Chorus fibre install stuck in no man's land

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lyndondrake

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#271947 3-Jun-2020 08:12

Hi,

For our church building, we're stuck on getting fibre installed. The property has a house and a church on it. The house already has fibre. The church is a separate building with some distance, and has two copper phone lines through underground conduit which surface inside the church building. Through 2degrees we've requested fibre. 2Degrees as always have been great, but I'm stuck with Chorus.

Two different Chorus contractors have visited. The first couldn't find the copper exit point and took off pretty quickly. The second contractor took a good look around, but decided that the install was going to cost him too much to do, and that there was a complication: there are two of those little telco drainpipe things inside our property boundary. One of them is where the conduit for the two existing copper lines terminate, but apparently there's no fibre into that one. The other one has two fibre endpoints (the contractor told me), one of which goes to the house on our property, but the second one has been tapped for a fibre line into the neighbour's property, leaving nothing for us - that connection would be a pain anyway as the contractor would run along a fence and then across open ground into the building.

Now everything has gone silent. I don't seem to have a way to push this forward. Any suggestions?

(& yes, I can speak to the people in the house and ask them to run a cable out a window for us which is what we're doing for Sundays, but it's not a great solution!)

Lyndon

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#2497195 3-Jun-2020 08:18

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Wheelbarrow01

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#2498821 5-Jun-2020 10:38

I may be able to provide some clarification on why this appears to be so difficult. Firstly we need to go back in time.

When Chorus signed the contract with Crown Infrastructure Partners (formerly Crown Fibre Holdings), the understanding was that Chorus would provide one pair of fibres to each legal address.

The problem you have in your situation is that you have two separate buildings on a single legal address. Chorus has connected one building for you, but cannot easily connect the other within the parameters under which our network was designed.

Yes we do offer Additional ONTs, however additional ONTs are essentially an extension off the primary ONT using the second fibre, and as such, they MUST be in the same building as the primary ONT.

Chorus was never asked or mandated to provide capacity to connect multiple separate buildings on a single legal address. This has created quite a few issues, particularly where property owners have built minor dwellings on their property without subdividing, since our network was built past their gate.

IF a new minor dwelling has ended up with a separate postal address registered with NZ Post, and has its own letterbox, and has a separate and matching address for the electricity meter, then it is sometimes possible for the RSP to get that postal address created in our system as a usable demand point. That would then allow an order to be placed, which then goes down our Infill Build process for the additional network capacity to be built. I suspect this solution will not suit your circumstances - I doubt the church has it's own postal address and letterbox and possibly not its own power meter, so in your case I only see two other options:

1. You (or your electrician) could provide & install your own 20mm duct & Cat 5/6 cable between the two buildings. One end of that cable would be connected to Port 2 of the existing ONT, and the other end can be connected to a new router in the Church, and you simply pay the RSP of your choice to liven up a secondary connection on Port 2 of the existing ONT. I'm sorry I don't know if 2Degrees offers secondary connections or not.

2. Chorus does offer a Smart Location service. This is where we create a demand point in our system for a new primary connection. A Smart Location Address is commonly created for assets such as ATMs, electronic billboards, traffic light control boxes, electric gates, portacoms etc - anything that doesn't have it's own unique legal street address. We have recently done a Smart Location order for a dental clinic at an Auckland school - the main school building was already using the fibre connections allocated to the school's street address but the dental clinic on the school grounds required their own standalone connection. We could not use the school address as that was already in use, so a Smart Location demand point was created and an order was then issued to connect the dental clinic. It is important to note that for a Smart Location connection, the end customer pays for all the Network Build required to facilitate the connection. This is quoted and the customer must agree to the charges before work begins. For some basic information about Smart Locations, head to https://www.chorus.co.nz/connecting-smart-locations

If I were you, I would strongly consider option 1 above. It is likely the quickest, cheapest and least obtrusive way to get a connection to the church. Please let me know if you need further clarification.

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer Chorus NZ Ltd

lyndondrake

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#2499718 6-Jun-2020 16:34

Thanks, this is super helpful! For a third option, which may not be possible: you mention that "additional ONTs are essentially an extension off the primary ONT using the second fibre" — how would I go about asking Chorus to give us a second ONT, which could then be installed in the same location as the current ONT, connected to that second fibre?

The ONT would then be located in the "wrong" building but I'd feel much more comfortable having the cat5/6 cable run if we had control of the actual broadband contract and connection ourselves.

RunningMan

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#2499719 6-Jun-2020 16:42

lyndondrake:The ONT would then be located in the "wrong" building but I'd feel much more comfortable having the cat5/6 cable run if we had control of the actual broadband contract and connection ourselves.

