A brief review of my recent installation by CityFibre, with Brawband as the ISP.
Received email info from CityFibre on the 1st of April that they are now available to order on my street. After researching the ISPs who were listed, and some pre-sales enquiries, I ordered FTTP from Brawband on the 10th of April.
On the 17th a couple of CityFibre guys came by, the initial survey, dug up around the old Openreach duct. They found a blockage, so being 5pm they covered it up again and said they would return. On the 22nd, another team came by, dug up the front monoblock, found the blockage, then ran their purple tubing through to a chamber in the street a few doors up.
Installation happened on the 2nd May. Team arrived bright and early, discussed how and where the "cable" would be run. I had been concerned because there was no way we could run this straight through the wall from the old Openreach duct, as inside had been built over in recent years. Anyway, we agreed the run would go from their brown outside box, across the front of the house, up behind a drain downpipe, across the soffit, then back down the wall to the spot I wanted the fibre to come into the house.
All went without any problem. The ONT installed inside exactly where I wanted it.
Engineer tested using his equipment, and all good.
I had chosen to use my own router rather than their supplied one. By the time they were ready to leave I had my router connected and getting good speeds up & down.
I had chosen to take their 160 Mbps service. After 13 Mbps ADSL that's good. Have the option of gigabit speeds. The router I'm using is an older Draytek Vigor - the firewall is only good up to 300. I've an agreement with them that if/when I upgrade to a newer router I can upgrade to a gigabit service without any penalty.
All of their guys were great. Polite, professional, competent. Discussed everything with me. They wore soft slippers over their shoes when coming inside the house. Tidied up everything after themselves. Left the job clean and neat.
Only one thing annoyed me. The installation had been agreed for 24th April, but after finding the blockage CityFibre had re-arranged until 2nd May, However nobody thought to inform me. Grrrrr.
The very next day after the installation, Openreach showed up in the estate with 5 vans, around a dozen workers, and blitzed installing their own fibre.
Some pics available here:
https://ibb.co/P9VRGG4
https://ibb.co/syS8xMb
https://ibb.co/FXKcvMx
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clyde123
