Fibre internet in Gauteng on Openserve (Telkom) network

[biena]

Telkom FTTH

Ordered FTTH from Telkom on 15 April 2015.

20 Mbps
50GB Softcap (resets on the first of each month)
​

Promotion included

First 3 months 50% off
DSTV explora
Wireless router​

Cost

R999 for 24 months
No installation fee
Trenching (did it myself)
Conduit R241 for +- 48m
Conduit install (did it myself)
​

15 April Ordered (order took a while to complete, coverage check/credit check/etc/etc 25 mins+)
15 April SMS with account details (this was supposed to be activated when fiber is installed)
16 April Followed up on why account was actived (** See below)
16 April SMS Your order (xxxxx) is receiving attention (Probably when order was assigned to someone)
20 April SMS Your order (xxxxx) is receiving attention (no idea)
23 April SMS Your installation for order (xxxxx) is scheduled for 20150504 between 07:30:00 and 16:00:00
1 May Telkom visited premises to do pre-install inspection (I was in the roof putting in ducting, they waited till I got out and let them in. Thanks for waiting/perseverance guys! It took me a while to get out )
2 May Timeline is not very accurate, I am guessing and going by time-stamps on photos

9:00 Technician arrived. Not quite complete with all the ducting, lucky for me he had go fetch another technician
10:00 Completed ducting
10:30 - 11:40 Technicians pull fiber cable through (+- 60m)
11:40 Splicing cable on premise for a cable test
12:00 Cable is not broken anywhere in the conduit (if it was had to start pulling from the start)
12:30 Splicing cable on pole (access from the neighbours, box is facing away from me)
15:00 Cable test to the exchange (it looks good)
15:20 Packed up their equipment and one technician went to exchange to do work there
16:00 Doesn't look good, the ONT does not want to authenticate to the exchange. Was asked to leave equipment switched on so that they can ping the ONT



​

3 May

8:24 Received phone call, asking me to check the ONT
8:40 ONT looks like it is authenticating (was fixed 2 May at 22:00, technician thought it was better to let me get some sleep)
8:54 Internet works
9:12 Oh no, it is 2Mbps
9:40 Technician arrives to see what is going on
9:50 Found the problem, profile was set to 2Mbps, change the 2 to 20Mbps (2048 vs 20480, probably a mistype when order was entered)
10:07 20mbps and everything looks good.​

21 May First bill everything looks correct, received the 50% discount. Billed for May(prorated from the 4th, when it was activated) and June.
29 May Incorrect billing for the early activation was corrected with the help of TelkomZA (Thanks!)
10 June DStv explora: Sent a direct message on twitter to Telkom. Received a phonecall back, apparently person that entered the order did not add the Explora to the order, will now receive it in 7-14 days by courier.
02 September After a few times querying the Explora it is finally with the couriers and will be delivered on 3 September (hopefully)
03 September Explora delivered. Tale of woe and tears have now ended since nothing else is outstanding.

Equipment

• ONT is a Huawei HG8245 (Locked down so that only the fiber portion and one ethernet port works) http://huawei.com/en/products/fixed-access/fttx/ont/hg8245/
• Wireless router is a Huawei HG532t Media router (Telkom branded) wifi, 4x ethernet, usb, adsl (Rotuer configured as a wan router

Interesting facts

• Signal loss from Endpoint to pole 0.03db
• Signal loss from Endpoint to exchange 20.3db
• Loss may not be greater then 28db
• Endpoint to pole 70m
• Endpoint to exchange 3.7km
• ONT stands for optical network terminal
• Telkom FTTH ties into IPConnect this means you can use all the existing xDSL ISPs . Tested it with a FNBConnect/CrystalWeb/WebAfrica account and it works.
• You do not need a router. You can connect your pc to the ONT and setup a PPoE connection, router is there to provide wireless/more than one physical network cable.
• The 50GB SoftCap product: once the 50GB is used up you are throttled to 300-400 kbps (That is what my test on 31 May 2015 showed)

Hiccups

• **Had to contact customer service since the 50GB Softcap was activated too soon. Had them recheck the whole order and it was not marked for the promotion. Asked that that should be fixed. Confirmed it the next day and it was corrected. Took a long time to get through to the billing department 40min+. Got it corrected on 29 May with the help of TelkomZA a month and a half later. To give TelkomZA credit I first tried through the callcenter/online chat, only asked for his help on the 25th May.
• Do not have the DSTv expora yet, apparently it is going to be delivered by courier
• Do not yet know if the 50% off for the first 3 months is going to be correctly applied (month 1/2/3, discount correct)
• After all the assurances that the order is correct it turned out that the DSTV explora was not added.
• Explora was delivered after chasing Telkom and repeatedly asking where it was. Had to open 2 new tickets.
• Oct 2016 bill was a bit strange, part of November billed for line, November bill had it subtracted again.

