Upgrade from Legacy FTTC to New EE Full Fibre

[XRaySpeX]

I recently upgraded my legacy EE Fibre Plus plan (FTTC 80 Meg) to New EE Full Fibre 150 (FTTP 150 Meg), but could just as well have been any Full Fibre up to at least 1 Gig. It all went smoothly as to be hoped & expected.

In early Dec. 2024 I ordered the upgrade & EE booked an Openreach (OR) engineer to install it on 30th.Dec. He promptly arrived then in an OR van also marked with C.J.Quinn, so I don't know whether he was really OR but he did do a neat efficient job.

He laid my new fibre cable overhead from the telephone pole in parallel to my existing separate landline about a foot apart to my roof area, than vertically down to near ground level to a small grey external box & then horizontally to a entry point he drilled close to where my existing landline enters. On the inside he fitted a 1 Gig ONT resulting in this setup:

Once I hooked up the SH+ (SH32B) sent me beforehand I speed tested it at ThinkBroadBand to get sync speeds of 150/30 Meg as it has been since. I confirmed with the engineer that all was satisfactory & he left.

It took about 2 weeks before my legacy FTTC line was cut off. So for a time I was running 2 BBs, FTTC & FTTP, thro' 2 different routers.

I am longer using the SH+ but am using my original BrightBox 2 because I know it can reach all the places I want it to reach, all my devices recognise it without change & it is functionally stronger than the SH+. The only thing missing is IPv6 but I can live without that..

[MBEE]

Well what a difference a few weeks make...
Full Fibre 150 Essentials FTTP has since been made available in my neck of the woods, so have plumped for that @ £33pm with the first 3 months free, so a smidge over £30pm over the 24m contract.
149Mbps down with 100 min guaranteed , upload 30Mbps. 

@XRaySpeX , much like you, am hoping to stick with my existing Brightbox 2 for now, how have you been finding it?

[XRaySpeX]

@MBEE : Fine. Everything is running on it OK with TBB speedtests at 150/28 Meg.

Until last night at 7 PM. My PC was running v. slow. Browser pages were taken ages to load or wouldn't load at all, Outlook wouldn't connect to its servers, TBB speedtest wouldn't even load, ... Rebooted both router & PC but to no avail. On my lappy things were a bit better. Most pages would load but slowly, Outlook worked, TBB speedtest ran but at speeds of 20-30/12 Megs. Thankfully today everything is back to normal. Yet there appears to be no adverse reports on DownDetector.

[MBEE]

Hopefully then, is just 'one o them things...'. Maybe openreach were still doing some work in the vicinity; tho maybe odd for prime time 7pm friday!

Whatever, my current fttc had barely been pushing min guaranteed speeds lately, and we've had several unexplained, short, sudden dropouts (couple mins each) over the last week or so.

[XRaySpeX]

It's all OK. Last night's behaviour was all a red herring. I had attached a mobile router to my PC to receive some SMS for the purpose of registering its SIM, while carrying on with my normal stuff. It was that caused the strange behaviour. The PC musta been sending its packets over WiFi to the mobile router instead of over Ethernet to the main BB router.

Today I tried to do the same thing with the mobile router. When I had it connected it was just like last night. As soon as I pulled it off everything was back to normal.

[MBEE]

Just had my FTTP installed; took a while as I had some cabling rerouted but seems to be working well now on my BrightBox 2. Used the Smart Hub Plus only for initial setup and testing with the Openreach engineer.

I called in to EE broadband  help after he'd left as it wasn't totally plug and play for me and I needed to change some of the BrightBox 2 settings, namely:

• Broadband Type needed to be set to Ethernet (not Fibre?!).
• Broadband Username needed changing from my legacy one simply to 'btbroadband@btbroadband.com' (apparently, this can be set to anything '@btbroadband.com' however).
• Broadband Password set to 'BT' but again, I was told this can be set to anything, or even left blank!
• The Ethernet cable from the Optical Network Terminal LAN port needed to go into the red WAN port on the back of the BrightBox 2.

From memory, I had run into some issues ages ago when I switched from my BrighBox 1, where I'd needed them to update the router serial number in my account before I could connect but doesn't seem to have been a problem this time; so far! I had a post about it but I can't find it, think it's been archived. Oh well.

[MBEE]

Ah, it was to do with time server shenanigans; here it is:

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Archived-Posts/Brightbox-2-Time-Sync-Not-Working-Again/m-p/1083370/hig...

[XRaySpeX]

@MBEE : Yes, I only needed to do the 1st & 4th settings/wiring change.

1. Broadband Type needed to be set to Ethernet from Auto-Sense
2. My PPPoE BB Username is unchanged from what it was with Freeserve. Probably ignored.
3. Pwd ditto.
4. ONT cable plugged into Red WAN port & DSL cable removed.

Good luck with it 🙂 . No issues with mine.

[MBEE]

Good speeds so far... but even the slightest movement / touch of the ethernet (not optical) cable at the ONT causes the LAN light to go out and connection to drop, is this normal? Unplugging and reseating the cable sorts it but it does seem v. delicate... same behaviour from two different new ethernet cords, even though both give that satisfying 'click' when plugged in 🤔

I only noticed because both ONT and the router next to it are sited above head hight near the ceiling and I'm putting a small shelf in for the router to sit on (it's currently hanging from a cord attached to a nail! 😄 )

[MBEE]

The only other thing I'm a little concerned about every time I walk past it is the way the engineer routed the optical cable through this wooden, internal door frame by the skirting board. He assured me it was ok but it's a delicate cable and am kinda worried that it's been left vulnerable to a knock from a passing foot / hoover / whatever...

[MBEE]

Oh, one final thing also: can I not get rid of the old British Telecom junction box at the top here now? Surely it's useless now the copper phone lines are on their way out nationwide?