My Sky fibre install tale...

Booked it for 3rd January as the exchange went live on the 1st, router turned up on the 31st December.

Engineer turned up at 9am having been given a 8am to 1pm time slot, got the BT modem out, asked where i wanted it, plugged it in, plugged it into the Sky router, checked on my Mac and had gone from 3meg to 59meg down, 17.5 up...

All done in a couple of minutes, made the guy a cup of tea and had a chat before he went to his next job.

Doesn't happen often but its nice when things go smoothly

Nice to hear a good tale for once.

Keep us informed about speeds over the next month or so.

Oh my that must be so sweet! An amazing increase in speed.

Unfortunately I won't be seeing fibre for a while even though my exchange has it available. I've read BT don't have any intention of upgrading my post code area but I don't mind as I realise these things take time.

I have 7.7 Meg Unlimited WBC just now (should be 11 Meg but high noise margin currently) but 59 Meg!!! HAHA that would be incredible.

Currently downloading a large file at 9300KB/s - i am still in awe of all this lovely speed and actually enjoy watching stuff download in minutes - I have gone from not even being able able to watch a movie trailer on my Apple TV without it buffering for ages, to watching a full HD film with no buffering - lovely!

My experience was similar when upgrading to fibre. All went smoothly and didn't take long. Saying that it was a pretty straightforward install, nothing needed moving or anything.

I hope my install goes that smooth.

Mines due to be done on 25th Jan, although nothing has been comfirmed yet.

My estimated speed is 31.6meg down and i think 6meg up.

Currently with O2 and getting 7meg down 1meg up.

The speed increase will be very nice, looking forward to it.

Speed has varied a little over the past week, i guess as it goes through some sort of bedding in period - cant work out how to show the results from the speedtest website but the speeds vary between 55 and 66Mb/s down, and pretty stable at 17Mb/s up - very happy so far...

Im starting to doubt the speedtest results to be honest as they are lower than what i am seeing on my computer..

at the moment i am downloading a number of large files at a consistent 9200KB/s - the downloading program is reporting that, and my network monitor program is also showing a speed of 9.23MB/s - this equates to around 73 Mbits. Am i right with these figures? If so then the speed of the connection is very good!

In reply to a post by chubsta:

All done in a couple of minutes, made the guy a cup of tea and had a chat before he went to his next job.

Doesn't happen often but its nice when things go smoothly

Did he install a new master socket faceplate? if not the install wasn't done right. My engineer came out Friday and was out of the house within 10 minutes, I phoned the Sky Fibre Team to query it and they were astonished and appalled by the installation, Openreach are coming out tomorrow to do it properly.

It only takes a few minutes to install the new filtered faceplate and run the tests.

What did your engineer do?

With the OP saying a couple of minutes I thought he was out of the house within say 10 minutes like mine. Unless you'r PC is right next to the master socket it should take longer than that.

The BTO engineer just connected the Openreach modem to my telephone extension cable and then to the Sky hub. Basically a self install which hasn't started yet although their is talk of a trial run where the engineer doesn't need to enter the house. The only test he did was a normal speedtest.net one to see if I was connected.

Edited by deleted (Sun 13-Jan-13 22:17:06)

Sounds like a dodgy contractor. PC location shouldn't make a difference unless you're having the master socket moved.

No it I think it was an Openreach engineer unless the contractors are using Openreach vans. The contractors usually have their own vans signed up with a "openreach sticker".

Not sure what you mean when you say location of the master socket doesn't make a difference. If the location of the master socket is right by the PC then it will be quicker to install than if in another room. My master socket is in the hall so a cable has to run from there through the living room into the dining room which is open plan.

The engineer shouldn't be touching the PC during an install on behalf of Sky. It's the users responsibility.

In reply to a post by Moochy:

Not sure what you mean when you say location of the master socket doesn't make a difference. If the location of the master socket is right by the PC then it will be quicker to install than if in another room. My master socket is in the hall so a cable has to run from there through the living room into the dining room which is open plan.

