Fibre internet in Gauteng on Openserve (Telkom) network

[Brolloks]

The audio is fine. The technician commented about the noise on the handset, but it is a cheap and nasty handset that I inherited with the house. The other handset audio is clear as can be. Will test at some point with a few more calls.

I will post some photos tomorrow of the entry into the property as that is where I ran into tight bends etc.

I don't know why one can't plug into the gateway directly but have to use the ADSL/DSL router. Maybe the back-end somewhere is still using ADSL technology?

Nice pics!
The photo of the blue sleeve and ruler is particularly helpful, as is the close-up shot of the black fibre - thanks.



Yeah, looks like a fairly thick-walled sub-duct.



Agree. Really messy to use about 1/8 of the functionality of a perfectly good fibre router and then add a whole 'nother router somewhere else.



So it looks like you've opted for the fibre-based voice service on top of the FTTH package ? When you've had a chance to try it out, please come back & let us know how well it works.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[jcheek]

The audio is fine. The technician commented about the noise on the handset, but it is a cheap and nasty handset that I inherited with the house. The other handset audio is clear as can be. Will test at some point with a few more calls.

Good to know, thanks.

I will post some photos tomorrow of the entry into the property as that is where I ran into tight bends etc.

Great - look forward to it. I'll be doing the same shortly.

I don't know why one can't plug into the gateway directly but have to use the ADSL/DSL router. Maybe the back-end somewhere is still using ADSL technology?

I think Biena alluded to some of the reasons somewhere in an earlier post.
Basically it seems that Telkom like to use the ONT (GPON router) only for remote admin (?) and don't want other providers meddling with their circuits (?). Hence why all the spare ports are disabled.
Hopefully Biena will expand on the topic some more here.

 

[Brolloks]

I read some of his posts but not the whole thread. It would explain why the tech's on site had to phone in to have the setup tested and configured by a remote admin. That took about 30 minutes but they said that sometimes it's as quick as 5 minutes depending on who they get at the support centre.

Still a pity though having all the extra hardware. Would have been nice if they (ISP) had a admin level access and I had user level access.

Good to know, thanks.


Great - look forward to it. I'll be doing the same shortly.


I think Biena alluded to some of the reasons somewhere in an earlier post.
Basically it seems that Telkom like to use the ONT (GPON router) only for remote admin (?) and don't want other providers meddling with their circuits (?). Hence why all the spare ports are disabled.
Hopefully Biena will expand on the topic some more here.

 

[biena]

Is that blue sheath lubricated ? seems like a mission to get that installed, also wondering why they changed the procedure. Only thing I can think of is when you are using a shared duct to prevent mishaps. (in my case only the fibre will ever be in the duct)

About the ONT not much more that I know, terminal makes it possible for remote admin and keeps users from messing with settings. The wifi on the ONT is actually just used for wireless admin it apparent cannot be used as a wifi router (read that somewhere on a forum, not confirmed and I do not believe it as the documentation on this shows normal Wifi setup) it is disabled for Telkom installs.

I realized I made a mistake with the location of the ONT, should have installed it in a closet and then ran Ethernet from there. Getting it moved would involve replacing the whole length of the fibre.

BTW if the router is any indication of the quality then I am rather glad that the ONT is a "dumb" device that you do not depend on for wifi / multiple ethernet. I got rid of the router a month after my install.

 

[Brolloks]

Hi Biena,

No it does not appear to be lubricated. It's just ribbed (striated in the length) for the technicians enjoyment There's only a shared section down the road up to my boundary. After that no more sharing.

It was a mission to get in since it does not bend as easily as the black fibre.

 

[Bursty-dude]

Sukumani contractors are outside our property and will be commencing trenching for the fibre today.
I cannot wait to get rid of this ADSL line and get decent internet.

Post edited to add pics.

This was the progress done yesterday:




And today the guys were back and did more digging.
The concrete part under the manhole cover was demolished and they have dug deeper and cleared away quite a bit of soil.
Hole is about 2,5m X 2.5m and around a metre deep so far.



In the last pic, the green conduit goes down Van Staden Road and left to right is Maroelana Street.
The conduit in the hole on the right goes towards another manhole and a pole on the other side of our property.