Tips

• Get ducting at least a week before install date, was told that Telkom is going to use a different fiber cable that handles bends better. (Yes you need ducting, if that fiber breaks a new cable has to pulled for the whole distance! pole->endpoint)
• Use easybends in ducting not the round inspection box, the angle that the fiber goes through the round inspection box is such that it is easy for the fiber to break.
• 20mm ducting was accepted, 30mm is preferred

What Telkom can improve

• Appointments for pre-inspection (I was really not expecting them and it was simply luck that I was at home)
• Call center agents needs training (Any time that you mention fiber you are put through to the fiber department and they cannot help with orders/new installations)
• Add the Fiber packages to a place where it makes sense, telkommobile.co.za was the last place I would have looked

Just playing around I managed to use up 9% of 50GB. Did do quite a lot of updates. I am happy, 18 days from ordering to installation. Stayed up to after 12 and nightsurfer is working.

Trenching/underground is not a must, it is my personal preference to avoid future problems (any cable break means a totally new cable from pole to endpoint)

Inspection boxes not to use.


Rather use these types.


Outages:
3 September 2015: Authentication problem. Authenticates and the the session is dropped. (fixed after some equipment in exchange was rebooted) No actual outage, got a session by luck and did not drop it again.
13 October 2015: Authentication problem. Cannot establish new session, authentication times out. (port recreation fixed it) +- 2hours, could be shorter if I reported it earlier.
25 October 2015: Authentication problems for 4 hours,
17 January 2017: Authentication problems for 2 hours,
28 June 2017 - XXX Speed dropped to 2Mbps in evenings.
3 October 2017 - 10 October 2017 - LOS flashing red. Fibre break. Technician tidied up the fibre box on the pole by cutting all connections and reconnecting everything, pity the he connected me on the wrong fibre strand into my house. Unnecessary downtime. Put in a bill dispute and am getting credit for the downtime.
19 December 2017 - 10am to 1pm - Area outage

Changes:
Telkom lowered the price R999 to R849 (automatically applied)
Increased upload speed from 10% to 20% 2Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s (automatically applied)
Telkom doubled the capped data 50GB to 100GB (Dec 2015) (automatically applied)
Increased upload speed from 20% to 50% 5Mbit/s to 10 Mb/s (Aug 2016) (automatically applied)

 

[biena]

Telkom Pole with fiber

Trenching.. what fun

Smooth bend

Fiber cutter for a nice flat fiber head

Splicer

Endpoint to pole test

 

[biena]

Fiber (black) from pole terminates in here, yellow cable is fiber that goes to ONT
Passive box (no power needed for it. yellow cable is more robust than the black one.

From previous to the ONT

ONT fiber connection

ONT Ports, locked down so ethernet 1 and fiber is only ports active

Telkom router

Telkom router ports

 

[Jase]

Great thread! Now if Telkom would just cross the road into Garsfontein ...

 

[jcheek]

Now this, this and this are some seriously good posts - well done, biena, and thank you for taking so much time to share that all with us (and in the dead of night, too!)

Your posts have provided some much-needed insight into what the "last 10 metres" of the Telkom FTTH install looks like. One interesting thing is that the Telkom install seems to need not one but two "boxes" to get from the incoming (black) fibre cable, to an electrical ethernet cable that you can plug into the WAN port of your router - correct ?

Some questions please :

1) Is there a particular reason why you decided to run the incoming (black) fibre cable - the one from the Telkom pole outside to the first termination box - underground ? Was that for aesthetic reasons, or did Telkom insist on that type of installation ?
Reason I ask is that I was under the impression that that cable would also come into the house overhead, in the same way that the old voice/DSL copper wires used to.

2) That first termination box (the one between the incoming (black) fibre cable and the yellow fibre "patch cable" looks to be completely passive, ie no power supply needed - correct ? I guess its main purpose is just to terminate the incoming "outdoor" fibre cable, and provide a plug and socket type connection for the yellow fibre patch cable ?

