Missed the first two parts of this fibre broadband installation case study?
Read part one here
Read part two here
So, now we’re onto the Fibre Installation BUILD element. This is when they actually pass the fibre from the street junction to my house.
So how did things go when it came to the BUILD stage of my installation? Well, on the 24th July I received a call bright and early once again at 0711, asking, first of all if I had mended my fence. Cheeky! …but fair enough. Fortunately, I had. So I told the Chorus contractor that was all fixed and he confirmed that he would be coming to my property today before 0830 and that he would start on the outside build activity. He also confirmed that I did not need to be present for the work to be done.
At 0810 the Chorus van pulled up on the driveway and the contractor hopped out and said “Hello” and then he got to clambering around in the bushes and started on the BUILD.
We had agreed to a surface level installation job involving the fibre cabling being attached to my fence and then some underground trenching once the cable was at the back of the property.
There are plenty of details on the BUILD options available on the Chorus website and if your contractor is like mine then they will know all the options. I have copied some of that information below, but there are 4 or 5 different options to choose from.
The main aim of the BUILD component of the install is to build the fibre from the street to your property and connect it to a small box installed on the outside of your house called an External Termination Point (ETP).
If your existing copper phone line is connected by aerial cable or an underground pipe, then usually the installer will install your fibre cable in the same way. If that’s not possible they will recommend another option.
1. Aerial cable fibre installation
If your existing copper line is connected by aerial they will either replace it with fibre, put the fibre cable up alongside your copper cable, or if you need to keep your copper line for voice services or a monitored alarm, they’ll replace your copper cable with a hybrid of fibre and copper.
2. Underground pipe fibre installation
If your copper line is connected by an underground pipe and it’s usable, they will dig at each end and pull the fibre cable through it. If you want to change from aerial to underground, ask your broadband provider to place an Overhead to Underground order for the installers to complete the work at your own cost, or you can dig the trench yourself as marked out by one of the site technicians. If that is the route your looking at you’ll need to meet trenching standards and we have linked to these here.
A. Mounted on a fence, driveway edge or retaining wall - if a suitable surface like a driveway edge, footpath, curbing, retaining wall or fence runs from your street to your property, we can mount the fibre cable to the surface. The installer will aim to minimise the visual impact of this and mount the cable discretely. The lightweight nature of the cable means it won’t cause any weight-bearing issues.
B. Buried cable in a grass verge or garden - if the route from your street to your property is a soft surface the installer can bury the fibre cable. This is done by digging a shallow trench by hand and laying the cable inside. The location is determined as a low impact area to avoid being dug up and it doesn’t need to be in a straight line. The installer will restore any surface we disturb once we finish.
C. Buried cable under a driveway or path - If there is a hard surface, like concrete, from your street to your property then machinery will be used to drill or dig a trench to bury the fibre cable. When drilling, the installers drill under the hard surface to create a trench to pull their cable through. They limit digging to a temporary hole at each end. When trenching, the installers make a wide cut right through the hard surface or a narrow cut in the top of the surface to lay the cable, taking the most direct route and being mindful of other utilities. At completion, they will use the same material to restore the surface but it’s not always possible for them to match the colour, texture and pattern for concrete and asphalt completely so be prepared for this.
For my fibre installation we chose a combination of surface level mounting on the fence together with a short length that was buried under the grass at the back of the property coming up into an External Termination Point on the rear of the property. It all looks very neat and tidy.
The BUILD phase was completed in a day and when I came home from work everything was complete and looking good.
In the meantime my brand spanking new modem was also delivered. As we mentioned in an earlier post, you need to have the right tools for the job. If you are lucky enough to have a Gigabit fibre connection coming into your property you want to ensure that you have the right equipment to route that connection through to your devices.
My new fibre connection has a 100Mbps download speed and the new router is more than acceptable, offering wireless speeds of up to 450Mbps and it was also free of charge with my new plan. Make sure you check your current router’s capabilities if you are planning to bring your own router of r modem to your new connection.
So that’s the end of part 3 of the case study… just the last stage to go. C – CONNECT.
This is going to happen on Monday the 29th August. Exactly 3 weeks after I signed up for fibre… I’m getting even more excited now!
Read the final part of this fibre case study here once I'm connected... which should be in just a few hours! (I'm writing this afternoon of August 8th 2016)
