UFB experience

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351 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1724473 22-Feb-2017 14:13

Saw Spark's address checker enable my address for Fiber on Thursday and I immediately signed up, got a call on Friday to schedule the appointment on Monday, the Chorus guys turned up and did the scoping and I had to get neighbors consent. The Chorus guys came back and did the whole job the next day, now I'm rocking this connection.

Vodafone, 2Degrees and the Chorus website updated the UFB eligibility for my address on Monday, as of yesterday when the fiber was installed BigPipe still did not update their address checker. - I guess its worth checking different ISP's address checker to find out sooner if you can order fiber.

trig42

5814 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1724486 22-Feb-2017 14:19

Wow, nice speed, and really quick to get connected too.

I found Bigpipes checker quite slow to update as well, but I contacted them and they confirmed it was available despite what their checker said.

naggyman

697 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1724759 22-Feb-2017 21:22

jeeg:

Saw Spark's address checker enable my address for Fiber on Thursday and I immediately signed up, got a call on Friday to schedule the appointment on Monday, the Chorus guys turned up and did the scoping and I had to get neighbors consent. The Chorus guys came back and did the whole job the next day, now I'm rocking this connection.

Wow that is supremely fast, and I'm not talking about the connection's speed!

Possibly you got lucky? Someone cancelled?

Morgan French-Stagg

morgan.french.net.nz

invisibleman18

1362 posts

Uber Geek

#1724774 22-Feb-2017 21:59

That's unbelievable. From signing up to getting connected in 5 days, and that included getting consents from neighbours. In contrast, I have had consents obtained for 2 months and am still waiting to even hear from Chorus, let alone have the scoping done. Considering cancelling soon as it just not worth persevering with any further for a rented place where I could just end up being given notice to move after the long wait anyway.

jfanning

438 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1724803 22-Feb-2017 23:07

naggyman:

jeeg:

Saw Spark's address checker enable my address for Fiber on Thursday and I immediately signed up, got a call on Friday to schedule the appointment on Monday, the Chorus guys turned up and did the scoping and I had to get neighbors consent. The Chorus guys came back and did the whole job the next day, now I'm rocking this connection.

Wow that is supremely fast, and I'm not talking about the connection's speed!

Possibly you got lucky? Someone cancelled?

My son moved into a new apartment on the 13th, and had fibre installed on the 15th

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#1724830 23-Feb-2017 06:14

jeeg:

Saw Spark's address checker enable my address for Fiber on Thursday and I immediately signed up, got a call on Friday to schedule the appointment on Monday, the Chorus guys turned up and did the scoping and I had to get neighbors consent. The Chorus guys came back and did the whole job the next day, now I'm rocking this connection.

Vodafone, 2Degrees and the Chorus website updated the UFB eligibility for my address on Monday, as of yesterday when the fiber was installed BigPipe still did not update their address checker. - I guess its worth checking different ISP's address checker to find out sooner if you can order fiber.

Wow! I think you've got some 23 million jealous people just next door!

What's the tech for the implementation? Looking at the support page for modems, they seem to take GE in but why the 700-900Mbit/s spec then?
Do you really need to take one of the plastic boxes, or can you simply put Mikrotik or EdgeRouter there and make a proper setup?

code15

198 posts

Master Geek

#1724863 23-Feb-2017 08:32

Looks like Chorus' updated address checker is generally showing 1 week for fibre installs in Auckland, 4 weeks for Wellington.

Pretty impressive.

Sharesies

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trig42

5814 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1724867 23-Feb-2017 08:36

ojala:

jeeg:

Saw Spark's address checker enable my address for Fiber on Thursday and I immediately signed up, got a call on Friday to schedule the appointment on Monday, the Chorus guys turned up and did the scoping and I had to get neighbors consent. The Chorus guys came back and did the whole job the next day, now I'm rocking this connection.

Vodafone, 2Degrees and the Chorus website updated the UFB eligibility for my address on Monday, as of yesterday when the fiber was installed BigPipe still did not update their address checker. - I guess its worth checking different ISP's address checker to find out sooner if you can order fiber.

Wow! I think you've got some 23 million jealous people just next door!

What's the tech for the implementation? Looking at the support page for modems, they seem to take GE in but why the 700-900Mbit/s spec then?
Do you really need to take one of the plastic boxes, or can you simply put Mikrotik or EdgeRouter there and make a proper setup?

It is a GbE service, but because of overheads etc., they don't advertise it as Gigabit. That speed is pretty impressive, and I'd wager there would be nothing that getting the extra 65mbps down would improve (likewise the extra 88mbps upload). You can BYO router, but the plastic boxes they provide are pretty decent (and in a lot of cases better than a BYO). The only thing to consider when bringing your own is VOIP - some ISPs provide phone services over VOIP provisioned in the Router they provide and will not support it on a third party device.

acetone

181 posts

Master Geek

#1724870 23-Feb-2017 08:43

I know lots of people wait for months to get fibre installed and I was prepared for this as well. I was very surprised with how quick it happened for me.

