It will be a new router. You can put it next to the fibre socket wherever that is, and connect everything else to it by WiFi, or run data cables if that is worthwhile for you. The installers will be experienced how to drill through different walls.

Don't know about the other questions but we would dearly love fibre broadband, or even FTTC. We have five people all trying to do online school and work over a 4G phone internet connection. The schools and employers are now expecting everyone to be available at any time on Zoom video calling for lessons and meetings, and are sending out multi-GB videos of teachers explaining stuff which the kids have to download and respond to within the assigned lesson time. Apparently the govt are pulling back from committments to a universal service of broadband.

Whatever it takes to get the fibre into your house, I'd definitely suggest you do it, the world has changed forever and people will expect a home to have it.

Posted By: RexIf the fibre comes to the loft

Start there. Will it? Or will they put an underground cable in? That's the first thing to establish - ask them.

Lots of houses near us have overhead phones and/or power and suffer the associated grief from time to time. We put everything underground and I'm very glad we did.

Incidentally, drilling through warmcel is no problem. Poke a small hole in the membrane and start drilling. Tape up the hole afterwards around the cable, or use one of the fancy sticky grommets. If you have to drill the other way so the membrane is at the end, then have somebody watching and when the drill strikes it just take it slowly or poke a hole first and push the drill through.

As Will says, wherever the fibre comes in it is likely that it will be terminated, and where it is terminated there will be a box that needs mains power. So once you know how they're proposing to bring the fibre in, you can decide the most practical place to terminate it where you can provide power. If the only place they can bring it in is somewhere awkward, you can also ask them whether it's possible to run the fibre a bit further inside the building to somewhere more convenient.

Once the signal's gone through the ONT box, it's a regular internet cable that comes out the other side and you can connect it to whatever switches or devices you want.

If you want to distribute internet around the house, phone wires generally are no good, you'll need cat-5 or better cables (better for gigabit!) or else you'll need a wireless system. Modern mesh systems are pretty good.

We have an Openreach cabinet by the street a couple of houses away from us in the village, and I switched from ADSL to FTTC DSL 18 months ago. So I now have 80 Mbps. I definitely wouldn't want to go back to ADSL (especially since I'm paying less now :) but I'm not sure I'd use much of a gigabit link.

edit: As Phil says, we have discussed this before.

Should have added that at the time of building, fibre was not really a thing and I did not see the need for CAT5. Silly boy!!!

Posted By: RexBecause our phone line comes in via a pole, I would imagine that is how a fibre will be installed.

Aerial Fiber cable can have issues with longevity so the usual deployment is via underground. Locally this may be done by 'mole' technology so I would not assume anything as to how it will be deployed.

At the moment, all BT cables run in underground piping, then popping up to the various poles to be distributed to the houses. Each pole and an inspection chamber at its base. However, the last two poles (and my house gets its cable from one of them) is situated in the middle of a small roundabout and there is no inspection chamber. So there could be a possibility of an underground fibre, but my feeling is it is unlikely.

I have been researching the ONT and the general guides suggest that it should be close to where the computers are situated; in my case, that is almost diametrically opposite where the existing (and I assume fibre) would come into the house.

As I don't have CAT5, only a standard phone cable, I fail to understand how the fibre connection would get from the loft to the computers? Can it be done with the existing phone cable?

Presumably, the idea is that from the ONT, one uses WiFi? It may work fine but my PosiJoist and ali UFH spreader plates could cause WiFi issues. How would I know if WiFi will work until it is installed?

As for drilling through the breathe paper, certainly it is not difficult but it is very tough stuff and during the build, when I had to drill through it a couple of times, I found that is wraps itself around the drill and until it either tore off a large amount or stalled the drill.

I don't want that happening in the cavity, where I cannot see what is happening.

Plenty of ways to bring a FTTH 9mm duct in without going through a wall. If it's anything like mine (which is a completely different organisation, not BT) in terms of install it's:

Small 9mm ducting put to somewhere in the house (mine was underground and then through a 4" duct left in for extra services, it terminates in the router, which is screwed to the wall, and then a couple of fibres are blown (literally) down it - they look like fishing line. If you can bring it in underground, what about putting it in the electricity duct?

My router does have a WiFi point but I've turned it off and instead I run 3 access points made by a company called Ubiquiti; one AP on each floor of the house. They're older tech (prev generation) and only good for about 80mbps but it's only for phones and tablets so it's ample - and they were 35 quid each on eBay, they're rock solid and they get their power through the Ethernet wire so it's only one wire to hide; run it up the corner or an architrave in the hall and plaster it in. The office is wired for gigbit Ethernet (the house was wired with cat 6 to a point in every room and I actually wish I'd run it to every light switch and socket too - always handy to have spare wires running everywhere) so the desk computers are wired in and really do get 950+mbps when it's needed (I do a lot of large video transfers; very handy to be able to stick a 2 gig video on some internet download server in a couple of seconds)

