Gigaclear installation queries, ducting, router location

The only fibre available here currently is Gigaclear, at the moment we are on Zen ADSL. Gigaclear installed ducting in the pavements last year and are offering a discounted price of £16 pcm for 300mpbs for the first 18 months, before it rockets in price.

I've read issues regarding with installation, and customers having to dig up their gardens to lay a duct (which I'm not adverse to do, as at least then it'd be done properly, Their connection box is on the pavement near to our front border about 10m to 12m from the house.

The fibre termination in the house would be on the closest outside facing wall. That, for our house, is the worst position for the router, so can the router be run via Ethernet from the termination point to elsewhere, or does it have to be close to the incoming termination?

No one in our road has used Gigaclear yet so this is just to gauge opinion before we change our services with the PSTN switch off.

How quick is installation and how have people found it, especially if you'd be actively involved in assisting the install/laying ducting?

My Gigaclear service was installed in April 2015. Gigaclear installed a pot on a corner of my property. They provided me with a cable about 50m long which I ran in water type pipeing from the pot to my attic where I installed the router. Some years ago the router was changed by Gigalear to 'bridge mode' so it works like an Openreach ONT and I have a separate OPNsense router and a Zyxel Wifi access point.

I can access the router remotely using a Wireguard VPN.

The equipment in the pot is like an Openreach splice point. About a month ago I had a Plusnet Openreach FTTP servie installed at a different address.

In reply to a post by Camtree:

so can the router be run via Ethernet from the termination point to elsewhere, or does it have to be close to the incoming termination?

That is generally the advised way to do it with Openreach installations. You need to check that Gigaclear use an ONT rather than a direct optical fibre connection to the router. Some of the altnets - probably for marketing reasons - tend to have the fibre direct to the router, possibly because it gives a more 'hi-tech' feel to the installation. But in truth, it is a dreadful way of doing it, because for the customer it is generally better to have an ethernet connection which they own and can repair, rather than a fibre controlled by the network.

Thanks to you both, very helpful.

Will contact them and see what they offer!