A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
required two men, and sometimes two vans.

On Wed 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
> required two men, and sometimes two vans.

Your neighbour need to beware that none of the ISPs using CF cabling
provide any services other than broadband. They don't off mail or Usenet
handling (not sure about TalkTalk if they appear in your area) so it
will be necessary to use such as Gail, Hotmail or the like. If you don't
want to use them then you would have to use an agent that will charge
you for the services. One of the cheapest and most reliable that I have
been pointed at is Mythic Beasts but I haven't taken the step yet.

Whilst VM are not cheap and their overseas CS script jockeys are
diabolical and often rude, and their annual RPI-adjusted* increases adds
to price, they are probably the most reliable SP on the market. I have
been with them since the early noughties when I was a beta tester of
NTLWorld, but IMSMC correctly we have only had four or five outages in
the intervening years. We had a mail server issue that lasted 24 hours a
few weeks ago, and we lost service for about three days some years back
when some drunken idiot piled his car into the streetcab at the top of
our road. The only other was back in the noughties when we had a frozen
TV picture all day one Boxing Day.

[Most ISP's use CPI+3.9% for the annual increase, whereas VM use
RPI+3.9% - RPI is usually 2.2% or thereabouts greater than CPI so this
year when most people paid an increase of about 14.1% we on VM paid
16.7% or one sixth.]

On 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
> required two men, and sometimes two vans.

Kelly did mine, from a pole, one man, one van. He said if the pole
hadn't been replaced recently, it would have bee two, as he could see a
"do not climb" note on the pole on street view...

Dave

On Wed, 02 Aug 2023 15:32:34 +0100, Woody wrote:

> On Wed 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of the
>> ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
>> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
>> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before required
>> two men, and sometimes two vans.
>
> Your neighbour need to beware that none of the ISPs using CF cabling
> provide any services other than broadband. They don't off mail or Usenet
> handling (not sure about TalkTalk if they appear in your area) so it
> will be necessary to use such as Gail, Hotmail or the like.

AAISP use CF in some areas, and they definitely offer mail. Few ISPs offer
Usenet now anyway. AAISP can also provide VoIP over CF.

Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Aug 2023 15:32:34 +0100, Woody wrote:
>
>> On Wed 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of the
>>> ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
>>> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
>>> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before required
>>> two men, and sometimes two vans.
>>
>> Your neighbour need to beware that none of the ISPs using CF cabling
>> provide any services other than broadband. They don't off mail or Usenet
>> handling (not sure about TalkTalk if they appear in your area) so it
>> will be necessary to use such as Gail, Hotmail or the like.
>
> AAISP use CF in some areas, and they definitely offer mail. Few ISPs offer
> Usenet now anyway. AAISP can also provide VoIP over CF.
>

Why, these days, would anyone want any of these services from their ISP?
There’s plenty of mail providers out there, from free to a few pounds per
month, all with the advantage of no lock-in to the ISP. Likewise, there is
similar for Usenet.

By the way, Talktalk is in deep trouble

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/07/debt-pressures-pushing-budget-uk-isp-talktalk-toward-breakup.html

On Wed, 02 Aug 2023 18:32:14 +0000, Tweed wrote:

> Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Aug 2023 15:32:34 +0100, Woody wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>>>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
>>>> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>>>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF
>>>> employee in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this.
>>>> Kelly, the installation contractor I have seen doing installations
>>>> before required two men, and sometimes two vans.
>>>
>>> Your neighbour need to beware that none of the ISPs using CF cabling
>>> provide any services other than broadband. They don't off mail or
>>> Usenet handling (not sure about TalkTalk if they appear in your area)
>>> so it will be necessary to use such as Gail, Hotmail or the like.
>>
>> AAISP use CF in some areas, and they definitely offer mail. Few ISPs
>> offer Usenet now anyway. AAISP can also provide VoIP over CF.
>>
>>
> Why, these days, would anyone want any of these services from their ISP?
> There’s plenty of mail providers out there, from free to a few pounds
> per month, all with the advantage of no lock-in to the ISP. Likewise,
> there is similar for Usenet.

With AAISP mail services, you can use your own domain name. So, no lock-
in. As it happens, I use AAISP for the domain, but my own mail server
(pretty well the reverse).

On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 16:47:28 +0100, David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid>
wrote:

>On 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
>> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
>> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
>> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
>> required two men, and sometimes two vans.
>
>Kelly did mine, from a pole, one man, one van. He said if the pole
>hadn't been replaced recently, it would have bee two, as he could see a
>"do not climb" note on the pole on street view...
>

I found out later that the guy I saw only did the outside work.
Someone else will have to connect him up.

On 03/08/2023 16:12, Peter Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 16:47:28 +0100, David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> On 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
>>> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
>>> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
>>> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
>>> required two men, and sometimes two vans.
>>
>> Kelly did mine, from a pole, one man, one van. He said if the pole
>> hadn't been replaced recently, it would have bee two, as he could see a
>> "do not climb" note on the pole on street view...
>>
>
> I found out later that the guy I saw only did the outside work.
> Someone else will have to connect him up.

When BTOR did my FTTP one guy did the whole job inside and outside and
left me with a working circuit.

Took him about 2.5 hours but it was an easy instal I had seen to that.

On Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:18:25 +0100, grinch wrote:

> When BTOR did my FTTP one guy did the whole job inside and outside and
> left me with a working circuit.
>
> Took him about 2.5 hours but it was an easy instal I had seen to that.

Same here. About 2 hours, but unusually the drop fibre comes through the
wall at first floor level, goes to a really tiny splice point, and has
about 8cm of fibre to the ONT.

A woman turned up about halfway through, but I think she was being
trained.

On Thu 03/08/2023 16:18, grinch wrote:
> On 03/08/2023 16:12, Peter Johnson wrote:
>> On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 16:47:28 +0100, David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02/08/2023 13:41, Peter Johnson wrote:
>>>> A neighbour is ditching his Virgin installation in favour of one of
>>>> the ISPs offering via City Fibre, don't know which one yet. The
>>>> installation was carried out this morning by an an assumed CF employee
>>>> in a CF-liveried van, the first time I have seen this. Kelly, the
>>>> installation contractor I have seen doing installations before
>>>> required two men, and sometimes two vans.
>>>
>>> Kelly did mine, from a pole, one man, one van. He said if the pole
>>> hadn't been replaced recently, it would have bee two, as he could see a
>>> "do not climb" note on the pole on street view...
>>>
>>
>> I found out later that the guy I saw only did the outside work.
>> Someone else will have to connect him up.
>
> When BTOR did my FTTP one guy did the whole job inside and outside and
> left me with a working circuit.
>
> Took him about 2.5 hours but it was an easy instal I had seen to that.

And the chocolate biscuits?

On Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:37:21 +0100, Woody wrote:

>> When BTOR did my FTTP one guy did the whole job inside and outside and
>> left me with a working circuit.
>>
>> Took him about 2.5 hours but it was an easy instal I had seen to that.
>
> And the chocolate biscuits?

I provided tea and coffee, but they both declined the chocolate biscuits!