Zen - City Fibre Install Next Week in Bolton

We've took the plunge and are going to be the first house in the street to have Zen - City Fibre FTTP installed.

Being the first, we have some questions about how the City Fibre install goes.

1. Our front garden is around 4 meters from the main road, will they need to dig up the garden a little or can they use the existing BT phone line ducting to the house?

2. I'd like to place the ONT and Frizbox router in a central part of the house, to try and get some good wifi coverage, will the installer be flexible and lay put an extra 3 meters of fibre from the outside wall of the house to my preferred location?

3. I've seen pictures of a black coloured ONT on City Fibre install pictures Does anyone know the make and model?

4. How long from the engineer visit does it take until the ONT / Frizbox is activated ? Does the engineer do all the checks that everything is working before they leave?

Lots of questions, really appreciate any help.

Andy

Edited by Andy_K (Fri 14-Oct-22 16:00:30)

In reply to a post by Andy_K:

We've took the plunge and are going to be the first house in the street to have Zen - City Fibre FTTP installed.

Being the first, we have some questions about how the City Fibre install goes.

1. Our front garden is around 4 meters from the main road, will they need to dig up the garden a little or can they use the existing BT phone line ducting to the house?

2. I'd like to place the ONT and Frizbox router in a central part of the house, to try and get some good wifi coverage, will the installer be flexible and lay put an extra 3 meters of fibre from the outside wall of the house to my preferred location?

3. I've seen pictures of a black coloured ONT on City Fibre install pictures Does anyone know the make and model?

4. How long from the engineer visit does it take until the ONT / Frizbox is activated ? Does the engineer do all the checks that everything is working before they leave?

Lots of questions, really appreciate any help.

Andy

1. That depends. If Cityfibre have dug up your street and installed their own ducts and have a plastic Toby box on your property boundary then they will not use Openreach ducts in your garden.

If they haven't dug up your street and have used the existing Openreach ducts and poles then they will use their ducts across your garden.

It's not something that can be changed ad-hoc. They are either using Openreach's ducts in your street or they aren't.

2. That depends on the installer on the day but Cityfibre do tend to be flexible.

3. Can be different ONT's in different areas.

4. The same day. The engineer should prove service before leaving if there are no issues.

1. As @J0hn83 says it will depend upon how CityFibre have built your street. They do use Openreach in some areas if it is suitable, but they may have installed their own. Do you have the Toby box by your boundary?

2. Be nice to the installer and see if they will do it!

3. Apart from York (they announced it was XGS-PON rather than GPON) they are using the Calix 801G ONT I think.

4. ONT activation is part of the install, so the engineer should check that it is registered OK, I don't know with Zen but with Vodafone they also check the CPE part and do a speed test.

York was their first full XGS-PON city as I understand and according to their press release some months ago, should now be moving forward with XGS-PON rather than GPON. No doubt there will still be existing GPON based installs for some time though.

Do you have any interest in using your own equipment instead of the Fritzbox? Or would you be willing to try a quick swap over (if you have a PPPoE router to hand) to see if it works?

I'm getting Zen with Cityfibre next week but I have concerns on whether I can use my own gigabit-capable WiFi6 router instead of the Fritzbox. I've seen numerous posts on this forum that say to try different VLAN IDs 101, 911, 0, blank, 70 (these are the ones I've collected so far) but not a solid answer on whether it worked. I've heard setup is more easier on TalkTalk, which uses DHCP instead, or Giganet, who have a setup page in their FAQ on how to connect your own router as well as the correct VLAN ID to use.

Zen will email you the PPP details, the correct VLAN is 911

Install went better than expected, the Kelly Communications team were great...

Routed the ducting from the toby box through a thick stone wall, using a stihl saw to make a channel for the btu ducting
Used a spade to dig through 5m of lawn, dropping in the btu ducting and cutting through a few tree roots on the way
Lifted and re-seated 1m of block paving and drilled a couple of bricks to route the btu ducting
Screwed the brown fibre box to the front of the house

Routed the 10m fibre patch cable round the corner and through the wall into the lounge.
Routed the fibre patch cable around the door frame to where we had 2 central power sockets and installed the ONT and Frizbox in a central place.
Blew the fibre from the brown wallbox 270 meters to the cabinet that served our house

Activated and speedtested before they left

Overall install took around 3 hours - team of 4 (2 trainee's)

Edited by Andy_K (Sat 22-Oct-22 13:31:14)

Very good. 👍

What though is “btu” duct?

Do you mean BFT (as in blown fibre tube) by any chance?

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 22-Oct-22 16:27:10)

Thanks, I wasn't given any details other than user/pass, but I can confirm Internet VLAN 911 Prio 0 works. Connected the ONT cable to DSL port on Asus and its all up and running