COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Big Kev]

[Tripps]

All meters read - and done in full sunshine. Same number of units used as last November. and the direct debit has been reduced, without prompting, by nearly £20 due to iron self discipline during the Autumn.

gas reading.JPG

[Whyperion]

Ahh, the kneeler , just as the vicar comes round and wonders why the prayer to the deity of power and the offerings of coinage made to them

[Tizer]

The road and pavement around our house are repeatedly being dug up by various utilities, especially the fibre installation workers. When our current broadband package ends next summer we'll ditch the phone landline and go to full fibre (or earlier if they force us to change).

That has made us think about how the fibre line will enter our house and the implications for our current TP-Link Powerline set up. We're in a conventional 1970s house and our present phone line first appears in the hallway and must come in under or in the concrete floor. There's no sign of it elsewhere. Our house is on a corner facing the main street and BT's workers have dug and filled a trench across the end of the side street with a branch going to the bit of garden at the corner of our house. We weren't consulted, it was done without our knowledge and I suppose that's going to be where they will want to pass it into the house. However that's the wall of our lounge and the opposite end to where the hallway is.

Mrs Tiz is concerned by the experiences of some of her friends who've ended up with routers placed where they least want something with a `forever on' light or where they get poor wi-fi. We have PCs in two rooms upstairs at the front of the house and TV in a downstairs room at the back. Currently our router is in the small spare room upstairs at the opposite end of the house to where that trench reaches our property. Mrs Tiz hates having `forever on' lights so we'd prefer to have it remain in that room.

OG members have probably already gone through the full change to fibre and might have advice to give us. For instance, would it be possible to have a cable run from that trench up the outside wall of the house and along to the spare room at the other end? Or do they force you to have it close to the entry point.

All advice welcome!

[Stanley]

Peter, all I can tell you is that BT were very efficient and the Powerline connection functions exactly the same.

[PanBiker]

The outer Open Reach fibre box is on the outside wall by our back door. The inside bits of kit that are powered and convert from fibre to CAT5/6 are in the kitchen, near a convenient ring main socket. From there I have a Cat 5 cable through to where we have the router, basically downstairs by the desktop computer which is roughly in the middle of the house. I have a cable connection to a switch that runs all the TV bits and a power line adaptors from the computer position up into our loft for the PC in my radio station most of that CAT 5 infrastructure was already installed when we were on 20Mb broadband before we upgraded to fibre. Everything else, more TV bits, phones and tablets are all running on WiFi.

The light on my Talk Talk router is just a small white led on the front which indicates the status of the fibre link to the exchange, I suppose you could just stick a bit of black tape over it if it offends you. The powered kit in the kitchen also has link status led's, the router also has a VOIP socket for a land line phone. I sill have that connected but I cancelled our free UK calls package. It still functions on standard tariff but we only use it for incoming calls as we both have mobiles with free calls.

[Tizer]

Ian, thanks for all that information. I guess that your fibre comes from a pole rather than underground if it comes in by your back door? If the Open Reach box is fitted on the corner of our house where the trench ends it would have the inside box in the far corner of our lounge which is the worst place for us because most of our kit needing a connection is at the other end of the house. Also wifi is unreliable which is why we use powerline adapters. There's no way we could put a cable from that corner of the lounge to where our router presently lies, upstairs at the opposite end of the house. I think I'm right that someone from Open Reach or BT visits in advance to discuss the layout etc?

[PanBiker]

Not with me, the Open Reach Engineers and fibre expert Sophie sorted it on the day. I laid all my own internal infrastructure, (CAT 5 etc, some already there). The internal powered kit confirms the connection to the exchange, its the equivalent in Open Reach terms to the old telephone Master Socket. You are correct in that it comes from a pole about 30M away. Surprisingly it involved a Simon Snorkel to connect the fibre run to the house OR don't seem to do ladders any more.
The armoured external fibre is loose around our flat kitchen roof as the Snorkel wouldn't reach so far from the street and they would not stand on the roof to clip it round which is double layer fibreglass and resin and perfectly safe, our window cleaner doesn't have a problem with it!

[Tizer]

I guess it's going to be a case of waiting for them to come on the day then telling them where we want the router, then them saying no can do and trying to work out the least worst plan for us. We could end up like some of Mrs Tiz's friends who are now not happy with what they've got.

[Stanley]

Or, in best case Peter, you could get a good engineer and a perfect installation. I hope that is the case.