Hi all.
Having been involved with forums myself for many years I can appreciate that not updating threads can be a tad frustrating, so I thought I'd offer an update.
The short story is my re-scheduled appointment for 7th December did actually happen and I'm now up and running on full fibre. 👍
The slightly longer version in case anyone is interested or it helps others...
The assigned Openreach Engineer was great. With my legacy Instrument Engineering background I'm fortunate to consider myself to be quite tech savvy, so a quick discussion of my needs over a cup of coffee soon had an agreed cunning plan sorted for the install.
Essentially with a little fettling, the CSP could be mounted where the existing FTTC cable arrived at the house. Pulling the new fibre from the house to the manhole was a little problematic due to a slightly congested duct at the manhole end, but a quick phone call soon saw another OR Engineer come to help. The problem was quickly resolved with one man at each end of the fibre and we were soon back on track with one man for the rest the install. Constructive feedback; personally I don't see cable pulling as a one 'man' job but I guess that's down to OR procedures.
The new CSP and associated trunking was moved slightly to align with the existing ducting to offer the required mechanical protection for the fibre. As above, the ONT position was discussed over coffee as my requirements are perhaps a little outside of a what could be considered a more normal install. Essentially the CSP at the front of the house and the ONT and Hub in my study at the rear would have been the ideal installation, due to the study being used as the hub (no pun intended) for my existing hard wired ethernet connections. An external fibre run was an option, but I didn't want a fibre clipping to the outside wall. It would have looked unsightly, especially when trying to meet the minimum bend radius requirements. An internal solution was the only viable option in reality and we agreed on the ONT being placed on the internal wall adjacent to the CSP position. This allowed the existing cable hole to be re-used for routing the fibre from the CSP to the ONT and also suited my existing power availability.
With the Hub being required in the study, a suitable ethernet cable was obviously required between the ONT and the Hub. Again a solution was offered, but with OR being somewhat restricted on their installation practises, I didn't want an ethernet cable clipping to skirting boards and around door frames. I was sort of expecting that anyway due to previous posts on this forum, so will install a Cat6 cable myself at my leisure. I needed to have the study up and running quickly, so as an interim solution I have used powerline adapters for the WAN connection. The new fibre service was tested at both the ONT location and in the study with no problems.
A little equipment information to those who may be interested, I was supplied with a Nokia G-010G-T ONT and an EE branded (BT stickered) Smart Hub SH20A.
I hope the above may prove helpful to someone.
Thanks again to the Mods on here who have helped.
