Metrofibre at a church

H

Hook

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I've got a different kind of problem.

We are/were aiming to replace our current ADSL line at church with a Fibre service from Metrofibre, which is the only FNO available at the church.
An order was placed with an ISP and the ISP came back with feedback from Metrofibre that the church is classified as an SMME and that we should place an order for a SMME line which is a "Fibre to the business" line.
The ISP canceled the order as they say they are not able to provide us with that service. I think the same would go for many other ISPs.

The cheapest 10Mbps business fibre from Metrofibre is R1920. This would be too expensive for us to afford as we are a relatively small church.
It would also be ridiculous for us to use Business Fibre because we simply don't need the features of Business Fibre.

1) There is only one office person working halfday doing mostly basic stuff such as email.
2) We are streaming our services twice on a Sunday (2 hours total) and would like the stability of a fibre service. 10Mbps or 25Mbps would be more than enough. (Currently using a separate LTE modem but we would like the quality to improve a bit using stable fibre)
3) The occasional Zoom meeting.

This is less than what a typical household uses. We don't need 1:1 contention ratio and guaranteed service availability etc. Why can't we simply get FTTH service like a house ? What are our options ?
I don't see the point of forcing a church to pay as much as business when no business features are used. The church uses less than a normal house.

Thanks !
 
Just thinking out loud. If the church is registered as a non profit is there no way to use that status explaining that a place of worship is not actually a business?
 
As Toastmaster said above if they new it was an NPO they might just install a FTTH package.

I would contact them direct instead of an ISP and mention it is a church and NPO etc.

The ISP probably just logged a new install they looked if its covered and see its only covered for business fibre and sent an automated message. There probably was no real thinking from their side that went into it and if there was it was a selfish one.

We just got fibre installed in our warehouse in JHB and there are 4 people that work there and Metro also said sorry business fibre or no fibre... So company is paying a bakkie load of money for a FTTB service when all we wanted was like a 25meg FTTH....
 
I'm not managing the account at the current ISP, someone else does. We discussed the non-profit status and will try that because we've got the papers. If this doesn't work maybe another ISP have more leverage. Otherwise either Metrofibre gets some business from us, or they get nothing.
 
MFN’s FTTB and FTTH networks are distinctly separate (in terms of topology and hardware). So the first question is about location. Is there definitely FTTH coverage at the adjacent properties or is this along one of their FTTB routes?
 
The area is on their map for FTTH. Around it is mostly houses, few converted complexes and businesses running out of old houses.. There are two driveways into the church and at both there is a boundary box. These boundary boxes are too far away from the surrounding properties too serve them. The trenching and infrastructure installation here took place at the same time as when they did the houses around it. In one of the emails Metrofibre sent to the ISP they do mention something of them "prefering an SMME order in their FTTH network". Does sound a bit contradictory.
 
This was the response from the ISP, quoting the feedback from Metrofibre.

--------------------------
Good Day

Please kindly see the feedback from Metro Fibre

''Kindly confirm if this order is for a Church. We would prefer SMME order for Churches within our FTTH/GPON network.''

Thank you

Kind Regards
----------------------------
 
Hook said:
This was the response from the ISP, quoting the feedback from Metrofibre.

--------------------------
Good Day

Please kindly see the feedback from Metro Fibre

''Kindly confirm if this order is for a Church. We would prefer SMME order for Churches within our FTTH/GPON network.''

Thank you

Kind Regards
----------------------------
Click to expand...
"prefer" is not cast in stone. Write back and say you would "prefer" FTTH but will stick to current if they are not flexible as you are a "Sunday" church and not a mega church with a large permanent staff compliment.
 
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