Full Fibre installation downtime

[derekbez]

We have ordered Full Fibre for our home.  Apparently the engineer will be here next week to do the installation.

Two questions:

1. The engineer will be on site for up to three hours to do their work to connect us.  Will we be offline for all of these three hours?  Both my wife and I work from home, and supposed to be online, so we will need to manage our respective bosses' expectations.  (My current expectation is that the majority of the engineer's work will be installing the cable and boxes.  The actual switchover should only be a few minutes.)

2. Will the engineer actually complete the installation on the given day, or is there going to be a lot of sucking of teeth and "got to get parts" or "we'll need to dig up the road" type of excuses?

For the record, I'm quite happy with my current FTTC connection a the moment. We're only "upgrading" because that is all that is on offer now that our current contract is running out.

[licquorice]

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@derekbez wrote:

We have ordered Full Fibre for our home.  Apparently the engineer will be here next week to do the installation.

Two questions:

1. The engineer will be on site for up to three hours to do their work to connect us.  Will we be offline for all of these three hours?  Both my wife and I work from home, and supposed to be online, so we will need to manage our respective bosses' expectations.  (My current expectation is that the majority of the engineer's work will be installing the cable and boxes.  The actual switchover should only be a few minutes.)

Your existing (presumably FTTC) service is independent of the Full Fibre service at your premises, hence the switchover is not carried out locally and should be quite quick.

Can you not simply tether your mobile if the outage is protracted?

2. Will the engineer actually complete the installation on the given day, or is there going to be a lot of sucking of teeth and "got to get parts" or "we'll need to dig up the road" type of excuses?

No idea without a crystal ball. It won't  be 'excuses' though, either the engineer will encounter an unforeseen problem that needs to be resolved or he/she won't.

For the record, I'm quite happy with my current FTTC connection a the moment. We're only "upgrading" because that is all that is on offer now that our current contract is running out.

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[derekbez]

Thank you for your quick response. It certainly sounds like this has the potential to be a hassle-free experience, despite my cynicism based on other service providers (plumbers, tv aerial installers, painters, couriers, etc) 🙂  

While we certainly could tether to our phones - and will do only if absolutely necessary - I'd would rather not burn through mobile data on the endless Teams / Zoom calls we endure. 

So, on the day, it sounds like the engineer will do all the cabling and connecting up, then call into the "office" for them to do the switch from old FTTC to new FTTP?  Is that how it works? 

I've had a look at the cable route - it looks quite straightforward from the post in the street and on the outside wall of the house.  Most of the work will be up a ladder though.

Another question : how close to an electricity socket does the new box need to be?  Only point is in the darkest, least accessible spot in the room, so current Home Hub etc is on an extension.  Will that be acceptable?

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

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@derekbez wrote:

Thank you for your quick response. It certainly sounds like this has the potential to be a hassle-free experience, despite my cynicism based on other service providers (plumbers, tv aerial installers, painters, couriers, etc) 🙂  

While we certainly could tether to our phones - and will do only if absolutely necessary - I'd would rather not burn through mobile data on the endless Teams / Zoom calls we endure. 

So, on the day, it sounds like the engineer will do all the cabling and connecting up, then call into the "office" for them to do the switch from old FTTC to new FTTP?  Is that how it works? 

Not sure of the exact logistics, but pretty much like that.

I've had a look at the cable route - it looks quite straightforward from the post in the street and on the outside wall of the house.  Most of the work will be up a ladder though.

Another question : how close to an electricity socket does the new box need to be?  Only point is in the darkest, least accessible spot in the room, so current Home Hub etc is on an extension.  Will that be acceptable?

Both the ONT and router will need power, I think their mains leads are quite short though. No problem with running both on an extension lead. The ONT doesn't necessarily need to be co-located with the router, they can be connected together via up to 100Metres of Ethernet cable if you need to although you will need to do that yourself. Bear in mind the ONT location doesn't have to be where your master socket is currently located.

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[derekbez]

Thanks.  🙂 Appreciate your knowledge and taking the time to share!