Help needed with fibre installation

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bpm

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Hi,

My friend bought a house in an Estate in Lanseria area. The estate apparently installed fibre in the street instead of copper. That sounds great, except that in order to get a connection to your house, he has to pull fibre from the street box to his house and, then from there distribute to copper for his LAN/DSL needs. He got a quote from a company and they quoted him an absurd amount to do this (+/- 80 meters). I'm not going to say how much as I may just puke over my keyboard.

Now,......... To help me pout this in perspective: What would such a haul cost 80meters+/-? take in account its for home use and nothing fancy is required. Inlcude the pricing for the device that converts the signal to copper.

If anyone is interested to quote me for this job either supplying the raw materials yourself or we supply the cables and you bring the tools and the know how???

Thank you
 
bpm,

The cost will depend on a few things:
1) Has proper fiber conduit been installed to the house?
2) I would assume that single mode fiber is required?
3) Who will do the splicing at the street connection and in the house?

The cost of SM fiber (12 core Heavy Duty Duct) is about R12/m and the fiber conduit about R 15/m for direct burial. If the conduit needs to be trenched the cost can escalate quickly to R 50/m for only the trenching depending on how complex the path is; in other words does it cross driveways and lawn areas that need to be reinstated? The reinstatement cost can also have an impact on the total cost. 90 degree bends are also a problem and one needs to have a large radius or install a underground junction box. Otherwise the fiber cannot be hauled or blown through the conduit. You can also consider direct burial fiber cable. These are expensive (no idea of a price per meter, sorry!)

If you have permission from the HOA I guess you can DIY the fiber run. It is not that difficult to install. The media converter in the house needs to match the media converter at the distribution point and this is very much ISP dependent.

The next hurdle is to get a company to splice the fiber in the street distribution point and also splice pigtails onto the fiber in the house that will plug into the media converter etc. Most of the FTTx use single fiber for Tx and Rx but dual fibers are also used. Its always a good idea to have a spare fiber or two when installing a fiber run.

I have some spare fiber if you are keen to DIY...give us some more info as to what the job would entail?

Grubs
 
Just get normal Telkom DSL save you and your friend a lot of problems. Also I know there are companies supplying FTTH currently perhaps rather work with them?
 
@grubsner Thanks dude you are very helpful!
1) There's no conduit to the house, no trenches yet or anything except that there is a fibre distribution box right outside his property. I am not sure about how complex the path must be and if there are driveways in the way, but nothing a couple of labourers with supervision cannot manage... It's still new development so there's probably not much in the way of digging a trench.
2) I guess so... it's just for home use.
3) The contractor apparently must do the connection and i am starting to lean towards that they just sommer do the installation alltogether. They quoted R28k for the 80m haul terminated/spliced both ends which I thought was a bit much. It seems more like a R10-15k job plus/minus. Sounds like they gave the developer a discounted rate, to just recoup the costs from the home owners....

This fibre seems like a complicated business eish... Not sure if we want to DIY this, but its still an option.... I only have copper experience indoors & outdoors with trenches etc.

I thought that if we lay the cables and do all that, that the professionals come in to just splice, but they not so happy to do it that way and is loading the splice only costs to absurd levels ie R6k per splice.... Ridiculous if you ask me

I want to swing this info past my friend and will reply here if we want to attempt this DIY and i will let you know, but thank you for your offer of the cables and the great advice, much appreciated.

@eCliPSe I think because of the fibre to the house, Telkom will not be allowed to lay copper at street level and seems that home owners will be forced to fibre-up as their only way of connecting by cable.... alternative solution is always wireless but all providers say there is little or no coverage in that area and will need a quota of homes before they can offer an economic solution...
 
I suggest speaking to the body corporate / developers of the estate. They were smart enough to lay fibre, surely they made a plan for residents connecting up to the fibre.
 
@bpm, you're welcome!
It does sound like you already have a preferred contractor that does the fiber installations. Obviously the owner of the street fiber runs will not allow any person to open the dome connectors and start splicing etc.

What I can suggest to possibly reduce the installation cost: DIY the trench and fiber conduit (with draw cable pre-installed). This will allow the contractor to to simply install the fiber and connect both ends. This should slash the quoted installation price. Although Direct burial fiber is available, having a pre-installed conduit makes sense in the long run. Fiber can be replaced and upgraded without retrenching and digging up the neighborhood especially when driveways etc are crossed. Once the conduit is trenched, you can install/replace/refiber the run at any time.

The quote should indicate if fiber conduit is part of the price.

Proper fiber conduit with silicon lubricant is sometimes difficult to procure.Shout if you need help.

HTH
 
If you manage to come right and have the piece of fiber in the house I would recommend using a FTTH router to terminate the fiber directly on a build-in optic tranciever. Media converters are notoriously unreliable and everytime you log a line down and it turns out to be the converter will cost you a call out fee. Who may I ask will you use as service provider? I don't think our ISP's are too interrested in deploying fiber to residential areas, they much rather connect big fat corporates :-)

I would recommend using a Billion BiPAC 9800N, it has a build-in firewall, access-point and copper LAN ports and most importantly, it will terminate the fiber :-)
 
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