FTTH Private Company Installation in Complex - Good/Bad Idea?

[mulacasto]

Hey guys,

So I live in an estate in which quite a few of us residents have shown interest in a fiber connection. I just received the monthly newsletter in which it says:

Two companies have shown interest in setting up FTTH assets that will allow residents to have from 20mbps to 100mbps speeds. Indicative monthly costings are from R800 p/m (20mbps) to R1,800 p/m (100mbps). These planned assets will be open access in nature which will allow for home owners to choose their preferred ISP.

So how do these companies operate? Do they install the fiber and then you have to rent the line from them (the R800pm and R1800pm amounts) indefinitely, locking me into their price? And then the "open access" would mean I could get my data from whichever ISP I want?

Or do they install the fiber, which would be a flat cost to the estate, and then I will pay whoever I want, say Afrihost, for line rental and data?

What would your advice be? Is this private installation a good idea or will they have a monopoly and be able to set whatever price they wanted on the estate?

 

[hoenner69]

I live in Montanapark in pretoria. Also received a letter in my post box saying that they wanna put fiber in, but at least 5 of your neighbours must also join for them to be viable for them to make the connection. R1500 installation once off or sign a 24month contract and get it for free. and then it's 499 for 10mb uncapped and 899 for 20mbps. Wondering if it just sounds too good to be true.. They cover cape town and a large part of central gauteng already. lightspeed.co.za Lol just made myself sound like a salesman.

 

[antoniov]

I will most definitely sign up as well!

I live in Montanapark in pretoria. Also received a letter in my post box saying that they wanna put fiber in, but at least 5 of your neighbours must also join for them to be viable for them to make the connection. R1500 installation once off or sign a 24month contract and get it for free. and then it's 499 for 10mb uncapped and 899 for 20mbps. Wondering if it just sounds too good to be true.. They cover cape town and a large part of central gauteng already. lightspeed.co.za Lol just made myself sound like a salesman.

It is such a mission to get internet in Montana Park!

 

[hugor]

Maybe we should consolidate a request for the Fibre install in Montana Park and put the request forward for action.
If you are up for the idea then I will take care of the details.

Would just need everyone to PM me their requirement and address.

 

[k_l 0452]

I asked a CS lightspeed, and their sales was pretty helpful in answering

A bit of work on:

1) Enough combined customers to cover their costs and profit, any amount of customers partaking their offered packages and equaling to the combined amount set by the FTTH company. (CS quoted R10,000 per month)
2) Month to Month Contract (R1500 Installation fee, once off payment) or 24 Month Contract applicable
3) These contracts are only available to fibrehoods, apartment blocks or high density residential complexes.

If you feel as though you can rally this kind of commitment from your neighbors, they can by all means, start a process which will take 90 days turnaround time for installation to the central distribution point with a further 5-7 day turnaround time for reticulation throughout the complex.

This is a combined amount meaning there can be any amount of customers taking any speed package accumulating to the required amount.

Considering their lowest uncapped package is 20mbps R899/month into R10,000 combined amount.
Have to rally at most 12 contracts to get things started.

I'm interest to know how to get Body Corporate to look into this?

 

[pinball wizard]

I don't know the forum rules around this, suffice to say that I work for a company that is currently rolling out FTTH to several estates, with more planned in the coming months.

We do not require a minimum uptake from residents before we begin the backbone within the estate, as well as reticulation to individual residents.
Additionally our service does not require any upfront payment from the estate or residents.

Feel free to contact me privately and we can take it offline.

I don't mean in a sales way I can offer advice and some tech detail as well.

 

[Pateet]

Maybe we should consolidate a request for the Fibre install in Montana Park and put the request forward for action.
If you are up for the idea then I will take care of the details.

Would just need everyone to PM me their requirement and address.

