Be mindful City Fibre is an infrastructure provider like Openreach…so you don’t buy broadband services from them, they provide local broadband optical network infrastructure to broadband service providers who you buy broadband from. There is a massive list of broadband service providers who use or can use City Fibre infra such as Toob, Talk Talk, Vodafone, Zen to name just a few. You might not even necessarily know your broadband service is supported by City Fibre infrastructure.
interesting - I have existing subsurface ducting. After 3 failed Openreach visits they are stalling on the installation. The excuse is that the default installation method for fttp is overhead pole. I am not line of site to any poles, the Openreach people started figuring out where they could put poles and have run out of options so I am sat waiting using copper at the moment.
I am not sure that is correct…it depends on your environment… many newer houses are not supported by any poles but instead use under ground ducting, but older properties may use drop wires from poles, and it may even be a hybrid where poles are used then there are downlinks to under ground ducting from them. You can usually spot a pole carrying fibre as it a yellow laser warning sign on it.
It may be your current ducts might be damaged, flooded or obstructed so would require a dig that has to be arranged with the council if it requires digging up the road. There is also a possibility the initial location for your final fibre splitter (ONU) for you and your shared fibre broadband community/neighbours is not suitable and a new suitable location has to be found. (One ONU time shares a fibre with many ONTs)
Yes, it was City Fibre who installed ours, putting the cable in the lawn, around the house and through the wall. They were really helpful and put the ONT exactly where I wanted it. I find that lots of tea helps in these situations.
Earl Grey or Breakfast?
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Sounds good… from what I hear and experience most infra providers are quite accommodating…. and the variations they sometimes need to deal with is quite interesting… and yes I find for most workers where it be builders, tree surgeons, roofers, decorators or PV installers…plenty of tea (often with copious amounts of sugar) is generally helpful.
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@simon-in-suffolk, that is interesting, the openreach man said they would look to put poles in, the street has city fibre buried in the pavement and openreach on poles, lots and lots of new poles have appeared. However I can’t see any of them even from roof height.
The duct I have has 12 copper pairs in it and they go to a cabinet 100yds from the house, in my naivety I thought that the fibre would be in the cabinet, apparently according to the openreach man they would need to go from the cabinet to a pole,… so I am confused and waiting - LOL.
I would love to know the truth as no one seems to agree.
Open Reach have spent quite some time checking their sub surface ducting and connection pits, they even dug a fresh 50 metre trench in the road, and resurfaced it badly. So we should be good to go, we have a mixture of poles and underground connections.
Hmm. Might be down to local planning. Your parish or district council may know. If open reach have no current underground ducts … then poles might be the option… but it does question how your copper twisted pair is currently delivered… perhaps the old existing ducts are old and damaged?
Now what is interesting Openreach is required I believe to share its ducting, but Altnets are not neccezrily required to share their ducting infrastructure apparently… so it might be City Fibre has not authorised OpenReach to share its ducting in your specific location.
I suspect the actual reasons will be commercial in confidence.
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Thank you Simon, it’ll be interesting to see how things fare over the years as more and more people take up the fibre services.
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The Open Reach contractors told me that they have to share their ducting with other providers something to do with Ofcom and public funding when they were originally installed. But Open Reach can’t use say the new ducting recently installed by Toob etc.
Toob don’t install ducting for the most part, they are mainly a service provider. Toob mainly uses City Fibre ducting I understand. City Fibre does have a duct sharing arrangement with Openreach I understand, but it’s not nationwide and varies from area to area.
Openreach are not ‘forced’ to share ducting… and Openreach infrastructure is entirely commercial and in some circumstances they will bid with other infra providers for public sector contracts for fibre infrastructure which otherwise would not be commercially viable.
However Openreach sell an Ofcom regulated product called PIA which allows other infra providers to lease ducting space from Openreach should they wish to share their ducting infrastructure.
Thanks Simon, I was fooled by the Toob logo on all the ducting access points and their vehicles!
It’s the Clipper fair trade organic. The best builder’s tea around. Plastic free unbleached bags that will go in the compost. Highly recommended.
That’s not quite the case @Simon-in-Suffolk. Toob do build infrastructure. What they have is a reciprical arrangement with City Fibre. In area’s where Toob have no infrastructure, they use City Fibre’s and in area’s that City Fibre have no infrastructure they use Toob’s.
Ok thanks for the clarification, their site suggested they use City Fibre infrastructure. Almost certainly the centralised back haul from the OLT will be Toob.
City Fibre don’t provide broadband services.
No they don’t, but the ISP’s that use their network do.
Indeed, as per my description a few posts ago.
City Fibre is an infra provider like Openreach.
Well it transpires they do have some of their own ducting… but I understand for the most part they use other’s ducting and infra, as indeed HH experienced.
From Toob’s website:
Our network runs independently and is built using fibre optic cables that connects directly into your home or business. We use existing ducts and poles wherever possible so that disruption is kept to a minimum.
I read an article yesterday that there are billions of microplastic particles in each teabag that is not made from hemp based paper. Looked on our Clipper and Yorkshire boxes and relieved they are ok. It really beggars belief that nothing has been done about this.
Phil