Thanks again for taking the time to share - your posts give a really great overview of your install.
Enjoy your new connection !

 

[jcheek]

Great thread! Now if Telkom would just cross the road into Garsfontein ...

Your feelings/wishes are completely understandable !

[Slightly O/T] : Bear in mind, though, that as announced in November 2014 (and confirmed here), Garsfontein is at least getting LTE-A while it waits for FTTH :



LTE-A will get you speeds just as good as (if not better than) current FTTH. And, if you need less than around 30GB a month, it will end up costing about the same.

 

[MickeyD]

Now this, this and this are some seriously good posts - well done, biena, and thank you for taking so much time to share that all with us (and in the dead of night, too!)

Seconded!!!

 

[Jase]

Your feelings/wishes are completely understandable !

[Slightly O/T] : Bear in mind, though, that as announced in November 2014 (and confirmed here), Garsfontein is getting LTE-A while it waits for FTTH :

View attachment 212768

LTE-A will get you speeds just as good as (if not better than) current FTTH. And. if you need less than around 30GB a month, it will end up costing about the same.

Thanks jcheek! I just checked telkoms website and got the following:



Previously it was only a 10meg line and best I could sync at was around 6meg.

 

[biena]

thank you for taking so much time to share that all with us (and in the dead of night, too!)

Your posts have provided some much-needed insight into what the "last 10 metres" of the Telkom FTTH install looks like.
Enjoy your new connection !

It is a pleasure sharing this, something to give back to the community. Also doing it so that we can all understand what is involved, I did not fully realize what was going to happen myself .

One interesting thing is that the Telkom install seems to need not one but two "boxes" to get from the incoming (black) fibre cable, to an electrical ethernet cable that you can plug into the WAN port of your router - correct ?

That is correct.

1) Is there a particular reason why you decided to run the incoming (black) fibre cable - the one from the Telkom pole outside to the first termination box - underground ? Was that for aesthetic reasons, or did Telkom insist on that type of installation ?

They did not insist on it and it is possible to run it overhead. Problem with running it overhead is that any tree branches that drops on the cable may just break it (cable has great pulling strength, it snaps if it bends more than about 60 degrees). There is a big oak tree above the pole and running overhead is a sure recipe for a break (oak tree drops some pretty big branches at times).

Then I despise the overhead cables, it looks like a rats nest to me. Seeing as I had one chance to do it right I dug a trench.

Forgot to add: I did not have a telkom line and some time in the past someone decided to cut the overhead cable to the house :wtf:

2) That first termination box (the one between the incoming (black) fibre cable and the yellow fibre "patch cable" looks to be completely passive, ie no power supply needed - correct ? I guess its main purpose is just to terminate the incoming "outdoor" fibre cable, and provide a plug and socket type connection for the yellow fibre patch cable ?

It is completely passive. Correct on the change of connection type. The yellow fiber patch cable is also more robust than the black one.

 

[jcheek]

[Warning : Still O/T]

Previously it was only a 10meg line and best I could sync at was around 6meg.

Just to make sure we're on the same page here ... I was referring to a broadband connection using 4G (cellular wireless) LTE or LTE-A technology ... ?
(for interest, this thread will give you an idea of the speeds achievable with LTE).

ADSL/VDSL has been available in the Faerie Glen / Garsfontein area at >= 10Mbps for a while ... in theory. But depending on the age/quality/length of copper wiring between you and your exchange, I reckon only a very lucky few people will ever see those speeds using xDSL.
You're actually doing quite well at 6Mbps - I've never been able to (reliably) get more than 2Mbps out of my ADSL connection!

 

[biena]

Speedtest showing the stability of download/upload, look at that nice solid green graph.

download, ignore the meter. I pressed print screen a second too late.


upload, ignore the meter. I pressed print screen a second too late.

 

[digitalp]

Do you get a fixed IP with Telkom FTTH?

 

[biena]

Do you get a fixed IP with Telkom FTTH?

Does not look that way, when I check my sessions it is a different ip each time.