If he *moved* the master socket using proper cable that is normal. If he didn't move the master socket but made it so you can plug in the modem anywhere then he didn't do the job properly.

The engineer has to connect the Openreach modem to your Sky Hub and make sure it is all working before he leaves the premises, of course he has to touch the PC.

They do not have to move the master socket that is down to individual engineers as to whether they will do this. If the master socket is not near the Sky Hub which is usually by the PC then they have to run a data extension cable to your Hub.

Mine did nothing other than plug it into my existing phone line by the PC which is a quick way of doing it and not what ISP's (we) pay for.

Doesn't the engineer have his own laptop to test connection?

The engineer didnt appear to do anything to the master-socket bar plug the lead in which goes to the BT modem = the master socket is in the hallway next to the living-room door and the lead was passed under the door and up into a book case next to the door. That was plugged in and switched on, the ethernet from that was plugged into the Sky router which was then switched on.
My Mac is in another downstairs room and connected via ethernet cabe, we just went into that room and checked the connection - everything is fine.

Just a couple of minutes work, then we had a little chat about stuff and he went on his way...

11 days down the line and i havent had any issues at all - speed is still in excess of what the BT checker initially said it would be sat 60+meg instead of 57, and there have been no connection issues at all...

In reply to a post by chubsta:

The engineer didnt appear to do anything to the master-socket bar plug the lead in which goes to the BT modem

What sort of master socket do you have? if it just has one socket for the phone line and it is that he plugged into the openreach modem then the install was the same as mine which is incorrect.

A different Openreach engineer turned up today to sort mine out and like the Sky Fibre team was shocked by the original install, in his words "this type of thing gives us a bad name".

So he installed a new faceplate and connected up the openreach modem properly. The router stats now show I'm connected at 74604 compared to the previous 56000 and speedtests average around 66Mb/s which is 13 meg better.

I was happy with the speed before but if engineers are just plugging normal phone lines into the openreach modems then they are doing it incorrect and cutting corners.

MIne is one that has a socket for the phone and another one for 'adsl' - he has just plugged it into the adsl one...

In reply to a post by Moochy:

They do not have to move the master socket that is down to individual engineers as to whether they will do this. If the master socket is not near the Sky Hub which is usually by the PC then they have to run a data extension cable to your Hub.

Yes, thats what I was trying to say

Mine did nothing other than plug it into my existing phone line by the PC which is a quick way of doing it and not what ISP's (we) pay for.

Yep.

Good to see you got it sorted.

The ADSL faceplate filter should have been changed for a VDSL interstitial filter and separate phone only faceplate. The VDSL filter is the only one specified as part of the BT Openreach VDSL product and is what Sky paid to have installed.

Elsewhere on the forums, an ADSL faceplate filter has been reported as performing only marginally worse than the 'proper' VDSL filter (loss of around 1.5Mbit/second downstream speed on a >40Mbit/second connection). The ADSL filters have not been tested at the higher VDSL frequencies and an individual example may perform much worse at VDSL frequencies than the particular example tested.


Running a cable under a door, especially one that is opened and closed periodically, is very poor engineering practice. If Sky had ordered the Home Wiring Solution, which costs them nothing, you could have had a proper hard-wired socket installed for the modem.

So, even though i am happy with the way things have gone, particularly speed-wise, would i be better off fitting one of the vdsl filters myself, or better off leaving it all as is?

In reply to a post by David_W:

The ADSL faceplate filter should have been changed for a VDSL interstitial filter and separate phone only faceplate. The VDSL filter is the only one specified as part of the BT Openreach VDSL product and is what Sky paid to have installed.

Elsewhere on the forums, an ADSL faceplate filter has been reported as performing only marginally worse than the 'proper' VDSL filter (loss of around 1.5Mbit/second downstream speed on a >40Mbit/second connection). The ADSL filters have not been tested at the higher VDSL frequencies and an individual example may perform much worse at VDSL frequencies than the particular example tested.


