Fibre to the premises

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
Just out of interest, what is the monthly cost of this ‘300 mbs’ you speak of?
Exactly the same as EE 4G contract at £50/month give or take including VOIP voice calls. I’m saving the 4G cost and the copper landline and internet charges, so I reckon I’ll be at least £40/month better off and with between a 10 times and 50 times faster service, depending on the day, and almost certainly a more reliable service than EE.
Having said that, the only redundancy I will have from now on is the EE signal to the stand-by gizmo supplied with the fibre kit [which is no good because there’s no mobile signal on the ground floor where the router is] and my mobile phone if I walk up the yard and sit on the old milk churn stand.

I should mention that I went for the middle speed service of up to 300mbps rather than the cheaper available option. I’ll be getting that for my brother’s house because anything consistently over 50mbps download is enough for his use for the foreseeable future.
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
So about the same cost as most rural properties pay for a 3rd rate copper cable broadband service. [sigh]

I get 20mbs from a fttc connection. The irony being that one of the 2 main fibre optic cables that connects Scotland and England passes 30 yards from the house, but it’s not available for a public connection (“like connecting your kettle to a pylon”). The contractor that laid it said that if anyone accidentally dig through it, the compensation payment for loss of service would be at least a 7 figure sum.
 
I have FTTP at my house and at the farm. Very pleased with both.

One is a dedicated fibre system installed by Gigaclear nothing to do with phone cabinets/Openreach network.

The other is integrated into the BT/Openreach system (so comes up the same duct as the phone line) but retailed by a third party.

Both capable of gigabit speeds, and potentially even more thought I can’t really see why anyone needs more than 100mbps if I’m honest.

How much kerfuffle is involved getting a cable into your house?
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
How much kerfuffle is involved getting a cable into your house?

None at all. They were able to use the same Openreach/BT duct to the house from the local manhole/cabinet. After I ordered I came home one day 10 days later to find the plate fitted on the wall. My internal installation appointment was for 10 days or so after that.
 
None at all. They were able to use the same Openreach/BT duct to the house from the local manhole/cabinet. After I ordered I came home one day 10 days later to find the plate fitted on the wall. My internal installation appointment was for 10 days or so after that.

Sounds grand then. Hopefully they can do similar to get from the manhole in the road to the house.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
It took about an hour and a half for the man to run a cable across the yard from the pole to my gable end, run it down to a junction box, drill through the wall and a window frame and set it all up to work. He also changed the network passcode to make it easier and quicker to connect any wifi device to the router.
I’ve moved the TP link booster from the 4G router to the BT fibre one, using a data cable, and tested the tele and it woks fine with HD Amazon Prime Originals. Haven’t tried the booster upstairs yet but can’t think why it wouldn’t work.

Next job is to research wireless VOIP handsets. BT have supplied one but I want three or four more. Not sure whether the old DECT phones will be able to work with this system? If they can, great.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Next job is to research wireless VOIP handsets. BT have supplied one but I want three or four more. Not sure whether the old DECT phones will be able to work with this system? If they can, great.
You can get a converter to run analogue phones through VoIP. We have one on the robot alarm dialer.
Google Cisco analogue / VoIP converter
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
You can get a converter to run analogue phones through VoIP. We have one on the robot alarm dialer.
Google Cisco analogue / VoIP converter
Small issue here is that a Cisco ATA 192 Multiplatform phone costs as much as three new Yealink handsets.

All the options seem to have a complex setting-up procedure, which I wasn’t expecting and don’t want either. I wish these things were simple plug and play, but it seems not. I’m no telecoms expert or computer programmer and I don’t expect that more than a tiny proportion of the population are, so how the heck do they expect people to set these things up properly or at all?
 

Rookie

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincs / Notts
We were on voip, our original landline phone just connected straight into the white fttp box (ont).
However, recently bt have just changed us onto digital voice. The same phone now plugs straight into our bt router. Only downside now is that we've got to put in the area dialling code for all calls, including same local area which is a pita!
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
I’ve been told that I’ll need to use the whole number for local calls. If possible, will put them in a ‘favourites‘ directory like my iPhone’s. Otherwise will enter them in the phone’s normal directory. It’s a pity that it can’t synch with a smartphone’s directory where I have hundreds of numbers stored.

It is possible that my existing DECT landline phones will work with the new router. I’ll have to try it. My voice over fibre isn’t active yet.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Think there are 2 different scenarios.
Bt router FTTP has a phone socket which a conventional phone plugs into to give Voip

A 3rd party provider deals with VOIP
We have the latter. Local numbers dialled as before, without the area code
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
Think there are 2 different scenarios.
Bt router FTTP has a phone socket which a conventional phone plugs into to give Voip

A 3rd party provider deals with VOIP
We have the latter. Local numbers dialled as before, without the area code
We have Ring Central as our provider, local calls 6 digit dialling. You can transfer your old number or have new ones. The helpline is from the Phillipines, and they are really helpful with good English. One nice thing is that voicemails come as an email optionally, so can be forwarded to other people to deal with!
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
We have Ring Central as our provider, local calls 6 digit dialling. You can transfer your old number or have new ones. The helpline is from the Phillipines, and they are really helpful with good English. One nice thing is that voicemails come as an email optionally, so can be forwarded to other people to deal with!
Much like ours, through a company called Boxx. helpline UK
 

vantage

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembs
I was recently quoted for FTTP - £73,000 (with the grant). There is fibre a mile away... they had already put in the infrastructure under Superfast Cymru.
Aluminium phone line, and on a good day I get dial up speed.
The local mobile mast is down more than it is up, and no signal in the house anyway.
I am not on any "not spot" list. I have given up.
Voneus would put in a microwave link from the fibre, it’s what we have , currently 30Mbs, although can go to 100 I think.
 

pappuller

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
M6 Hard shoulder
Ive gone the Starlink route, a touch more expensive but getting 250meg down and 30meg up is a revelation.
We are at the end of a copper wire connection, miles from the exchange and our speeds are worse than shite.
Son keeps mentioning starlink but what tv services are available through it ?
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
We must be getting closer for FTTP. Three guys just spent 5 days with a trencher and a minidigger putting a duct about 400 yards down the field. It’s little wonder they charge so much if you’re paying for it!

Apparently Openreach are missing their targets on getting the right number of properties fibre enabled, and have been threatened with fines from Welsh Government. As a result, they are trying to get lots of the easier/cheaper ones connected ASAP.
Ridiculous really, as there are only 5 houses here (one of which doesn’t have or want a landline) and standard broadband is already at 14-15. There are far more deserving places in Wales that would see more benefit from the investment.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 78 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.6%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.5%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 5 2.7%

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

  • 1,286
  • 1
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/
Top