You can do this part with your existing setup, the second connection just uses the second ethernet port on the ONT.

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#2499776 6-Jun-2020 17:12

RunningMan:

lyndondrake:The ONT would then be located in the "wrong" building but I'd feel much more comfortable having the cat5/6 cable run if we had control of the actual broadband contract and connection ourselves.

You can do this part with your existing setup, the second connection just uses the second ethernet port on the ONT.

I believe you can't have gigabit connections on both ports, if you want that.

I've had three fibre installs done at home. On the second occasion I had to have a second ONT installed as having both ports active wasn't an option at the time. When I switched ISPs again, it was put through as a new order and the installers came on site expecting to install another ONT. Two is plenty I think.

Given the constraint that the ONT must be in the same building, the best option IMO is a second ONT attached to the second fibre, and Cat6 direct to the other building.

hio77

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#2499777 6-Jun-2020 17:15

SirHumphreyAppleby:

I believe you can't have gigabit connections on both ports, if you want that.

I've had three fibre installs done at home. On the second occasion I had to have a second ONT installed as having both ports active wasn't an option at the time. When I switched ISPs again, it was put through as a new order and the installers came on site expecting to install another ONT. Two is plenty I think.

Given the constraint that the ONT must be in the same building, the best option IMO is a second ONT attached to the second fibre, and Cat6 direct to the other building.

For a very long time, Chorus did not allow multiple primary services (which gbit comes under)

Other LFCs aren't as restrictive.

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lyndondrake

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#2499778 6-Jun-2020 17:18

RunningMan:

lyndondrake:The ONT would then be located in the "wrong" building but I'd feel much more comfortable having the cat5/6 cable run if we had control of the actual broadband contract and connection ourselves.

You can do this part with your existing setup, the second connection just uses the second ethernet port on the ONT.

We don't want to get our service from the same retail provider as the house is using. We want 2degrees, so I don't think just getting the second ethernet port is the way forward.

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lyndondrake

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#2499780 6-Jun-2020 17:22

SirHumphreyAppleby:

I believe you can't have gigabit connections on both ports, if you want that.

I've had three fibre installs done at home. On the second occasion I had to have a second ONT installed as having both ports active wasn't an option at the time. When I switched ISPs again, it was put through as a new order and the installers came on site expecting to install another ONT. Two is plenty I think.

Given the constraint that the ONT must be in the same building, the best option IMO is a second ONT attached to the second fibre, and Cat6 direct to the other building.

Yes this seems like the best option. I had no idea that a second ONT was an option until this thread so I'll pursue that. Presumably I can just speak to 2Degrees on Monday and get them to instruct Chorus to do this, then get our cabling guy to connect up the two buildings with a suitably ducted cat6 run straight to the second ONT's primary ethernet port.

hio77

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#2499782 6-Jun-2020 17:22

lyndondrake:

We don't want to get our service from the same retail provider as the house is using. We want 2degrees, so I don't think just getting the second ethernet port is the way forward.

he means a secondary service, this doesn't have to be the primary provider.

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nztim

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#2499783 6-Jun-2020 17:22

lyndondrake:

We don't want to get our service from the same retail provider as the house is using. We want 2degrees, so I don't think just getting the second ethernet port is the way forward.

you do know the second port on the ONT can be a different RSP from the first right?

Ports 1-4 and POTS 1-2 can be all be different providers

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lyndondrake

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#2499784 6-Jun-2020 17:23

nztim:

you do know the second port on the ONT can be a different RSP from the first right?

Ports 1-4 and POTS 1-2 can be all be different providers

No, I didn't - maybe that's even easier then? Unless I want gigabit I guess.

hio77

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#2499786 6-Jun-2020 17:25

lyndondrake:

nztim:

you do know the second port on the ONT can be a different RSP from the first right?

Ports 1-4 and POTS 1-2 can be all be different providers

No, I didn't - maybe that's even easier then? Unless I want gigabit I guess.

if you want gbit you need to await chorus to support multiple primaries - i do believe 2d are portal users though so this migt be possible already.

Best secondary offer you can get is 200/20 or 100/50 if you want a bit more upload.

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RunningMan

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#2499792 6-Jun-2020 17:26

I don't even think gigabit is an issue any more.

hio77

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#2499795 6-Jun-2020 17:29

RunningMan:

I don't even think gigabit is an issue any more.

Pretty sure B2B has one more release to come before it's supported... i haven't really being paying all that much attention to the marketing content with everything else i'm working on though.

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nztim

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#2499797 6-Jun-2020 17:39

RunningMan:

I don't even think gigabit is an issue any more.

200/20 or 100/50 is the maximum secondary offer

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