Is Openreach premium install service an option?

[#1]

OpenReach have just connected our street to the fibre network, so I'm now looking at placing a full fibre order. 

How much flexibility do I have as the homeowner to tell OpenReach where I want the ONT box and incoming connections to be located?

Our current copper line comes into a location that would be really inconvenient (both for power and also distributing the network through the house) and instead I'd like Fibre to come in via our garage which would be much easier for power and also to plug into the rest of the home network. This would probably involve more trenching and a longer fibre run to route.

I understand that Openreach do have a premium installation service to ISPs (at a cost) that seems more flexible. Is this something I can request and arrange through Plusnet at the time I place an order? appreciating that I would need to pay more.

thanks in advance.

[#2]

@treefish 

There is a certain amount of flexibility for the location of the ONT (the internal box). It's the art of desirability against the possible.

Are you current servced by an underground or over head feed? An external box (CSP) gets placed near the incoming fibre location and then a cable is run to the ONT. This cable can be pinned to the outside walls so there is potential to run it to the garage and then into your house through the wall.

Brian

[#3]

From experience, there is a moderate degree of flexibility.

When my business FTTP was installed, the KC guy kindly installed the ONT in the middle of the building (behind the bar), running the fibre up a wall, across the wall / ceiling joint (along side existing internal phone wires), round the next room to the external wall ... where the external box had been placed some 10m from the point that the O/H drop hit the building.

Note that the internal cable needs to be installed from the ONT outwards so as to not damage the pre-fitted optical termination plug. 

[#4]

Thanks @bmc & @Townman  without going too far down rabbit holes. We're currently serviced by an underground copper line this comes into a covered porch type area. It's still an external wall and there's no door, so entirely accessible for openreach. The problem is that the analogue cable then comes into our living room, a previous owner then seems to have routed this within the walls to the centre of the house up against the interior wall to the garage. My current router and ethernet points all span out from there.

There's no power socket next to the incoming analogue point, nor any existing Cat 5/6. To run internal ethernet from there to the rest of the network will either mean running it along the wall, through a door and across the hallway - there's no way to do that neatly without tracing into the walls and then redecorating.

Externally I could run a cable directly up from the current incoming point, there's a first storey overhang roof with a void above that then runs along into the garage, so if I could either get the CSP run to the current analogue point and then protected external cable to up through the roof void into the garage that's an option. I've got network and power options from that point and don't care about the cosmetics. This would be the most straightforward & acceptable solution for me.

The only alternative I can see would be to bring the fibre across the front of the house and garage and round to the side. 

Essentially, I don't want to be at the whim of whatever is easiest for the openreach engineer on the day, hence being happy to pay some extra for the premium install if it means I get exactly what I need.

After having said I wouldn't go down any rabbit holes, I did exactly that, thanks for your patience!

[#5]

@treefish 

Put ypu number in the following and see what comes up. Can you post a screen image (after hiding your details). I'm particularily interested in the narrative after the results window.

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

As to installation the engineer should always talk to you prior to starting just to confirm what's happening. Unfortunately as it's an underground feed the installer is highly unlikely to be authorised to work at height so wouldn't go above the ground floor.

Where the cable comes in is there a usable power socket on that wall?  The fibre cable can be run internally within the same room. This is my incoming cable. Or perhaps the CSP moved along the wall externally (cable up out of the ground and then along the external wall).

As regards the router that is connected to the ONT by ethernet so can go anywhere you're willing to run cable. You would have two choices. Router beside the ONT and run ethernet to where you want or run cable to the routers desired location. One possibility is to run external ethernet cable from the ONT location to the desired location (into the garage and then into the house).

Brian

[#6]

@bmc @Townman thanks for your help and sorry I didn't post a reply.

the broadband checker was down when I tried.

In case it helps anyone in future.

In the end I placed the order and then ran a couple of 3m x 25mm ducting runs and some fish tape near to where the existing copper connection came into the property. The Openreach engineer came yesterday and seemed quite happy to use the copper ducting from the street to install the CSP and my ducting in the low level roofline to bring the ONT exactly where I needed it. Whole install was 2 hours. (plus a lot of swearing on my part last weekend to get the fish tape through in the first place).

Now happily running on the 145mbps service.

[#7]

---

@treefish wrote:

Whole install was 2 hours. (plus a lot of swearing on my part last weekend to get the fish tape through in the first place).

---

@treefish 

Not much use for this occasion, but sometimes it's better/easier to put a draw rope through the conduit before installing it. I know my 17.5 metre run would have been nigh on impossible to do without using that method.

[#8]

@treefish 

Good to hear the install went OK and to your satisfaction.

Brian