FTTP on Demand

How long can the 4G antenna cables be? At our site 15 m would be handy as we have just had foil insulation in the roof space which will block most signals, and the flint walls have a similar effect.
Shorter the better is generally the rule of thumb with radio signals and coax cable. Basically to make up for the increased attenuation (loss) due to longer cables you need to increase the size (thickness) of the cable, which makes it expensive and more cumbersome.

Ultimately without an amp, and long lengths of coaxial back to your radio/receiver, you simply end up losing whatever you’ve gained, literally by fitting a higher gain external antenna.

This is why most standard dual polarised LTE panel or directional antennas that come with their own coax built in, only really come with 5 metres of quite thin dual coax cable.

Of course you can get (more expensive almost pro) antennas where you can fit your own separate, thicker coax of whatever length you choose, however as said you must be careful not to cut off your nose to spite your face. In that all the gain gets soaked up by the extra loss in the
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
Shorter the better is generally the rule of thumb with radio signals and coax cable. Basically to make up for the increased attenuation (loss) due to longer cables you need to increase the size (thickness) of the cable, which makes it expensive and more cumbersome.

Ultimately without an amp, and long lengths of coaxial back to your radio/receiver, you simply end up losing whatever you’ve gained, literally by fitting a higher gain external antenna.

This is why most standard dual polarised LTE panel or directional antennas that come with their own coax built in, only really come with 5 metres of quite thin dual coax cable.

Of course you can get (more expensive almost pro) antennas where you can fit your own separate, thicker coax of whatever length you choose, however as said you must be careful not to cut off your nose to spite your face. In that all the gain gets soaked up by the extra loss in the
Our best 4G signal is on top of the digester, which is where the Thinking Wisp dish used to be so we have Cat 5e up there. I do not want to run mains up there to power the router (close to an ATEX zone), but if I could get a 12V 1.5A via a POE supply I could keep the BT Hub there ready to connect if needed. I have POE injectors, but are POE extractors available?
 
Clever stuff . Have you got a 4G sim contract that allows unused data to be rolled forward.for that situation
Me? :D

Yeh going forward will be using Virgin Media (underlying network EE so all good) SIM @ £20 per month get me 120GB. On this particular deal can’t roll over 100% but can roll a decent chunk. So will definitely be good enough with FTTP doing most of the heavy lifting (soon hopefully!).
 
Our best 4G signal is on top of the digester, which is where the Thinking Wisp dish used to be so we have Cat 5e up there. I do not want to run mains up there to power the router (close to an ATEX zone), but if I could get a 12V 1.5A via a POE supply I could keep the BT Hub there ready to connect if needed. I have POE injectors, but are POE extractors available?
Yeh sorry. Been out an about - you sure can get PoE injectors and the opposite, I guess “extractors”. Just watch your PoE standards match your gear, how many watts you need to extract.

I use D-Link jobbies, from memory around a tenner each, for some gear that does not have native PoE support - so use an extractor with variable output voltage to suck out some juice and present it as 12 volts to the gear on a standard 5mm DC barrel connector.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Impressive week`s work from the contractors on our road FTTP scheme.
Army of tree trimmers, pole erectors, cablers & guys doing the terminating & splicing.
Pole outside my window has this kit installed today.
Heard 1st week in June mentioned as complete & live. Then presume a delay while the connection into the house is complete
fttp 1.jpg


Box on left of this pic
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Impressive week`s work from the contractors on our road FTTP scheme.
Army of tree trimmers, pole erectors, cablers & guys doing the terminating & splicing.
Pole outside my window has this kit installed today.
Heard 1st week in June mentioned as complete & live. Then presume a delay while the connection into the house is complete
View attachment 794658

Box on left of this pic View attachment 794660
(y) That looks like a familiar sight. Hopefully they can light it up for you soon.

The install here was reported as completed 2 weeks ago, pending commissioning and audit (up to the final pole presumably). Then they are supposed to call and make an appointment to install the tails to the house.

Basically got the exact same update today from Cerberus as on 19 April. So told them to put a rocket up Openreach and give us a completion date. Even a target. God help us all :rolleyes:
 
Update on Tuesday:

Planning are dealing for an estimate for a new rack to be installed in the exchange to carry the fibre tie cables and we have been advised that this will take 2 – 3 weeks. Only once that has been completed will the OCR estimate be able to progress. We are monitoring for progression.

It’s little wonder these jobs are taking a year or more to complete in some cases, if they don’t check the basics are there before they go to do the work. Maybe I’m being too simple.
 
Impressive week`s work from the contractors on our road FTTP scheme.
Army of tree trimmers, pole erectors, cablers & guys doing the terminating & splicing.
Pole outside my window has this kit installed today.
Heard 1st week in June mentioned as complete & live. Then presume a delay while the connection into the house is complete
View attachment 794658

Box on left of this pic View attachment 794660
Some more pics of what the final pole here now looks like after they came back and did “2nd fix” on 19 March.

