Gigaclear pre install - didn't go well

Placed an order with Gigaclear a week ago and their contractors turned up today to run the outside bits.

We are served from an Openreach pole so the fibre came over the same way.

It's a single story barn conversion with stone walls. I was keen for the fibre to go straight through the gable wall, along the loft and down into an airing cupboard (as the existing BT cable does), but apparently that wasn't permitted. We agreed a route across, diagonally down the edge of the roof, along the side wall and down a corner.

They couldn't fix the fibre to the stonework/mortar on wall and it looked awful - so they stopped, said to call Gigaclear and left it coiled up where it attaches to the wall.

Gigaclear were no help, apparently I have to wait for a second pre-appointment ahead of the install date, and no confirmation anything would be different then.

What are the options? If I drill a hole myself and run the fibre internally, will they use it? Also - they only left about 2m on the outside - if it's too short do they join it?

Edited by jdp_80 (Fri 10-May-24 15:47:18)

The norm for an Openreach install is

• a fibre plugged into a CBT - Connectorised Block Terminal - on the pole or in the manhole
• a fibre from the ONT - Optical Network Terminator - in your house, where your router connects by ethernet
• a CSP - Customer Splice or Service Point - mounted on the external wall of your house where the loose ends of the fibres are spliced

This gives plug in connections at the 2 ends and an outside point, the CSP from which either fibre can be replaced.

It is not a given that Gigaclear will be exactly like this. If it is, you need to plan for a CSP outside the house which is accessible while stood on the ground, with an outside only route from the CBT for Gigaclear to put the first fibre. After that, you need an onward route which can be partly inside and outside to the point where your ONT will go for the second fibre. The current telephone NTE box is not always necessarily the ideal place for the ONT.

The net effect is to have pluggable ends at the ONT and the CBT, joined via the CSP. The fibres each have a cut end and the appropriate connector at the other end. Crucial to you is the fact that there are no fibres with a CBT and an ONT connector on either end, it must all go via the CSP and the hole in your wall need only be large enough for a fibre cut end to pass through, rather than a connector.

Obviously, it is hard to turn this generic information into a workable implementation for your house without seeing it, but hopefully this will give you some guidelines and some reasoning for the constraints to be addressed.

For the specific problem of cleating the fibre to a stone wall, I would consider running 20mm plastic conduit in black or white [you might be able to get brown or grey] to suit the stone, fixed with the appropriate cleats.