 

[Azimuth]

Telkom-based FTTH in Pretoria

Great photos @Bursty-dude. I've largely stayed away from this thread as my area has no hope of a fibre rollout. I have however been checking in with fellow LTE nut @jcheek. With his install complete, we've been comparing results - FTTH vs LTE. I love my LTE but his fibre results are something else!

Keep up a great thread guys! Us FTTH hopefuls are watching with envy.

 

[jcheek]

"Heaven", someone said recently on this thread. I'm there!

So after the looooongest and most frustrating wait (94 days, to be precise - read the whole sad saga here), my 40Mbps service from WebAfrica is FINALLY live, and it's wonderful!
There was an awful lot of kicking and screaming to make this happen, and I very, very (very) nearly gave up on WebAfrica, Telkom and FTTH. Some of Telkom's current 4G wireless LTE and LTE-A deals are damn near as good as fibre (24x50GB/R699 and 24x100GB/R999), and at the lowest point of my depressed/exasperated state, I almost signed up for one of those instead.

There's no doubt that a fixed line installation typically involves more schlepp than a wireless one, and a much longer wait. That much hasn't changed since ADSL days. But now it's done and I'm very glad I hung on.
I opted for a 40Mbps/60GB package from WebAfrica and the speeds so far have been pretty much on the money. Of course the low latency is wonderful and - best of all - the connection's performance is very consistent.

So here are some pics of my installation :


This is one of two Telkom poles where fibre is available and from which I could have got service. This particular one wasn't the most convenient for me (more ducting involved) but it was faster for Telkom to use it. After waiting 90+ days, I wasn't about to be choosy!
The aerial part of the "fibre backbone" has been laid on top of the existing analogue voice/ADSL lines and made available inside the black splicing box near the top of the pole. A small 2-fibre cable (only one of which is used) will run from the splice box to where it enters my place. In FTTH parlance, this small cable is called the "drop cable".
(The four lines on the right (yes, four!) are old voice/DSL/fax lines, only some of which are active.)



This a weatherproof entry box I placed high up on the wall of my place, with direct access into the roof space via 25mm conduits. I left the Telkom guys with a draw-wire and an eyebolt to terminate the drop cable onto.
Now you can see the back fibre drop cable (about 3mm Outside Diameter) disappearing into the conduit. Seems crazy that since the active fibre is only about 120µm wide, the physical "carrier system" is 200 times bigger just to make the humans' life easier!



This is a view of the drop cable going through a second eyebolt up to the splicing box on the Telkom pole.
Interesting side note : When you look at the device used to attach the drop cable to the eyebolt, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's made from some arbitrary galvanized-steel armour wire stripped off a discarded piece of armoured power cable. Actually, it's quite a clever piece of engineering that looks deceptively simple - see here if you're interested.



Up in the roof space, I maintained the 25mm conduit and kept the bends very gentle. I used a hot-air gun and conduit bending spring to tailor-make the bends. The effort paid off with a dead easy fibre-pull.



I took the opportunity to put all my "IT stuff" into a wall-mount rack and so the FTTH drop cable terminates here in the back of the rack.
For some future-proofing I asked the Telkom guys to leave me some(!) cable slack so that if I ever need to move the endpoint, all it will involve is one splice and not a complete re-pull (hopefully!).
From the little white termination box (which has a termination inside), there is a connector into which you plug the removable and much more flexible yellow "fibre patch cable" to make the connection to the Huawei ONT.



This is the Huawei ONT plugged in temporarily for testing. Its permanent home is now on that rack shelf.

The device that Telkom provided for use as an ONT is actually a full-featured "home gateway" : a Huawei HG8245H Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) terminal, complete with Wi-Fi and all the usual features you'd expect from an end-user home internet gateway. However as biena mentioned previously, the Wi-Fi and virtually all the other funtionality is disabled, leaving just one LAN port working.
Seems a pity to have all that power and then disable most of it, but that's life, I guess ...


I've updated my "ordering & installation blog" to reflect the end of the whole, long saga. It appears in this post here.

 

[StoneCold]

Congrats jcheek !

Since I got a notification of fibre roll out in my neighbourhood, I've read this thread of yours since the beginning and it was an awesome read. Glad that you're finally sorted. Here's hoping when I eventually place my order I wouldn't need to wait so long, otherwise, I'll crack, lol

Post some speedtests so that the rest of us can be jealous in the mean time

PS: Oh yes, thanks a lot for posting all the photos too, really puts things into perspective with regards to the installation!