They’re still doing exchange work for another few weeks yet, so not been given a date yet when the service will go live.

I was sent a one pager today from Cerberus with all my (future) IP address details and stuff.

Be interesting to see when yours goes live in relation to my install. I expect you’ll have to wait a while yet once all the Openreach work is done before it’s marked as totally “complete” before you can order an FTTP service from a provider.

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upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Boys from Avonline Networks have been working their way up the road this week doing the connections with those dome shaped thingies.. Sure you have the tech name
Still got the last 400 m of cable from the 1st house back to the road end to pull in & connect into the main
As regards completion everyone I speak to has their own version of events, so seeing is believing :scratchhead:
 
Over the years I’ve had multiple overlapping 4G mobile contracts with EE, often run two SIM concurrently and as the data runs out of one SIM the router flip flops over to the next SIM.

Anyhow my experience of EE has been first rate to be fair, good performance if not a little on the expensive side compared to some of the competition. Anyhow now over the last few months as the FTTP live date approaches (although it keeps drifting on and on :rolleyes:) I’ve been running these EE contracts to expiry and not renewing them.

My plan was/is to keep a 4G connection for backup with FTTP acting as the primary connection and the router then deciding what connection to use. My grand plan looked good as I could get 120 GB from Virgin for £20 inc per month and rollover up to 40 GB unused data per month - this would be ample with the FTTP taking the main burden....

So anyway as luck or not would have, my last EE contract expired this week and the SIM actually stopped functioning on Monday. No problem I thought, just segue into the using the Virgin Media SIM without the FTTP a bit earlier than I hoped...so popped in the new Virgin Mobile SIM, which I got last month into the router and re-started everything on Monday night. Everything worked off the bat, and as Virgin use EE masts, I didn’t even have to re-aim the external antenna. All good, right (y)?

Wrong!!! All good for about 18 hours, until yesterday at late morning around 11:30am when everything went completely and totally tits up. No internet, no phone, no anything! WTF just happened!?!

After a lot of head scratching, thinking something had mucked it with the SIM or settings, it turns out it was that a massive national outage with Virgin Media, lasting almost 8 hours, that didn’t get resolved until around half-six yesterday evening.

So out the window went my bulletproof 4G experience the last 5 years or so. EE come back I love you again :geek::LOL::ROFLMAO:
 
Pondering whether these companies train their staff in how best to frustrate customers.
After 2 very busy weeks on our scheme there has been no one on the job at all this week
My updates from Cerberus seem to go round in circles. They just repeat the same nonsense, until I bark at them, then they run off to Openreach to get a semi sensible update.

The next week they’re back to repeating the same message from 2 weeks ago, which appears to contradict the previous update. It’s enough to send you around the twist.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
My updates from Cerberus seem to go round in circles. They just repeat the same nonsense, until I bark at them, then they run off to Openreach to get a semi sensible update.

The next week they’re back to repeating the same message from 2 weeks ago, which appears to contradict the previous update. It’s enough to send you around the twist.

Just imagine if they were a government body....!
 
Just wondering, when our phone lines were on overhead cables stray shot from shooting days was blamed for nicking the outer cable and letting moisture in to cause intermittent faults so BT (or whatever their name used to be before privatization) offered us an underground solution just so long as we dug the trench.

Openreach surveyors suggest that we can have underground fibre in 2 years if we dig and lay the ducting which they will provide albeit on a completely different route to the 5 pair analogue cable.

What would the likely outcome of stray shot damaging to newly suspended fibre "cables" ?
 
Just wondering, when our phone lines were on overhead cables stray shot from shooting days was blamed for nicking the outer cable and letting moisture in to cause intermittent faults so BT (or whatever their name used to be before privatization) offered us an underground solution just so long as we dug the trench.

Openreach surveyors suggest that we can have underground fibre in 2 years if we dig and lay the ducting which they will provide albeit on a completely different route to the 5 pair analogue cable.

What would the likely outcome of stray shot damaging to newly suspended fibre "cables" ?
Depends if you're unlucky enough for the shot to pass through the armouring and buffering around the actual fibre. I'm not sure of the exact construction of their aerial fibre cables though. I expect they will be of some sort of 'loose tube' construction rather than steel wire armoured. The tubes in this sort of cable are usually just PVC type plastic and the fibres sit inside, sometimes in a nice gel that acts as a cushion and also water repellent.

Fibre itself is very vulnerable to damage, but the cables that encase them are usually pretty tough. Not sure they test them against loose pellet fragments though...:cry::unsure:
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
The fibre is in a solid 3.2 mm OD white plastic sheath, which is then encased in a very tough black plastic outer (6.3 mm OD, or to us oldies 1/4"), with a 2.5 mm copper pair attached to the side in a distorted figure 8
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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