Count me in! I also know a couple of other people in Montana Park that might join in. Sick of struggling with telkom's poor speeds

 

[Alkine]

Hey guys,

So I live in an estate in which quite a few of us residents have shown interest in a fiber connection. I just received the monthly newsletter in which it says:

Two companies have shown interest in setting up FTTH assets that will allow residents to have from 20mbps to 100mbps speeds. Indicative monthly costings are from R800 p/m (20mbps) to R1,800 p/m (100mbps). These planned assets will be open access in nature which will allow for home owners to choose their preferred ISP.

So how do these companies operate? Do they install the fiber and then you have to rent the line from them (the R800pm and R1800pm amounts) indefinitely, locking me into their price? And then the "open access" would mean I could get my data from whichever ISP I want?

Or do they install the fiber, which would be a flat cost to the estate, and then I will pay whoever I want, say Afrihost, for line rental and data?

What would your advice be? Is this private installation a good idea or will they have a monopoly and be able to set whatever price they wanted on the estate?

Well the fact that it is open access is good. Typically those prices are when you use them as an ISP, or you could get an ISP (which have their own price) and they pay a portion of that to the fibre provider (so you do not see a line retal). Others have a line rental and ISP cost separated.

The prices look good if they are uncapped (compares well with Greencom for example). Just make sure if it is uncapped, unshaped and there is no fair usage thing on it. Or if it is capped how big the caps are.

Don't stress about the private installation, that is how all the community fibre projects works, private companies delivering services. If they try to screw you over, start a process to get another company to install their own infrastructure (because the new will be cheaper and thus compete with them, forcing them to drop their prices). They also still have to compete with ADSL and LTE so there is some upper bound on what they can charge.

 

[Frosty-Et]

Montana Park Fibre

Maybe we should consolidate a request for the Fibre install in Montana Park and put the request forward for action.
If you are up for the idea then I will take care of the details.

Would just need everyone to PM me their requirement and address.

The Monvilla Home owners association (Complex on the corner of Visvanger and Braam Pretorius) is interested in joining the efforts of getting fibre to our suburb.

Please PM me to collate our efforts

 

[Zarnicate]

The Monvilla Home owners association (Complex on the corner of Visvanger and Braam Pretorius) is interested in joining the efforts of getting fibre to our suburb.

Please PM me to collate our efforts

We finally have Telkom LTE Uncapped in our area. I have been using the capped for a while. Gaming no problems. Video streaming no problems. For our area without the fibre this seems to be the best.

 

[ponder]

Unless it's an open access network don't sign up!

 

[LadyAnne]

Hi
We received a quote from Greencom to install fibre. Can anyone tell me how does this work? We live in a complex. We want to choose our own Service provider. Who will be responsible for the fibre installation costs. Are there cheaper fibre suppliers that we can get quotes from? Do you know if Greencom binds you with a contract? This is all very new to us.

 

[beesboertjie]

https://www.hellopeter.com/greencom

 

[Venomous]

https://www.hellopeter.com/greencom

Lovely...

 

[Venomous]

OP,

By us Fibrehoods(now vumatel) installed the fibre at their cost.

There are multiples of ISPs that can linkup the users in the complex. Not just 1.

The initial cost is for the cable provider.
They pulled the cables through the electric cable manholes where possible. Or lifted paving to bury the cables. With only the last few meters of cable being neatly placed in trunking on the unit walls.

That way any possible future repairs will be that cable provider's.

We refused any type of smart village set up where by people would then be forced to only use 1 ISP.

And with that all it took was a bit of time from trustees to decide where/how the cables were to be laid, with some input from the cabling company. Keep a sort-of-eye on the progress. Changes at early stages are easier than to change things later.
And the trustees had to sign off that everything looked good and no mess was left before Fibrehoods paid the contractor.
We insisted on a disclaimer that none of the trustees are involved with fibre cable installations and should there be any technical problems it was between the cable provider and their sub-contractor(s)


If you pay for the cables it is best if someone knowlegable overseas during working hours until complete and tested. I don't have time for that.