 

[jcheek]

Congrats jcheek !
Since I got a notification of fibre roll out in my neighbourhood, I've read this thread of yours since the beginning and it was an awesome read.
PS: Oh yes, thanks a lot for posting all the photos too, really puts things into perspective with regards to the installation!

Good for you on the fibre roll-out in your area !
Thanks for the kind words, the feedback and the support is very much appreciated.

Glad that you're finally sorted. Here's hoping when I eventually place my order I wouldn't need to wait so long, otherwise, I'll crack, lol

Yup, it sure was a long wait in my case. Here's hoping yours goes a lot quicker!
Average in these parts to date seems to have been around 2 weeks, with anything between 1 to 4 being common. Mine was definitely not "average" ...

Post some speedtests so that the rest of us can be jealous in the mean time

The obligatory SpeedTest is posted at the end of my install blog, but here's a result obtained right now:



Since you asked so nicely I'll go one better and link you to this short SpeedTest video that demonstrates how beautifully consistent the service is :

[video=youtube;x6CrUvd-qeY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6CrUvd-qeY[/video]

 

[User4456]

wow jcheek this is awesome! Grats man!
also great work on the blogging

I've been following this situation for a while now too, and the red roll of fibre is currently parked outside our complex in Faerie Glen.
They physically pushed fibre cabling into all the manholes starting at the front of the complex to the manholes within the complex interior last week.

Now all that remains is to get the fibre into the house and activated

Perhaps with all your XP on the matter, you know the best way to go about obtaining it- numbers to call, places to sign-up etc? Would appreciate it!

 

[StoneCold]

Good for you on the fibre roll-out in your area !
Thanks for the kind words, the feedback and the support is very much appreciated.

Since you asked so nicely I'll go one better and link you to this short SpeedTest video that demonstrates how beautifully consistent the service is :

[video=youtube;x6CrUvd-qeY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6CrUvd-qeY[/video]

Thanks a lot for the kind words, I really can't wait for the roll out to be completed.

I have to say that speedtest does look mighty fine indeed

Enjoy!

 

[Bursty-dude]

Some more digging happened during the day further down the street (I was not home, but was told they were busy until about 3pm).
And a green conduit was pushed through the one pipe that runs from this hole to the manhole on the other side of the property where a Telkom pole sits where we get our ADSL line from, so here is hoping this will be a painless excercise to get FTTH up and running at our place.







Distance from this hole to the other manhole is around 40 to 50 metres.
Manhole is right at the base of the pole where the ADSL line sits. I will snap a few pics of that tomorrow.

 

[jcheek]

Great updates Bursty-dude - keep 'em coming !

Interesting that Sukumani / Telkom seem to be using different materials in different areas. I've not seen them using that 4-tube composite green sub-duct out our way - just the plain red single-tube Nextube stuff. But I have seen similar ducts used by other fibre contractors (notably DFA, as seen here).

Edit: Hey, the blue duct in this 12-duct bundle looks just like the one Telkom used in Brollok's place :

 

[Bursty-dude]

I suspect something big is happening with this hole (excuse the pun).
It is now around 2m deep and has seen some cutting of the green corrugated "main" conduit to shorten it.


This is the pole and manhole on the other end of the property:


Our line goes from this pole to another pole on the other corner of the property, then to the house.

And standing by the pole & manhole combo looking back towards the Groot Gat (distance is around 50m):


I have not had a chance to chat to the guys, but a Telkom dude was here this morning by the pole and had the manhole cover open. The green 4-core sub-duct that is in the big hole and pushed through to the other manhole is visible.
I reckon the Telkom tech was just checking if the run was fine and did not interfere with the other wires.

 

[biena]

Looks like I the price reduction was automatically applied
Should have paid R999, Received bill for R849.

 

[jcheek]

Looks like the price reduction was automatically applied.
Should have paid R999, Received bill for R849.

Nice one! Good to see Telkom putting their "early adopters" first.

Though there was an article on MyBB, I've yet to see Telkom advertising those reduced fibre prices in the open ... ?

 

[Inertia]

Congrats to everyone with shiny new fibre service! Here is an update on my current progress:

Our road in Hyde Park has had a nightmare of a time trying to convince Telkom to sell us their infrastructure of which they installed on our road. From my understanding it is due to two main factors - (1) complete disconnect between sales and technical divisions of Telkom and (2) poor infrastructure planning.
This is due to the fact that (1) a sales representative came to every house on the road to sign them up, but then technical only ever actually connected a handful of houses, and (2) it appears that the road is served by 2 fibre rings of which one wasn't even fully finished before they began signing people up.