 

[biena]

New deals from telkom
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/125434-telkom-smartoffice-data-deals-launched.html

SmartOffice Business Fibre Elite R999 x 24 months 20Mbps 100GB
SmartOffice Business Fibre Elite Plus R1,499 x 24 months 40Mbps 300GB
SmartOffice Business Fibre Deluxe R1,999 x 24 months 100Mbps 500GB

Taking the 50GB home product for R999 makes no sense now, Yes you get 50% off for 3 months + DStv expora but on a 2 year contract the extra 50GB would be more useful.

 

[jcheek]

More on the FTTH "in-home" fibre cable

<snip>
Tips

• Get ducting at least a week before install date, was told that Telkom is going to use a different fiber cable that handles bends better. (Yes you need ducting, if that fiber breaks a new cable has to pulled for the whole distance! pole->endpoint)
• Use easybends in ducting not the round inspection box, the angle that the fiber goes through the round inspection box is such that it is easy for the fiber to break.
• 20mm ducting was accepted, 30mm is preferred

Just to add to the great info that biena's already posted, here's a close-up pic of the smaller cable that Telkom is currently using for the cable run between the outdoor pole-top box and the indoor termination box :



Observations:

• The outer sheath is black plastic with an OD of 3.3mm.
• Embedded in the plastic outer sheath, on opposite sides of the core, are two fine yellow fabric "strings" that provide the cable with significant tensile (pull) strength.
• Just inside the outer sheath is a clear, hollow plastic tube (yet another sub-duct) that carries the fibres. The tube is lubricated on the inside (probably with silicone oil) and the fibres are free to move inside it. You can just see a piece of this tube inside the small offcut in the photo above.
• Inside the clear plastic sub-duct are the two actual optical fibres (orange and blue in the photo above). Apparently only one fibre is utilised in the install.
• The fibres themselves are essentially the same outer diameter as the ones used in the outdoor O-12 and O-48 cables : around 0.21mm.

Besides the two optical fibres themselves (which are actually remarkably flexible), I would say that the clear plastic inner tube is the most fragile component, as it's made out of a plastic that isn't very flexible. Sharp bending causes the tube walls to collapse onto the fibres and will quite probably break them. As illustrated in the photo below, I would estimate that the comfortable bend radius on this cable should be no less than about 40mm:


( Edit: Minimum recommended bend radius is actually more like 50mm as shown in this post )

It's still early days for FTTH installs (here in Pretoria, anyway) and Telkom may well change the type of "in-home" cable used (as biena reports) to one that is more bend-tolerant. Even if they do, when setting out the cable route into your house (whether it be overhead or in ducting, as in biena's case), it would make sense to follow biena's recommendations and keep the bend radii nice and gentle.

 

[biena]

two fine yellow fabric "strings"

It is actually kevlar (info from the technician)

On the bend radius it is not only the strength of the cable that you need to keep in mind, sharper bends have more light lost, light loss on optics is bad. Bend it too much and the light actually does not follow the fiber, it simply leaves the glass at the bend.

Technician demonstrated it to me. Pity that my camera could not pick it up.

BTW: That orange/blue is sheathing around the actual glass fiber, it also gets stripped before a splice is made.



Markings on the cable. All I can make out is Telkom FTTH, the rest of the writing was scraped off when pulling it through the conduit.

 

[jcheek]

WebAfrica coverage map for FTTH Pretoria updated

Heads-up : The WebAfrica coverage map for Telkom-based FTTH has been updated in the last few days. (Seems the whole coverage-checker tool has been prettied up a bit, too).

Certainly the WebAfrica Faerie Glen coverage now more closely matches that shown on Telkom's FTTH coverage map :

Faerie Glen before:


Faerie Glen after:


That's more like it !

 

[biena]

Certainly the Faerie Glen coverage now matches that shown on Telkom's FTTH coverage map :

Not quite, look at the top of manitoba on both maps, looks like Telkom has coverage but [-]MTN[/-]WebAfrica not.
Dislike the map, the icons do not scale makes for horrible navigation.

 

[jcheek]

Not quite, look at the top of manitoba on both maps, looks like Telkom has coverage but MTN not.

WebAfrica, I think you mean, but yes!
Ah well, since Telkom is ultimately the carrier, I guess we know which one to believe ...

Edit: And I'm not in WebAfrica's indicated coverage! (*gasp*), even though I am in Telkom's.

 

[tanka]

I'm not in Web Africa coverage but they don't seem to update their map. I am covered according to the Telkom map and I have had my fibre installed by Telkom through Web Africa so I would trust Telkoms more.