Location: Auckland.

My street was eligible for fibre on the 1st of December.

I contacted my ISP on Friday the 2nd.

On Monday morning of the 5th Chorus rung to arrange the scope for the 7th. The guy who was to complete the job rang me in the evening of the 5th and asked if he could come a day earlier on the 6th.

On the 6th they turn up and did everything, I had fibre running a day earlier than the initial scope date.

From request to live it was 3 working days.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#1724872 23-Feb-2017 08:48

How do they actually run the fiber? From where (street corner?) to the house?

Is it this service: https://www.chorus.co.nz/broadband-options/for-home/fibre/installing

About week is pretty quick if they actually need to install any cable properly underground. I had missed that UFB had really started to deploy proper FTTH in addition to VDSL.

trig42

5814 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1724882 23-Feb-2017 08:58

ojala:

How do they actually run the fiber? From where (street corner?) to the house?

Is it this service: https://www.chorus.co.nz/broadband-options/for-home/fibre/installing

About week is pretty quick if they actually need to install any cable properly underground. I had missed that UFB had really started to deploy proper FTTH in addition to VDSL.

Depends on how your copper currently gets to your house. A lot of the time they will replace the copper - so if is is aerial, they may go aerlal. They may dig a trench and trench it. They may run it along a fence line. Every install is different.

In my case, the fibre is hung on the power poles, not underground, but our feed in from the poles to the house is underground.

When the chorus techs came to scope my install, they blew the fibre up the underground feed (alongside the existing copper). A couple of days later they came back and ran it under my house and up through the floor to the cupboard where I had asked them to install the ONT. Took them about an hour.

UFB was always FTTH by the way, not VDSL. VDSL was available to a lot of people well before UFB, and was available after Chorus (in Chorus areas) finished their FTTN rollout and installed a whole heap of new cabinets.

Australia's NBN (a very poor version of NZ's UFB) is using a combination of FTTH, FTTP and FTTN. Poor buggers.

invisibleman18

1362 posts

Uber Geek

#1724917 23-Feb-2017 09:35

Doesn't seem to make sense that some people wait months, and others sign up and are connected within a week. Surely the people still waiting should be ahead in the queue shouldn't they? Do Chorus have deals with certain ISPs where their customers get bumped ahead and certain others keep getting pushed to the back? For instance I signed up with Big Pipe who I understand are owned by Spark, so are Spark customers getting priority due to being the parent company? Or are some ISPs just better at organising it quickly and others just leave it to Chorus without getting involved in chasing it up?

Understand there is often a wait for consents, but if I was told consents had been obtained 2 months ago, why are people who only signed up last week ahead of me in the queue?

BarTender

3606 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#1725122 23-Feb-2017 12:51

invisibleman18:

Doesn't seem to make sense that some people wait months, and others sign up and are connected within a week. Surely the people still waiting should be ahead in the queue shouldn't they? Do Chorus have deals with certain ISPs where their customers get bumped ahead and certain others keep getting pushed to the back? For instance I signed up with Big Pipe who I understand are owned by Spark, so are Spark customers getting priority due to being the parent company? Or are some ISPs just better at organising it quickly and others just leave it to Chorus without getting involved in chasing it up?

Understand there is often a wait for consents, but if I was told consents had been obtained 2 months ago, why are people who only signed up last week ahead of me in the queue?

Bigpipe and Spark are completely different organisations even though Bigpipe is owned by Spark. Different teams manage the ordering, different hardware. They are in all respects completely different ISPs.

I suspect your last line "some ISPs are better at orgenising" is probably the most accurate statement. It really comes down to the automation and size of teams looking after the UFB ordering process and when things go wrong.

invisibleman18

1362 posts

Uber Geek

#1725271 23-Feb-2017 15:28

Interesting. I have been blaming Chorus and Big Pipe have been telling me there's nothing more they can do, we just have to wait. Clearly there doesn’t seem to be a queue of people getting connected in the order in which they ordered which I had thought would be the way it was done. I thought the order went through to Chorus and then it’s entirely up to them, but maybe the ISP is more involved in organising installations than I’d thought.

steve2222

499 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1725309 23-Feb-2017 16:59

I am in Auckland. ISP is Spark.

Chorus have had fibre up the power pole for nearly a year. Other neighbours already have it to their house (some are with Spark as well).

We completed our order in early October 2016 (confirmed by Spark email saying would be installed in 30 to 40 days).

We have NEVER been proactively contacted by either Spark or Chorus. The only communication we have had is when we have called either of them. They keep telling us our order is 'subject to network build off site (ie not on our property)'. Yet the power pole is right on our boundary and others are already connected. Neither can (or are willing to) tell us what the network build involves.

Latest is Chorus (and Spark) say the network build will be done by the 27/2 - then sometime later the fibre will be run to our house.

What a joke! FIVE months and nothing has happened. Others in Auckland get it in a week. My parents in New Plymouth (not Chorus) had the whole thing done in 2 weeks from ordering (completed Monday).

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