The Boards.ie Explainer: FTTH and You

I just changed from Virgin 500mb to Vodafone 500mb for half the price and I'm delighted with it. Had mine installed right next to existing outlet. I might have just got lucky with placement though, but like I say, in terms of internet performance itself I don't notice any difference and speedtests are giving me better results for pings and so on.

About to move into a new house in Leitrim that has FTTH available via OpenEir

Is there any functional difference between any of the ISPs offering this? I know it is all the same connection resold, but how many of them just resell a white label service and how many have their own infrastructure on the network?

Do any of them engage in throttling? With my last ISP in the UK I used to use about 1TB per month in traffic. Sometimes I would go down as low as 600GB in a month sometimes as high as 1.2TB or so. Which is the best ISP to go with for that sort of traffic?

Is it definitely Eir FTTH? If you are urban could it be SIRO?

I ended up hot-spotting from my phone....

I ordered Sky TV and Broadband as apparently it was them who the previous person got their wifi from. Sky came out, saw the FTTH connection, and said we can't do this today as w have you down for FTTC.

3 weeks of back and forth later, "we can only give you FTTC and actually we can't even do that because the engineer says you don't have that connection"

Your house doesn't need to be indexed for copper fttc only ftth.

What's happening here is sky put your eircode down and nothing comes back. "Computer said no" situation.

They then can't find anything on the estate no cable paths no cabinets they only know what district the house is in. So they just generate a provision of service order for a telephone line from nearest exchange. Essentially telling the contractor to get this telephone line from this exchange to that house and use his best judgement how that happens and when it gets built it'll have a full recorded path for example it ran through a cabinet 600m from the house and there's VDSL ports in this cabinets.

Thing is this usually doesn't work save for a few cases of a new built house in the countryside.

They're more of a desperate grasp at providing service because usually when an order comes out for a line under these circumstances where they have no records because there aren't any phone lines out there and never will be.

It's not that they're trying to be disingenuous they just can't see the fibre available to order so they try the next best thing.

Hi All,

I'm thinking of changing broadband and tv from Virgin to Sky. My Virgin modem and tv box is connected to the TV point on the wall hidden behind the television with no visible cables. Can anyone advise if Sky can use the same tv point/coax cable or will they have to run new cables for the broadband?

TIA.

Complete novice question here.

NBI told us we will have FTTH in a few weeks.

I am thinking of switching provider and was talking to Eir on the phone and they said that because NBI are providing the fiber then the only package available is 1Gb, €49.99 two year contract.

Because it's coming from NBI that's all that is available regardless of the reseller.

I had a webchat with Vodafone and they said 500Mb, €35, 1 year contract, or 1Gb, €49.99, 1 year contract, no problem.

Who is telling the truth ?

Can anyone tell me what the Eirgrid line looks like coming into the house (which was built in the 1980s) which used to have an eircom phone line. Some work was done in the hall and lines ripped out. I'm now trying to figure out if this is the Eirgrid line so that I can change broadband supplier from Virgin?

This is a photo of the wires that I have located which I think might be. Is it the heavy grey cable or the two single cables (red and black in top of photo).

I think the red and black wires were alarm wires. The grey cable has a white wire inside so hopefully that is the Eirgrid cable. I had vodafone out a few years ago, but didn't know about the grey cable then and vodafone could not locate where the cable was on the outside. I tried contacting Eirgrid about it, but they didn't reply.

Thanks for your help babi.

With a new FTTH install you and the installer will discuss on the day where and how the new fibre line enters the house.

Normally the ONT is mounted within 1m from the house entry point, adjacent to a power socket. The router is then connected to the ONT.

Virgin's cable infrastructure is separate to the open-eir or SIRO networks.

Is there underground ducting in place to run the new fibre line from the street to the house?

Depends on where the network drop point is located, the connection point from where fibre is run to your house. It could be in a manhole on the footpath/street, on a pole or maybe on a wall of a terrace.

If the fibre is underground a duct will be required, maybe you have one for a old copper telephone line that can be reused.

Fiber seems to have been pulled through the ducting and up a pole outside my house . A box has now been attached to the top of the pole. Photo attaching .

Does this indicate that it might should be soon available or could it sit like that for months or years .