Full Fibre Broadband installation question

[Happydaze2]

We are considering installing full fibre broadband which involves an engineer coming to feed a cable from the street to our house via a drilled “small hole” in a wall. It sounds pretty drastic to me so I’d welcome hearing from anyone who has had this done. Is it majorly disruptive, how long does the job take, and is it worth it?!

Had mine done a while ago, takes no longer than 15mins, small hole is not much bigger than the cable really. No disruptive at all apart from a few mins of noise when the engineer was doing the actual drilling.

It is no bother at all and not more than would have been done to install your copper landline back in the day.

Are they feeding you overhead (from a pole) or underground?
If underground they will have to dig the cable in and depending on your front garden/driveway this can be more involved. When Openreach provided the fibre to our old house they were there 3-days getting through concrete but they left the garden as neat as they found it, excellent job. They drilled through into the house exactly where we asked them to and the box & router were perfectly positioned for us.
At my late parents house however VM provided the BB cable and laid it just under the bark chippings, kept getting exposed and was eventually damaged and ripped out. Their box was plonked on the wall where they wanted to put it despite this being a stupid location which looked horrible.

Is it worth it?
Probably yes. You will find your BB speed is better and should be a lot more reliable.

@JLbaby thanks - that’s quick, hopefully same for us!
@Cupcakequeen75 thanks for explaining your own experience - I don’t know if it’d be from a pole or underground but as there is a telephone pole right outside the house I’m hoping for overhead.

If your old phone line is overhead then they will almost certainly install the fibre overhead too, as installing cables underground requires a lot of labour and costs much more. Even where the existing phone network is underground, the new fibre will often be put overhead if Openreach can get away with it!

As others have said, drilling a "small hole" in a wall is not drastic really. How else would a new cable get into the house? Getting a pipe or a new flue for a boiler or wood burner through a wall would be much more dramatic, and those are installed quite routinely every day. This will be just a small cable, and the process is no different from any other hole for a phone line, TV aerial, satellite dish, outside light, socket, car charger etc. etc. My own house has at least twelve such holes that I can think of off the top of my head!

@CasperGutman thank you for the reassurance 😊

It's fine, as PP have said they just drill a small hole through the wall and put a small box on the inside, there is also a bit bigger grey box on the outside wall. No disruption and definitely worth it. Our house is 1930s so had some old BT boxes so they left the previous wires and box including a small very old GPO box thing and DH removed them himself, I was glad to see the back of them, it looks much neater now

As others have said, if you have a pole nearby then they will likely run the cable from there to your house.

Will probably run to the bottom of your roof and then down your wall. A small box will be fitted to outer wall for cable to connect to. A hole will then be drilled through to the inside of your house - the wire that feeds through the wall is tiny. This then connects to your hub.

I live in a really old house. Was a bit worried about damage etc, but it was all fine.

Depending on your circumstances, job may be done in two parts. For me, the outside cable was sorted first - involved one lane on the road being closed and temporary traffic lights so that they could work safely from the telegraph pole. Then a separate date for the drilling through the wall and being connected to the box. I didn’t have to arrange anything apart from agreeing to the date/time for work to be carried out.

Oh yes, as @Furries says, if your connection needs to cross a main road that could get interesting. A friend's fibre installation involved closing a busy A road in a rural area where the alternative route would have been many miles. Luckily this was only needed for a short time with a rolling road block, but still a bit more fuss than they imagined would be needed!

Luckily theirs could be overhead, as obviously getting the cable under the road would be much more tricky! I don't think it cost them any more though.

If your pole is outside, it's very quick. And it's so much more reliable

Our pole is down the road probably about 4 or 5 houses away, quietish street so no road closure, they did all the pole stuff then knocked our door to do the house stuff. They don't take away any the old wires, well they didn't with us and we did have suspect scammers knock the door to remove the old wiring, quite near the time we had it done, once before and once afterwards though it was probably that they knew our road had recently been upgraded to full fibre

I had it installed a few months ago, overhead wire. The whole process was very simple, and the box indoors was put in the same place our previous connection sat. The drilling made a bit of dust, but he cleaned up after himself. With teens and wfh, the higher speeds were worth the upgrade!

It’s not remotely drastic, very quick and simple and the fibre speeds are great.