Fibre optic

Hi all,
Does the new internet that is supposed to be coming real soon mean swapping existing cables for new ones to the house? We have only just had all new lime pointing done and we have also lined most of the walls in the whole house with insulation and plasterboard making it a real pain in the ar## to bring new cables in.

It depends what type of fibre you get - if VDSL (up to 80Mbps) it would use your old normal phone cable - if full fibre up to 2Gbps = 2000Mbps) then yes you get a new fibre optic “cable” arrive at the house - this may arrive underground or above ground

1 Like

I have fibre optic but its a brand new house so the gaines were put in with the utilities etc during construction but it still proved a headache for the telephone engineers to pass the fibres through the length of the drive tothe street connection. My son has an older house and FO was brought to his cul-de-sac last summer. He absolutely resolutely refused to let them bring it through any house walls whatsoever so in the end it went under thehouse which is about half a metre above ground level but sealed off apart from a small inspection trap at the back and that was fine. I could never have had it done in my old breton longère with metre thick solid granite walls so luckily that small commune was not getting it for some years yet. I think maybe you need to discuss the installationwith the telephone people (France Telecom now known as Orange did mine but I am with FREE and very happy with it although having TV and phone controlled by it meant I missed out twice this past week when the internet went down due to works being carried out in the commune, that is the only downside

No way is it going underground, we have had a new front wall built and paths and underground drainage all around the house. Looks like we will stay as we are if there aren’t any other options.

How does the telephone wires enter the house at the moment?

Ours comes in overhead, in the same place the previous phone cable came in. So just under the roof, and from then on seems to use existing cables as didn’t notice them replacing anything.

They come through the top of the wall under the soffit and into our lounge and they enter a small box. Two years ago we got Orange to run a cable to the far end of the house where we set up the phone and router as we use the kitchen more than the lounge. And of course we insulated and dry lined since then. We have extenders everywhere so it will be testing to say the least.

80mbs, we get 8 at the moment and that can fluctuate of its own accord, does anyone else in France get 80mbs…that must be like living in the future :rofl:. I have my fingers crossed we can get fibre into the house.

1 Like

If your property was wired correctly, the fibre will be pulled through the gaine that the telephone cable uses. If not you takes your chances. When our fibre was installed it was not possible to use the 'phone gaine so it enters the property through a newly drilled hole at the front of the house, 1200mm thick grey granite. Hardly a problem for someone used to handling a drill and bit. I did have to lend the techy a bit though, 8mm x 1500mm. From there it continued to our comms box through gaine that I had previously posed for that purpose.

Our fibre cable comes across the road from a pole, onto the end of the house, replacing the old ADSL cable that used the same route. From there it traverses the house outside under the soffit then turns down to come into the house through a tiny window in the thick stone wall (a very handy route that used to be a cat flap) where it enters a small box on the wall indoors. I just did a speedtest : 936 Mbps down and 532 Mbps up via ethernet to the Livebox. Via wifi it is lower : 354 Mbps down and 356 Mbps up. It really is the “future” compared with what we have had up to now.

You can go off people, you know :unamused: :rofl:

4 Likes

Sorry Brian… but I think we deserve it ! We left a fast cable connection in the UK and moved to a terrible dialup line here. It really looked like the rural areas would never be connected to the internet. Alsatis came along with a system of aerials locally - one in the bourg and one on your house. That was OK but not very reliable. Then we switched to satellite but it was costly and with a quota. Then, du coup, Orange started to introduce ADSL on the old wires. It was better than nothing, but slow and often unreliable so we kept the satellite connection too. Then the fibre rollout started. We were so jealous of the poles and wires we saw everywhere we went, except here. Then the satellite stopped working in Feb when Russia invaded! So it was back to only slow ADSL but better than nothing, UNTIL… “fibre is being installed in your commune”. It came quickly after that but was rocky to start with - lots of coupures, I think until everyone locally was connected up. So it feels only fair that we have this shockingly fast connection now !

1 Like

Well maybe there is light at the end of the Telephone gain, alas our was already installed and I never thought I would be having these questions about it so as to improve access (only so much can be thought of with these old houses),the Mayor popped a note in our post box telling us that any trees that may inhibit the Telecom workers doing their thing to get us all hooked up need to be cleared by Nov 11, if anyone has a problem doing this the commune will do it and charge appropriately. That’s great news for us as our house faces east onto a neighbours field with the full length of the field is overgrown with Chestnut’s growing through the existing cables. So bye bye trees hello sunshine.

2 Likes

Every cloud has a silver lining. Our builder who is back with us tomorrow will have a solution plus a huge drill bit.

1 Like

I get 70Mbps down and about 14Mbps up on VDSL, which is pretty OK for the holiday home.

I don’t seem to have a fibre option at the moment which is annoying - wish I’d gone for it when it was available.

The UK connection is 500Mbps.

Absolutely no reason why the fibre optic cable can’t come into any home using the same route as your current copper connection.

Fibre optic cable isn’t the fragile and fiddly to terminate material it used to be.

1 Like

I’m still waiting for Sogetrel to get their shit together and install fibre at our property. Think we’re up to visit #5 now. What should have been pretty straightforward has been anything but. Partly due to the lack of a regard telecom when the copper line was originally installed, but not helped by their engineers who disconnected our ADSL line before realising they couldn’t pass the fibre through the gain, another engineer who closed our dossier saying we no longer wanted fibre just our old ADSL (causing us to go back to the beginning of the queue) and two engineers who’ve not bothered to turn up.

I think our original cable has been covered in Limecrete so as far as I can see no gain, hopefully that can all be remedied before Orange get around to doing it.