How is FTTP connected up

Sorry if this enquiry is common knowledge to you but I would like to understand it more.
I have FTTC but what steps have to be taken to convert it to FTTP.
The cabinet is in the main road at the bottom of our street.
I am assuming a copper cable then comes underground to the next visible sign which is a post from which several houses are served by overhead wire. Am I right in thinking then that the underground connection from the cabinet to the post has to have fibre installed and what about the overhead wire from the post to the premises.
I am in Spalding and Lightspeed have been up our road today and checked the post from ground level but then checked one of the wires from the post by one of those hydraulic platform on the back of their van.

THanks

Lightspeed are what is known as an AltNet (short for alternative network) that is they don’t use the Openreach fibre network for their customer access. However they may use Openreach ducts and poles (called Openreach Physical Infrastructure Access or PIA) to run their own fibre network from their own nodes / points of presence to your premises.

Note that if this was Openreach based FTTP, it does not generally run to an existing Openreach cabinet (except in some pretty exceptional, ultra rural circumstances) but it goes back to an underground aggregation node, before running along a spine fibre cable to a large handover exchange, not usually your small local exchange which would be used for telephony.

As AltNet FTTP providers don’t have their own network of telephony exchanges to run back to, in many case they actually do have some form of street furniture, like cabinets that they will run their fibre back to. I’m not sure what Lightspeed do here specifically, but in any event it would not be going back to existing Openreach cabinets. Any cabinets Lightspeed use would be new and dedicated to them.

If you are currently overhead fed by BT on copper, then any new fibre connection from Lightspeed would also sent be overhead. Lightspeed would install their own furniture on the pole to serve a fibre connection to the various properties served by that pole. Otherwise they would need to dig in their own underground service connection which is unlikely.

(Overlapping posts. I type too slowly. Pheasant has posted before me with 95% of what I have below. Plus clarifying what I was unsure about, which was whether Lightspeed would be working for Openreach or installing their own stuff).

FTTP does not come from the cabinets. It comes from what Openreach call Aggregation Points, which are underground.

FTTC cabinets are also generally fed from those, with the fibre signal being changed to VDSL2 in the FTTC cabinet where it is also merged with the phone line signal and fed down the two-way link with the phone cabinet and on to your premises.

FTTP comes direct to you all the way into your house from the aggregation point, (possibly not the one that feeds your FTTC), via optical splitters and connector points that split things even further. If the fibre comes via a pole then the connector point for you will be one of several housed in a CBT (Connectorised Block Terminal) at the top of the pole.

There will be two options available to Openreach about your phone. Most probably a new cable from the pole carrying a fibre strand for the broadband and a copper pair for the phone. The other option being your phone is moved to a "Digital Voice" (VOIP) circuit and your copper becomes redundant.

There's a lot more detail than that, but I hope that gives you the outline.

Edited by pluralist (Wed 16-Jun-21 01:38:56)

Thank you for your reply and that from pluralist.
It is more complicated that I thought but I am a little more informed now.
Openreach don't put out a lot of info and all I saw was a new cabinet installed next to an older one but no other work.
Lightspeed have been everywhere but no sure what work they have done yet
An article in the local paper about them is at https://www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/news/summer-work-on-...
According to the Think Broadband test I am on 38.6 Mbps bursting to 50 Mbps with upload around 10 Mbps

I've just made the switch from FTTC to full-fibre.
Mainly because a load of new development, in this area, has created such a high amount of cross-talk; the downstream connection speed (which started off at full 80Mbps) is slowly slipping away (to around 70Mbps with a 3dB noise margin) and was only going to get worse (it did hit 50Mbps over Christmas; when a load of neighbours had Xmas lights up).


Openreach are still doing large areas of this town, but had finished round here.
I'd already registered my interest; got the e-mail (from BT / Openreach), ordered the same evening and it was installed in under 2 weeks.

The ordering was dead easy... just an online "upgrade my broadband" and I'm paying a few £ more, per month, for 300Mbps/50Mbps (an extra £7 and I could get over three times that... don't need it right now).

The change, for me, was quite easy because it's a fairly new estate (everything comes in, underground and ducted).

The aggregation point was around 30m away (the FTTC cabinet is around 230m away, in roughly the same direction).
It took two Openreach guys just under 2 hours, to rod the duct, pull a twin-fibre through, drill a new entry point (as BT retail's current strategy is to keep customers on the copper line, for voice), fit a new outside box, fit the new fibre modem (wall mounted), and hook it up to the Smart Hub (that arrived a couple of days before).

From ordering to live, was around 10 days (it could have been within 4 days, but I chose the later date, because I didn't believe BT could deliver a new Smart Hub, in that time frame).

I expect it's a little more awkward with overhead wires (only because Openreach will need to bring a scissor lift or cherry-picker).

Openreach are saying COVID means they'd rather install the fibre modem in the same room as the entry point, and that's where you must have a spare power outlet (I expect this is because they don't want their engineers inside people's homes, for too long.

Really was a lot easier than I'd figured (mainly because the existing master socket, is directly behind the entry point).

Very helpful description of your installation, thank you.
Would not be identical here but a useful starting point to consider how this would work.

In reply to a post by adebov:

The aggregation point was around 30m away (the FTTC cabinet is around 230m away, in roughly the same direction).

Just a FYI, that's a Distribution Point (DP), not an Aggregation Point.

OpenReach FTTP goes from the Exchange to Aggregation Node, to Splitter Node, to Distribution Point, to your home.

When FTTP is made available to order the network is fully built up to the DP.
They only need to pull the fibre from the DP to your home.

as BT retail's current strategy is to keep customers on the copper line, for voice

That's not their strategy in most places. It is entirely area dependant.

Most people are put on their Digital Voice (VOIP) and not on the copper line for voice.

My FTTP (installed around August last year) used the copper line for voice.
Around a month later they switched to Digital Voice for all new FTTP orders on my exchange.
All my neighbours with BT FTTP are on Digital Voice.

In reply to a post by linkyork:

It is more complicated that I thought but I am a little more informed now.
Openreach don't put out a lot of info and all I saw was a new cabinet installed next to an older one but no other work.
Lightspeed have been everywhere but no sure what work they have done yet
According to the Think Broadband test I am on 38.6 Mbps bursting to 50 Mbps with upload around 10 Mbps

It is much as described above. I'm with an AltNet supplier (in Lincolnshire) that also doesn't use OR.

TBH I haven't looked back to my OR FTTC days. The new setup was installed extremely quickly with no faffing around at all. With the installed setup, its fibre (via a small internal termination box) all the way through to the router itself. They put the box exactly where I asked them to. Forget any thoughts of existing cable runs etc. While they may follow the existing runs they are fibre, not copper. The new service won't be using any existing cable.

As for speed, what you ask for, you'll be very close to it. I regularly get around 480/460 (if I can get the kids to stop using it) on a 500/500 service. Price to me is also very reasonable.

Edited by 69bertie (Sun 04-Jul-21 20:16:06)