Hi,
I had been contacted a couple of times by TalkTalk over the past few years with unsolicited Full Fibre Upgrade appointments that I had difficulty cancelling. My internet was working fine and I thought that if it ain't broke then why fix it. I knew that any new router would be at the opposite end of the house to my desktop computer and it wasn't wi-fi ready. I was also reading of people's problems after these upgrades.
Last year, I bought a new PC that was wi-fi ready and then reckoned that (surprisingly) we had about a dozen devices connected to the wi-fi. I then figured that I had waited long enough to inevitably upgrade so decided to take the plunge at the next free upgrade offer.
This offer came a few weeks ago and (bravely for me) I accepted. Within an hour of me accepting I had two CityFibre vans outside my house conducting a survey. The guys told me to expect a cable to me mailed to me prior to upgrade and they would bring the rest. On enquiring, I was assured by TalkTalk that any necessary equipment would be mailed to me 24-48 hours prior to installation. I thought that that was cutting it fine.
About 36 hours prior to installation I received an email from Royal Mail saying they were in receipt of a package from TalkTalk and it was on its way and would be delivered the day before installation. I was able to track the parcel.
When the package arrived it contained a new router (Sagemcom TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub), which looked like my existing router, and a connection cable. At this point I thought I might be able to use my existing router and not have to reconnect all my devices but noticed that the new Wi-Fi Hub had and extra port for my landline, so that dealt with that decision.
On the day, the CityFibre guys arrived and talked me through what they were going to do and asked me where I wanted the Fibre Connection Box fitting to the wall. This is what the router was going to be connected-to by an ethernet cable. They fitted the box exactly where I wanted it and another connection box was fitted to the outside wall so that the two could be connected together.
They dug a small channel from the pavement access point to the outside wall box and connected everything together. The channel is quite shallow so they showed me the route so I can avoid it when gardening. A quick check of of connectivity and everything was switched on. I noticed my Wi-Fi User Name and Password were photographed to speed up the checks so thought it prudent to change the password from default before connecting any devices to the new router. This was quite straightforward after a quick internet search to find out how to do it. After the engineer checks were deemed successful, I was advised to wait 30 minutes or so to allow for updates and stabilisation. The whole process took a bit over an hour at my house and a bit of time before that at the cabinet nearby. My garden looked the same as before they came.
Everything was still working through the copper phone lines after they left so I had a period of time to switch all my devices across to the Full Fibre Router with very little loss of connectivity. Being a bit pessimistic about the outcome of the upgrade, I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked perfectly through the new router and my landline also worked as it should.
My speeds prior to the upgrade were 72Mbps for download and 19Mbps for upload. They are now up to 150Mbps for both, depending on the time of day and I haven't yet seen them below 100Mbps.
I am pleased to say that I am glad I bit the bullet and went ahead with the upgrade. Clearly, some will have issues but my experience shows that it can all work well.
Good luck to anyone (especially if, like me, you are a bit nervous of this computerie techie stuff) if you decide to upgrade from copper to Full Fibre.
Thanks for reading.
trapper
