have a mind of their own, they won't always listen to a resident wanting a specific FTTP provider.