Record of conversion to FTTP

[#1]

A thread to follow my install - which looks like it will be very boring ( I hope)

Present:

ADSL in contract, home phone in use.

Speed is fine for me anyway  - the exchange is close  🙂  

Area is FTTP priority (so no choice - has to be FTTP)

There is an Alt-net but I see no point.

With the April price rise on the ADSL (to £31), it is now worth me changing to FTTP (£24 going to £28) plus the A&A phone number rental of £1.80

Note this existing customer rate is £1 less than the new user price - albeit without the £100 bung card.

Order sent, chosen date is 21 May, earliest was 19th - so there is some backlog but it does need a hoist.

OR checker output attached for reference

Online process ran fine with suitable warnings about confirming the phone can be killed off.  PN then warned me to update my contact number as that is the landline - well no as it will be ported to VOIP with A&A  - but ONLY once the FTTP is in.

[#2]

I've got a landline and a mobile number as contacts. That seems fine on the Plusnet systems.

[#3]

That assumes use of a mobile......................   🙂

[#4]

A flurry of emails overnight:

Appointment confirmed from PN and OR - and replied that I agree.

Slightly odd wording in the email from PN

"If  you have a home phone number, you'll lose it as part of this order"

"Any services and personal alarms which are connected to your home phone service will stop working and you'll lose your existing home phone number."

Neither of the bold text phrases are true, as everyone ha to get 30 days to port their home phone number to another provider.  Should be better worded - any customer this far in would not be going to abandon and want to keep the number via EE.

Might be one for PN staff to look over the wording of these automated emails.

Something like 'PlusNet will cease providing your home phone and you have 30 days from activation to retain this number via another provider' 

[#5]

@mwwagain 

Slightly odd wording in the email from PN

"If  you have a home phone number, you'll lose it as part of this order"

"Any services and personal alarms which are connected to your home phone service will stop working and you'll lose your existing home phone number."

Its a tricky one this!. I agree its not technically correct and, as you say, you have 30 days to retain it. 

However if it said

'PlusNet will cease providing your home phone and you have 30 days from activation to retain this number via another provider' 

then you have to qualify that it must be a third-party voip provider. Many people wouldnt understand what that meant and it would probably open sales/support to questions about voip providers and porting which they are not trained to answer.

Much simpler to say what it does, and rely that people in the know understand the reality...

[#6]

Some activity !

0106 Tuesday 0106 an email from PlusNet to advise the Hub2 is on its' way, with the Royal Mail tracking number

(It was posted on Monday)

0801 Tuesday email from Openreach to remind about appointment, and background rules for a decision maker, and landlord permissions etc

1030 Tuesday Hub arrived

(Did not quite fit my letterbox, the router box is 172 x 45 mm)

1047 Tuesday automated message from OpenReach to remind about appointment (same content as email)

[#7]

I have my options thought out:

Cannot follow the copper route, there is no mains in the hallway

Two poles they could come from, both are over a public road

(would they have a choice or not ?)

Hopefully secure to brick not the dodgy bargeboards

(What are the rules on wire height over roads ?)

CSP wherever - will offer at first floor as they could put the splicer on the flat roof to work.

Drill first floor external wall - ONT in office handy for UPS and network connections and would cover the internal hole

or

Into garage (part integral) and I have prepared for a CAT5 run to the office upstairs

(Providing UPS is then trickier with the ONT in the garage but the router & phone are upstairs).

[#8]

All proceeded as planned

1420 engineer arrived (from Kelly)

No hoist - apparently fairly common and he just used a ladder and the old school belt and crampon climbing up the pole.

Decided on the ONT in garage option and while he did the outside bits while I got the CAT5e run finished off.

Test run the router in the garage to sign off.

Done by 1630

Static IP address retained.

Now to reassemble the office !

A couple of minor issues that may be of interest to others :

Because I use fixed IP addresses internally I had to change the default gateway addresses to the Hub2 address (192.168.1.254) as previously my router was 192.168.1.1.

The Hub PSU is quite large and sits above the socket - beware if your socket is tight to something above it.

[#9 · Accepted solution]

Hopefully the above is of use as an example of 'Everything worked without needing intervention' as many of the threads are of course about stuff going wrong.

[#10]

Because I use fixed IP addresses internally I had to change the default gateway addresses to the Hub2 address (192.168.1.254) as previously my router was 192.168.1.1.

You could, of course, have changed the ip address of the Hub2 to 192.168.1.1