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]

Ah, of course you were, sorry!

Re. the router serial number, see the old link I put to my legacy 'time server' issue  couple of posts back; I actually called CS a couple days post fttp install before I even got the text, to get them to check this but they seemed to be v.confused at my request and the supervisor started going on about how it 'should never have been done the first time around anyway', that doing such things are a privacy / security risk, or some such... I gave up because either they hadn't understood me properly or he'd no idea what he was talking about and was just trying to sound important. Probably both!

[MBEE]

Yes, they were pretty accommodating. We're set back from the telephone poles on the main road, so the cables enter our property from the ground and the engineer used the same point of entry for the fibre as the copper. This is at the front of the house tho, we have a side entrance and I wanted the ONT bang in the middle of the house, which was thankfully doable and which he agreed was the ideal placement anyway, so we routed the fibre inside the house instead.

'temperamental ONT ethernet' was a couple posts back: "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..."

[XRaySpeX]

Up to now I've been using my BrightBox 2 to deliver my FTTP to my home. Today I switched to the supplied SH+ (SH31B) feeding the BrightBox 2 in Bridging Mode (I couldn't get it to work in Routing Mode which would have resulted in a double NAT) so all my devices need not be changed.

For the sake of clarity the SH+ is configured normally to provide the DHCP & the BB2 is acting as an Ethernet-connected AP with its DHCP disabled.

All mostly seems to be working with the following observations:

1. All devices appear in My Network of SH+ with some chosen ones Static.as well as in the equivalent list of BB2.
2. All devices appear in My Network of SH+ as being connected by Ethernet while all but 1 PC show as WiFi connected to the BB2.
3. The BB2's Internet light is showing Red which I ignore, altho' its Status is shown Connected. I suppose that's the result of Bridging Mode.
4. 1 device, an IP camera, can be seen locally on my mobile but not remotely. I'll need to keep an eye on that.

It'll be interesting to see how the f/ware of the SH+ is updated over the next few days. It's currently still @ r1.35.0-R-1138091-PROD-83002.

[XRaySpeX]

After 5 days the firmware of the SH+ (SH31B) was updated on 1st July 2025 in the middle of the night to:

App version: 2.36.9 
Firmware version: r3.8.11-R-1414606-PROD-83002

The following functionality was added since its previous version (1.13.1):

1. Compatible WiFi.
2. Configurable DNS (I switched to OpenDNS).
3. Dynamic DNS (DDNS).

[XRaySpeX]

@MBEE wrote:

out of interest / being nosey...

...can I ask (given that like me, you've been sticking to your BB2 up til now) re. your latest posts here:

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Upgrade-from-Legacy-FTTC-to-New-EE-Full-Fibre/td-p/... 
..why?

Or to put it a better way, I'm wondering more why you (or anyone for that matter) would bother keeping the BB2 active as part of their setup and not just switch to the SH+ in full?

I still haven't got round to returning my own SH+ yet; I'd no intention of using it but your post got me wondering if I might be missing a trick with it / shooting myself in the foot sending it back!

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[XRaySpeX]

@MBEE : Thanks for asking.

1. Far stronger functionality. SH+ is dumb compared with it.
2. Doesn't require a smartphone to config.
3. All my devices recognise BB2 w/out change.
4. All my devices reach BB2 over WiFi. Signal strength: SH+ = -25 dBm, BB2 = -26 dBm.
5. Haven't quite decided yet but will probably remove SH+ & revert to BB2 only. My main reason for putting SH+ online was to get its f/ware updated to latest. This was achieved within 5 days.