ONT Install Requirements

[MedicalFlyer]

Hi,

Having moved house about 2 years ago the drop from ~75mb to ~50mb broadband was noticeable but until recently there was no option for a better fibre install. They've been doing a lot of infrastructure work in the area and a cursory glance at the BT upgrade pages shows we can now get FTTP (it had been showing before until you tried to order it and then got told nope).

Before I get carried away and pull the trigger and then have a confused looking engineer on my doorstep I just want to try and get ahead of the game a bit.

My issue is that whomever designed the layout for phone access to these properties was clearly taking a rather large amount of psychotropic goodies. In the house there were 5 phone sockets daisy chained in various places. Thankfully they were wired with CAT5e so swapping out for RJ45 has solved some issues.

The sockets are connected as such:

#1 Phone line comes in to property by front door and socket mounted high up to the left of the door.

#2 socket in the middle of the 2nd floor room (split to phone line in to modem and RJ45 back down the rest of the chain)

#3 is back down to an under stairs cupboard (bridged and blanked off)

#4 in the lounge (swapped to RJ45)

#5 opposite side of the lounge with the 'Master' socket box (no longer connected)

As it is I have everything running from under my desk on the 2nd floor with a second access point in the lounge. However getting the ONT installed up there would be a tricky task at best. The wall the sockets are on a partition wall with no external access (the cavity is open to the loft  and existing cables run when the house was built) and under my desk which given what's on it isn't moving any time soon.

My thoughts are to have the ONT installed in the hall where the 1st socket is and then use the current cable run to bring the WAN connection to the 2nd floor where it can go straight in to my current setup keeping the BT hub safely in it's box where it can't annoy me 😄  (assuming that's where they would want to bring the fibre in)

Currently there are no power sockets near that socket, just an unswitched FCU which I have no clue what it runs so don't want to fiddle with. On the opposite side of the wall is the consumer unit so I''m thinking in preparation if I have a socket installed near the current phone socket I can then swap the socket itself for a 2 module data grid faceplate with RHJ45 and a brush guard to allow the fibre to pass through to the ONT. I would have to swap the faceplate at the same time as the install to keep things working.

This should keeps things reasonably tidy and allow the OR/Kelly guys to to just run the fibre in and hook up the ONT by the door out the way.

Does this seem like a feasible plan?
I appreciate the engineers will want to test things and could easily jerry rig the BT Hub to do so if I still need time to swap out the existing sockets where needed.

[stevebrass]

From you say it sounds feasible. It may well be the case that the installer will wish to leave you with a working BT hub. So you have a choice really to rig up a temporary power supply for ONT and Hub in the hall or proceed with some/all of your wiring alterations. 

definitely get a qualified electrician to install the new hall power socket. It may be the existing FCU can be utilised - depends what is running off it. 

[imjolly]

when you get FTTP are you also being switched to digital voice?  If so and you use your landline to make/receive calls then you need to connect the SH2 to the ONT to get DV to work

[MedicalFlyer]

As far as I can tell it looks like they'll use the existing underground runs as there are no poles installed around this street. I don''t think any of the neighbours have investigated this yet so can't have a peek at their install. Can easily lash up the BT Hub to test which they will likely need to sign off the job.
Given the ONT provides a standard connection out it makes life easy to hook up my existing gear over the current in wall cabling.

[stevebrass]

Yes @imjolly  good point about DV. When we moved to FTTP we kept the landline number and used the supplied DV handset, so kept the Hub online. 

Now we have diverted the landline number to one of our mobiles so the Hub and handset are now in storage. 

[MedicalFlyer]

I got DV with my current contract and it lives in its box. After figuring out the wiring for the phone sockets the hardest part was hunting for one of the suitable g.fast modems for the current setup. That lives upstairs and feeds an ASUS AX86U with an AX58U downstairs hardwired over the in wall cabling (have tested it at 2.5Gbps which may be handy in future).
Ideally with the ONT I want to be able to feed it back in to the hall wall socket up to the AX86U, fiddle a few settings as needed, and carry on.

The trick here really is just trying to guess what the engineers want to do here. It's a private road and I suspect without charging me for the pleasure they''re not going to be going beyond using existing ducting to get the fibre here.

[licquorice]

Why are you interested in the phone socket wiring if you already have DV but are not using it?

I can assure you that if there is an existing duct to the property and it isn't blocked, that will be how the fiibre will be routed.