Looking for photos / testimony of a Complex Install

XperiAnce

XperiAnce

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Hi there,

I'm hoping that someone on these forums has experienced a Fibre Installation through any of the providers (Telkom, Vuma, SADV, MetroFibre, anyone) and could provide some info and photos of how it went.

Namely, here are some points I'm interested in:

Costings to the BC & costings to the unit owner?
How discrete was the installation, how much hardware could be hidden from the outside perspective?
How the general complex installation went, were incentives given to your complex on a mass signup?
Did any additional conduits need to be installed, or could existing Telkom ones be used (if applicable)?
Who is responsible for the maintenance of the lines, i.e. in 5 years time, if the hardware mounting boxes start to look bad, who will replace them with new ones?

Photos of a unit, as well as the whole block, would be much appreciated as well, focusing on the aesthetics of it all.

Cheers :)
 
No one? No one has seen a single installation into a complex?
 
XperiAnce said:
Costings to the BC & costings to the unit owner? R1700 for the install to Telkom, BC don't even know I'm getting fibre, none of their business.

How discrete was the installation, how much hardware could be hidden from the outside perspective? The Fibre in our area is run on telephone poles, then underground into the complex to the Telkom box, exactly the same way copper is run.

How the general complex installation went, were incentives given to your complex on a mass signup? Single sign up, out of 10 units. Installation is taking longer than the house 2 houses down who got it 2 weeks ago. Issue was they ran it to the pole outside the complex and stopped. Technician came to install and said they need to come back and run it from the pole into the complex (meaning delays). Then they need to chase it to the unit via the same conduit that the analogue lines use.

Did any additional conduits need to be installed, or could existing Telkom ones be used (if applicable)? Existing are all being used

Who is responsible for the maintenance of the lines, i.e. in 5 years time, if the hardware mounting boxes start to look bad, who will replace them with new ones? Telkom I suppose, not bothered about this tbh.

Photos of a unit, as well as the whole block, would be much appreciated as well, focusing on the aesthetics of it all. There is nothing to see besides the fibre on the pole then the ATB on the wall.
Click to expand...

My answers in bold.
 
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Costings to the BC & costings to the unit owner? Installation was about R1250 to me (Tennant)
How discrete was the installation, how much hardware could be hidden from the outside perspective? Everything is hidden except the ONT and router. Cabling ran through current Telkom condiut
How the general complex installation went, were incentives given to your complex on a mass signup? No clue
Did any additional conduits need to be installed, or could existing Telkom ones be used (if applicable)? Used existing Telkom
Who is responsible for the maintenance of the lines, i.e. in 5 years time, if the hardware mounting boxes start to look bad, who will replace them with new ones? I bought the ONT so I am responsible - lines are MetroFibres problem
 
F1ve_Claw said:
Costings to the BC & costings to the unit owner? Installation was about R1250 to me (Tennant)
How discrete was the installation, how much hardware could be hidden from the outside perspective? Everything is hidden except the ONT and router. Cabling ran through current Telkom condiut
How the general complex installation went, were incentives given to your complex on a mass signup? No clue
Did any additional conduits need to be installed, or could existing Telkom ones be used (if applicable)? Used existing Telkom
Who is responsible for the maintenance of the lines, i.e. in 5 years time, if the hardware mounting boxes start to look bad, who will replace them with new ones? I bought the ONT so I am responsible - lines are MetroFibres problem
Click to expand...

So to confirm, MetroFibre used the existing Telkom conduits?
Did they need to remove the Telkom lines within them, or are they now side by side?
Did MFN need to put any hardware within the complex? If so, where is it housed (by each block or in a central area?)
 
So to confirm, MetroFibre used the existing Telkom conduits? Correct. Existing Telkom and then under the boundry wall
Did they need to remove the Telkom lines within them, or are they now side by side? Side by Side
Did MFN need to put any hardware within the complex? If so, where is it housed (by each block or in a central area?) There is an 'exchange' sitting outside of the complex or the road. Everything in my complex was spliced and hidding in boxes attached to walls. Very discreet. About 1m x 1.5m grey against the wall. Metro takes care of them
 
Thanks for the feedback :) Any photos would be much appreciated.

Anyone with a Vumatel Complex install testimony would also be much appreciated.
 
XperiAnce said:
Thanks for the feedback :) Any photos would be much appreciated.

Anyone with a Vumatel Complex install testimony would also be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of installation photos around this section. Just look for threads with 4-5 stars and start digging.
 
Inertia said:
There are plenty of installation photos around this section. Just look for threads with 4-5 stars and start digging.
Click to expand...

No good ones of a complex though - only one I could find was a orange cable sticking out a manhole cover.
 
XperiAnce said:
Anyone with a Vumatel Complex install testimony would also be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

I suppose you could just email Vumatel and ask them for reference sites?

You can also pm me. I'm at an open access FTTH provider, maybe I can help.
 
Metrofirbe Networkx is installing Fibre in our complex, they have connected the fibre to my unit. They just ran the fibre where the telkom line comes in, the little box sits below the telkom one. Then end of the month when network is live they will come and finish and I'll be up and running.
20160405_180113.jpg
 
Some additional info:
That's a Huawei Access Terminal Box (ATB) model ATB3101.
A fibre cable (flylead / patch cable) will then be run from the ATB to the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) which will more than likely be a Alcatel-Lucent I-240G-D.
Then you run a Cat5e cable from the ONT to the WAN port on your Mikrotik or whatever router you have.
 
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if you are in Cape Town I would invite you to my building, I'm in the CBD in Parliament Street.

I have a FTTE Lightspeed 100mbps fibre product supplying 50 owners in my building shared through an internal LAN.

End users pay R400pm for uncapped internet and VOIP line rental- and once off router cost of R700.

We are going to be upgrading to 200mbps within the next year, end users will still pay R400pm.

Everything is managed by the Body Corporate, the moment you give that scope to the ISP or 3rd party provider they will rip you off.
 
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roligov said:
That's a Huawei Access Terminal Box (ATB) model ATB3101.
Click to expand...

The Hauwei ATB is nice when you are the person doing the work. It has brackets that you can clip the splice protector(s) into to keep them safe.

As you can see from these pictures from an installation we completed yesterday, the 3M does not have any brackets (or a splice tray), meaning you have to balance the splice protector on the fibre and pray that the client doesn'topen the box and have a scratch around.

https://www.facebook.com/cape.conne...6475454542204/477609355762146/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/cape.conne...6475454542204/477609359095479/?type=3&theater

The 3M's advantage over the Hauwei is that you can use ST connectors instead of LC or SC connectors. Where the latter sometimes come undone, the ST connectors lock in place mechanically and stay locked in place.
 
Thanks for the additional feedback.

A MetroFibre rep is claiming that their network is open access, but it's the first I'm hearing of it. Anyone who's on the MetroFibre network, have you successfully moved to a 3rd party ISP and, if so, what are the "line rates" the rep is claiming?

Reps quote: "Open Access means that should you, for example, use Afrihost as your ISP, you contact Afrihost and tell them that you want to be on our fibre. Afrihost then contacts us. We then charge Afrihost an open access line rental fee. This contract is between us and Afrihost. You and Afrihost sign a contract of your choice."

edit: to clarify, I see everywhere that MFN list themselves as Open Access, I'm just yet to see a single ISP that isn't just a reseller of MFN bandwidth be on their network.
 
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If you're interested, I arranged for Vodacom to install fibre in our estate. We're greenfields so they have to hand trench ~4km of ducting. They're blowing fibre next week and should have first units going live end of month.

Drop me a pm if you want pics, info, etc
 
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