Ultimately, if you want your in-house WiFi coverage to be decent you don't rely on one access point built into your ISP supplied router; look for commercial grade kit that has been pulled because it's being replaced and put several in; your WiFi devices will roam around them and switch without you knowing. I haven't had great experiences with power line devices, but the Ubiquiti Unifi stuff has been brilliant, and similarly in a business setting the Aruba networks kit was good too

Don't know if your install will be different to mine, In our area open reach bring the fibre to the house then BT come along a few days later and connect up. Open reach like to put the box from the street onto the outside of the house and BT would put your final connection where you want. In my situation I had put under ground ducting in place several year ago so the cable had to come into the house. A neighbour was going to be around when he had his done and was going to have it in a convenient place so the outside box was close where his inside master connection and router were going to be. Open reach turned up a few days earlier than expected he was not in to direct them and they put it where it suited them and turned out to be a bigger job for BT. When my BT man came he was dead pleased that I had them close together because he very often would have a big job just routing the indoor cable to where the occupier wanted it. So plan where you want all the boxes to go and be around to direct open reach. Open reach are in my experience a law unto themselves mainly I think that they subcontract the work and the installers are not customer orientated. I found BT employees to be really great.

Posted By: Ed DaviesOpenreach is part of BT. BT was split up into a number of business units (7?), one of which is Openreach.

Indeed, so in some ways it's good that their employees seem to behave differently

Gentlemen,

Thanks for the additional information. At the moment, we watch either live of catch-up TV via a computer with a large screen TV as the monitor. It gets it signal via a Powerline adaptor and we don't have any problem. So that could be a possibility.

Use of the electricity duct is a thought, but I guess we would have to find the duct location near property boundary. And that is on the other side of the road from the BT pole.

Obviously, overhead to the loft is the easiest option. I don't want cables running down the wall, either inside or out as I took great pains during the build to ensure that walls were not 'cluttered' with cables. Unfortunately, I did not install CAT5!!!

Certainly seems that Wifi is the way to go. Is there a way to test if the Posi-joists and f/f UFH spreader plates will block the signal?

> Is there a way to test if the Posi-joists and f/f UFH spreader plates will block the signal?

Plug a wifi enabled router in somewhere - it doesn't need an internet connection in order to start its wifi point, then walk round with your phone etc and leave it in various places for a few minutes and check the declared signal strength, or if you want to get more detailed use a laptop and a suitable software to assess the wifi signal quality

You can dot some power line wifi APs around the place, or get some power-to-ethernet and reuse old ISP routers as WiFi points - just configure them all with the same name, password and different channels and your wifi enabled devices should roam around them. I recommend commercial grade kit because this sort of configuration is built in, and the software on them very reliable; I've never had to reboot one of my 4 commercial APs in 5 years of running them

I will admit that when talking techie stuff regarding wi-fi / internet / computers etc, I am somewhat out of my comfort zone.

As suggested above, I received a wi-fi signal on my phone; sitting next to the router, I get a reading of 72 Mbs. Up in the loft, where the fibre cable would come into the house, it is 42Mbs. although the number of bars fluctuates between one and two. Does this imply that wi-fi would work or would it be somewhat flaky?

I also see that wireless USB dongles advertise a speed up to (usually) 600 Mbs. This is considerably greater than I appear to be getting from the router (72) but I have no idea what it all implies.

Would 42 be sufficient or not?

Posted By: Rex

Would 42 be sufficient or not?

Only you can answer that question as it depends on what you want to do, when you want to do it and your tolerance levels if you have to wait a few seconds sometimes or whether you want to move around the house to get better reception. If your incoming broadband is slower than 42MBS then 42MBS wifi is fine as broadband will be the limiting factor

Last time I checked our incoming broadband speed it was 12MBS which is fine for us. Our wifi probably runs way faster than that but 12MBS is the limiting factor.

From the OP, I dont think Rex has committed to having GB fibre, its just being run to his house. As he doesnt see the need for it, were all guessing at how many meg his components are/can/need to run at;)

Posted By: Rex

Fibre needs a box of tricks to convert the light into an electrical signal, but if I find the wifi does to get a good signal, is it possible to plug the existing telephone cable into the (whatever) box, to bring the signal to the office (current master socket) and from there, plug in something into which the computers are connected?

Basically, fibre to the loft and the existing telephone cable to the office?

Not sure I totally follow this logic - you will need a patch cable (ethernet cable) to connect to the router (the box) - the connection is an RJ45 - the telephone line has an rj11, the two are not compatible. Some routers allow a phone to plug directly in with an rj11 connection, but only for use as a phone (VOIP).

If you can run one cable down and need more devices wired you can get a cheap switch (google ethernet switch or splitter - there are lots available for under £20 and can connect 4 or 5 devices) to plug more devices via the one cable.

You will of course still have the powerline option - which is probably the least hassle and cheapest or all - given you already have then.

"Probably need to ask about that option."

I imagine my mental health will suffer in trying to speak to someone at BT who would be able to answer anything. But I forget, as I understand it, the answers to all my questions can be found on the web site!!!!