Luckily for us a resident in the road had connections to the Telkom board and after venting frustration, had a polite call from Telkom CEO himself Sipho Maseko who apologised and gave us the details of the head of Technical for Gauteng. After chatting with him he apologised and gave his word that I atleast would have a fibre connected by last week Friday. Well today is Tuesday and nothing so far. After contacting him again he sent me the following email:

"Hi <name removed>


Apologies !

Yes I committed to provide you with service by last week and the intent was to foreign feed the fibre from a different DP box to service your premises. However, after the site meeting last week the team on site recommended that we extend the entire DP network to all 42 customers that completed the service applications. This unfortunately will delay service provisioning to the entire xth Ave to this week. My team (Naas and Peter) however confirmed that they discussed this matter with you and also committed that both you and Mr <name removed> will be have service by the 28th August 2015.

Peter/Naas

Please keep me and Mr <name removed> updated on progress. I trust we still on track to complete his service this week.

Regards"

This seems to confirm that even though they were selling services to our road, they hadn't even tested or made sure that the fibre in the road was operational and working. Shocking. I have half a mind to give out the head of technical's name and address/number so that other people waiting for services can get the ball rolling.

Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have some installation photos.

 

[jcheek]

Congrats to everyone with shiny new fibre service! Here is an update on my current progress:

Our road in Hyde Park has had a nightmare of a time trying to convince Telkom to sell us their infrastructure of which they installed on our road. From my understanding it is due to two main factors - (1) complete disconnect between sales and technical divisions of Telkom and (2) poor infrastructure planning.
This is due to the fact that (1) a sales representative came to every house on the road to sign them up, but then technical only ever actually connected a handful of houses, and (2) it appears that the road is served by 2 fibre rings of which one wasn't even fully finished before they began signing people up.

Luckily for us a resident in the road had connections to the Telkom board and after venting frustration, had a polite call from Telkom CEO himself Sipho Maseko who apologised and gave us the details of the head of Technical for Gauteng. After chatting with him he apologised and gave his word that I at least would have a fibre connected by last week Friday. Well today is Tuesday and nothing so far. After contacting him again he sent me the following email:

"Hi <name removed>


Apologies !

Yes I committed to provide you with service by last week and the intent was to foreign feed the fibre from a different DP box to service your premises. However, after the site meeting last week the team on site recommended that we extend the entire DP network to all 42 customers that completed the service applications. This unfortunately will delay service provisioning to the entire xth Ave to this week. My team (Naas and Peter) however confirmed that they discussed this matter with you and also committed that both you and Mr <name removed> will be have service by the 28th August 2015.

Peter/Naas

Please keep me and Mr <name removed> updated on progress. I trust we still on track to complete his service this week.

Regards"

This seems to confirm that even though they were selling services to our road, they hadn't even tested or made sure that the fibre in the road was operational and working. Shocking. I have half a mind to give out the head of technical's name and address/number so that other people waiting for services can get the ball rolling.

Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have some installation photos.

Way to go Inertia !
There are at least 42 immediate customers (and scores more future ones) that owe you one - well done!

As you'll have gathered from the stories in this thread, getting fibre is plain sailing for a fortunate few, but for many of us - definitely including me - a healthy amount of dogged persistence is required. The process is further complicated if there is another ISP in the loop (eg WebAfrica, MWeb, or whoever). At least in your case you are dealing direct with the infrastructure owner (Telkom).

Looking forward to seeing how you roll (out) !

 

[Bursty-dude]

Congrats Inertia!

Update on the progress in the Maroelana area fibre:

Hole looks to be almost complete. Floor done, brickwork done, gaps around bricks filled:


And it is finished off pretty neatly:


I have not spoken to the dudes yet as I have been working in Jhb every day since they started and only got back after they had left.
I am at home the next few days and will chat to them tomorrow.

I have an idea that this bit of work may be the main fibre point for our area, considering the amount of work so far.
I may be wrong.
But all the other work has been minor trenching and filling up again, nowhere near to rebuilding a complete Telkom manhole.

Will see what info I can gather tomorrow from the Sukumani dudes.