Running a cable under a door, especially one that is opened and closed periodically, is very poor engineering practice. If Sky had ordered the Home Wiring Solution, which costs them nothing, you could have had a proper hard-wired socket installed for the modem.

Get back in touch with the Sky Fibre team, if you did not have a faceplate the install was not done correctly.

Agreed having it under the door will cause problems in future. I have found fibre so sensitive to little things like crushed cables etc. Not good at all.

The explanation for using a new socket was that the older traditional ones were more expensive to manufacture. I didn't know they performed worse though! The VDSL should have been installed though.

Sky should be quick to resolve this though.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The explanation for using a new socket was that the older traditional ones were more expensive to manufacture. I didn't know they performed worse though! The VDSL should have been installed though.

The older ADSL faceplate filters were not tested at the higher VDSL frequencies - they may perform OK or they may not.


One big advantage of the new VDSL interstitial filter is that it's easier to install yourself if you have hardwired extensions, as it installs like the BT iPlate (or whatever it's called now). You remove the faceplate of your NTE5, ease the wiring connected to the faceplate through the slot at the bottom of the VDSL filter, push the filter into the NTE5 and the faceplate into the filter, then tighten the stack with the longer screws provided.

The old ADSL filtered faceplate needed an IDC tool to reterminate the extensions on the back of the filtered faceplate.

The only people who should have any difficulty self-installing the VDSL filter are those with old NTE5s that have brass inserts for machine screws (the sort of screws used on a mains socket) - though you can force the new screws into the brass inserts if you must. It would also be very difficult to install if there was very little slack in the extension wiring behind the faceplate, but if there's enough slack to remove the faceplate, there should be enough slack to install the filter.


Another advantage of the new VDSL interstitial filter is that you can disconnect your extensions and leave the filter in place, as there's a 'test socket' available on the filter with the faceplate removed.

I highly highly doubt that when fibre becomes a self install option that they will supply the VDSL faceplate.

We will go back to the dangley filters and internal wiring causing issues.
People aren't comfortable unscrewing their own sockets even if the process is a simple one.

I do agree with you that this is easier if it became a self install but I don't see that ever becoming standard.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I highly highly doubt that when fibre becomes a self install option that they will supply the VDSL faceplate.

We will go back to the dangley filters and internal wiring causing issues.
People aren't comfortable unscrewing their own sockets even if the process is a simple one.

I do agree with you that this is easier if it became a self install but I don't see that ever becoming standard.

In fact BT SIN 498 does allow for micro filters as well as a centralised SSFP and the trials carried out by Openreach using them used old BT micro-filters as used for ADSL/ADSL+

This was covered in a news story on this site some time ago.

It's much like in the good old days of broadband just as dial-up was fading. Engineers initially came out and fitted filtered faceplates and then it became a self install option and micro-filters came into play.

So much easier for the consumer. It's a case of convenience over performance.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I highly highly doubt that when fibre becomes a self install option that they will supply the VDSL faceplate.

We will go back to the dangley filters and internal wiring causing issues.

As systemx says, the SIN gives details of potential self-install VDSL allows for both faceplate and plug-in filters. The faceplate filter is available commercially from Pressac, so is available for ISPs and retail concerns to purchase. It will be used by those who want the best possible performance and neatest installation.

Sadly, as you say, the majority of people will use plug-in filters, and will opt for the cheapest possible garbage rather than a decent quality plug-in filter. There's nothing inherently wrong with plug-in filters - though I think many opt for their use because they are unaware of the faceplate filter or do not have suitable wiring topology for the faceplate filter and don't feel confident installing their own extensions. Most simply use whatever their ISP supplies. ISPs are desperate to save 50p on something they're throwing in as part of a package.

my personal experience shows no improvement in quality of faceplates over dongles anyway. It just looks tidier.

my old x1-fe dongle gets a higher sync than the new openreach vdsl faceplate, not a huge difference but is higher.