FTTP installation, moved master socket

[DaveJFT]

Hi Folks,

When we bought our house (new build) some years ago the master socket was in the hall just inside the front door - an utterly useless place as the hall is nothing but a narrow corridor and there was nowhere to place our SmartHub. We paid for a BT engineer to move the master socket to our 1st floor study where we could plug the Hub directly into it.

I'm about to pull the trigger on upgrading to FTTP. Will the new position of our master socket cause us issues with the installation?

Thanks

[licquorice]

The position of your master is totally irrelevant for FTTP. However, the ONT (fibre modem) will need to connect to your hub via Ethernet so you need to give some thought to the proposed positioning of the ONT and where the fibre cable will enter your house.

[Masquerade]

I am in a similar position.  The original master socket is not near any power socket.  Many moons ago - Openreach moved the master socket upstairs as part of the installation of ISDN2 for my study.  The original BT cable comes into the house underground into the Dining Room.  6-core (?) phone cable was then run outside of the property upstairs.  When FTTP is installed - where will the ONT need to be?  If in the Dining Room - who provides the power?  Is it OpenReach or me?

I am happy for cat-6 to be run outside of the house to the upstairs study.

[rbz5416]

Openreach won't run ethernet but no reason why the fibre cable can't be run to the first floor. All down the the installer you get on the day.

Power provision is your responsibility but it's absence helps your case for having the ONT upstairs.

[DaveJFT]

As I understand it, FTTP requires 2 wall boxes and previous copper cable installations have no influence - it's a fresh start. The CSP (Customer Splice Point) box will be placed on the outside wall of the house where the buried fibre cable rises and is protected by a vertical grey conduit. From there, the customer side fibre cable (not CAT-6) is run around the house to the room where you want the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box. The ONT needs to plug into a mains socket for power. You can ask for the ONT to be in any room anywhere where the Openreach fitter can run the cable to and can drill the outside wall providing they can access that wall from a single storey ladder to feed the cable. They'll drill from the inside to the outside - so sure as eggs are eggs they'll pop the brick surface off around the hole leaving an unsightly crater in your brick. This is so that they can check that they're not drilling through pipes and cables inside the house. They'll not drill while standing on a ladder either. The Openreach fitter will not drill holes inside the house and will not climb over roofs (flat or otherwise) so any room higher than the 1st storey, or with a roof below will not be suitable. I believe that the fitter would be OK with siting the ONT anywhere in the chosen room that he can cleat the cable around to, i.e. close to a socket.

[imjolly]

it will really depend on the person doing the install whether you get the ONT where you want  openreach employee tend to be more amenable than a sub contractor who gets paid by the job so as quick as possible

[Masquerade]

Brilliant.  The CSP will probably be on the outer wall of the Dining Room (the original master socket is less than 100cm away on the internal wall) as they will need to tunnel through the concrete base of the house as it protudes a metre from the front (I suspect that the original cable was installed before the base was layed.  They can then run the fibre following the line of the copper around the front of the house at the level of the top of the ground floor windows.  Since we could rely on mobile phones for a while (day or two) - they can remove the copper from the hole in the wall leading to the master socket - replacing it with the fibre.  The hole can be reached by someone on the outside standing on a "beer crate" or small step ladder on a concrete surface as well as the person in the upstairs room.  They can then replace the current master socket with the ONT - power is about half a metre away.  All is simple - no need to drill holes other than the big one through the base of the house to bring the fibre  from the drive way.

All - of course - will need agreeing with the team on the day.