Hi all, On Tuesday the 16th my UFB was installed.

I signed up to the $79 100/20Starter Plan on the 26th of december, using the Free Month promo they had at the time, Due to it being Christmas / New Year I didn't hear from enable until the 12th of Jan, where I got an email asking for me to call them to arrange the dates for the Scope and Install. They initially offered around the 20th of Jan, which was impressive, but I delayed it due to wanting to match up my old ADSL ISP's billing dates. The first month was free but I still had to pay the $49 setup fee

We arranged for the scope to be done on the Tuesday the 9th of February, and the final install to be done a week later (16th of Feb).

I think it's really good that you can talk to Enable directly, rather than relaying back and forth between the RSP. The install was contracted to Multimedia Commutations Limited

Fast forward to the 9th of Feb, Bryce the scoper arrived, we arranged that the path the fibre would take would be from the street, across the lawn, to the front of the house, then under the floor into the living room where the ONT would be located. I was told the trenching probably would be done the day before the full install, but it wasn't.

I was a little anxious when Tuesday came, but I recieved a call from the guy doing the inside install saying he was on the way, and the trenching people would come too.

An hour or so later, He arrived and did his bit

He began by pushing this fibre cable under the house, I noticed it was a pair which is interesting because only a single fibre is used, but it turns out the other is for backup, or in the future one may be for all your media stuff. He then went inside, drilled a hole in the floor, pulled up the fibre and brought in the Huawei HG8240 ONT and the Internal Termination box

The ONT was then mounted on the wall as he prepared to splice the ONT's fibre cable with the one he brought up from under the floor using a Fujikura fusion splicer. He then closed up the ITP and left.

A minute or so later, 2 guys arrived with a variety of tools including a digger

So here I was assuming they were gonna use a digger, but no turns out what they used is called a Terrasaw, which is a chainsaw made for trenching

I took a video of them doing it, it's pretty insane, check it out here. Now that's how you install fibre! 

After about 20 minutes, they were all done, filled in the trench and left. 

Not too bad of a finish, would be nice if they planted grass seed though

At the same time, the 'blower' arrived. I don't know his name, but we had a nice chat. 

It was quite interesting to watch him 'blowing' the fibre down the duct about 140 meters down the road, where he would join it up to the green distribution point. During our chat, I learnt that they are using a 24 split here in Christchurch, and while the duct usually only has a pair of fibre in it, a company for example could order 24 fibre all to themselves. He left

Watch the blowing video here

At this point I tried to tidy things up, and tried and failed mounting my TP-Link Archer C2 on the wall (it's not made for wall mounting.)

I had to go out, but the guy who installed the ONT came back to finish up the ETP and splice the external and internal fibre.

For those of you who don't know, Splicing fibre is when they melt two fibre's together to join them.

As he couldn't come inside, he called up the NOC to check if my ONT was online, it was. Later Bigpipe told me that my connection was live and my router had successfully authenticated. Awesome!

So overall, a pretty painless experience, And I would definitely recommend Bigpipe, and if fibre is available to you, get it!

Here are my speeds

Which looks good to me, although I had lower ping when I had cable at my old house

Thanks for reading!