City fibre upgrade

[Dimbat]

I have had a message from talk talk about CityFibre upgrade in my area and they want to upgrade in a couple of weeks.  However I need to talk to someone about my connections as I don’t know whether it is suitable.  I have one landline number but two telephone sockets in different rooms.  One is for the landline and the other is used purely to connect my desktop computer. There are no telephones connected to this socket.  According to their message someone should be contacting me but I have heard nothing yet.  Also the telephone help number in their message does not connect.  Not impressed so far. 

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Dimbat 

I have found a video that explains the installation process, apologies if it is a bit simplistic:-

https://youtu.be/oPLZTqvz7IA 

As I said before all of your current telephone wiring, either from the street or a telegraph pole, will become redundant & will no longer work. Previously all broadband was delivered over the phone line, but now with future fibre this is a completely new installation & if you are having a landline, this is now delivered over the fibre line.

What you need to consider is where you want the brown box put located on your outside wall, the ONT is normally located on the other side of that wall. It will need an electricity supply, as will your new router. That will connect to the ONT via a provided Ethernet cable. If you have the Eero router and are having a landline, then you will need a third power point for the Grandstream ATA that connects between the Eero & a phone (ideally a DECT cordless base station). If you get the Sagemcom 5464 (hub 2) router, the situation is much simpler, as it has a phone socket on the back of it (you have to peel off a bit of tape that covers it). Of course, if you use a DECT base station that will also require a power point.

Try to locate the router as far away from the DECT base station as possible, not near any other electrical equipment or in a cupboard. Usually about midway up the wall is a good point. However, this may not be possible in every case. If you want the router further away from the ONT, you would need to get a longer Ethernet cable.

You asked about problems with a City Fibre installation, obviously as a customer, I can give you no guarantees. However, despite there being what might seem quite a few problem installations on the forum, you never hear about all the other installations that were completed OK. Two of my neighbours went for it & have had no difficulties at all.

Once it is all installed, if you have any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me via this thread or create a new one if that is more appropriate.

[KeithFrench]

Please forget all about telephone sockets, they are no longer used at all with Future Fibre. The feed in from the street is totally new, coming from the new City Fibre cabling laid in your road.

Not knowing what speeds you have currently, for most people there will be an improvement in this 

[Dimbat]

Thank you Keith for your explanation.  It is of some help, however I am still somewhat confused how they will do this. I live in a bungalow and my main telephone socket is at the front of the property so thats not a problem.  My second socket where the desktop is connected is at the rear of the property so how will they sort out connecting? I am no expert as you can guess and I don’t know what a DECT is.  All I can say is they are standard telephone sockets.  We do have cordless phones with one base plugged into the main socket.  The other phones plug into standard sockets.  When I replied to their questions TalkTalk, said there could be a possibility the phone sockets might not be suitable.  I don’t want them to turn up and then find out they can’t do the job, wasting everyone’s time. I am also worried about some of the problems people have been experiencing with CityFibre.  I’ve still got problems with low bandwidth messages on zoom meetings on my laptop and I was rather hoping the upgrade would help with this.  

[KeithFrench]

@Dimbat 

You will have a box installed on the outside wall of your property and this will connect to the City Fibre ONT (Optical Network Termination). From there will be an Ethernet connection to your new router's WAN port. Depending on the router you get, there will either be a phone port on the back of it (Sagemcom 5464 - Hub 2), if it is an Eero, the phone connection is different. In this case, there will be an additional unit (Grandstream ATA), this has two connections one to a phone & the other to an Ethernet connection on the Eero.

Whilst it is possible to connect the phone port of these units to existing internal wiring in your house, this is a more advanced topic & is totally down to you. The easiest way is to connect the phone port to a DECT cordless phone base station.

This gives some idea of the installation process:-

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/How-Full-Fibre-is-installed/ta-p/2555166