I put in an order with my RSP, MyRepublic, and it was a 2 week lead time before NBNCo could send someone out. Eventually I got a date, and needed to take time off work to be at home for allow them in to get it sorted.
The telecommunications pit outside my house
Looking inside the telecommunications pit
Pulling out the fibre connection points from the pit across the road
Initially put the orange string (top right of picture) into the pit to start pulling it into my house
Trying to work out which hole on the side of the house leads into the telecommunications pit
The spool of fibre optic cable from the fibre connection point on the other side of the street into my house
To the installer's horror, the communications duct from my house was not connected to the pit! It ended in the white tube sticking out of the ground at right of the picture. This is him taking a picture.
Installer digging a trench from the white communications duct sticking out of the ground to the pit. A lot more work than expected!
Using bare hands to trench the final bits. There was water in the newly dug trench and they had to scoop it out. Again with their bare hands. Respect to the installers.
After the water was drained
Use a smaller shovel to trench deeper
Hit more water as they went deeper. Had to be at least the same level as the base of the white duct sticking out
The trench from the duct connecting the house to the pit
Close up
Drilling a hole in the pit to allow the duct connecting the house to the pit
Close up of drilling
Then need to dig even more to get to the base of the white duct connecting the house to the pit, so as to be able to turn it 90 degrees down to connect to the pit
Hit even more water
Had to scoop out even more dirty water and mud out to reach the base of the white duct connecting the house to the pit
Eventually got there and they put in another PVC pipe to bridge the gap between the duct connecting the house to the pit, and the actual put itself
Needed to drill the hole in the pit bigger
Telecommunications contractor vans are the same around the world
Vertical view
After connecting the PVC pipe to the duct connecting the house to the pit, uses some kind of gel like substance to seal the 2 ends
The final product. To get to this stage was almost an hour and a half
Final checks before burying it for good
Putting the grass back (!)
I must say he did a very good job!
If you don't look too closely you wouldn't know it had been just dug up
Starting to string the stuff they use to pull fibre across ducts from the fibre drop point across the street
To the other side of the street
One end of the fibre cable is tied into a orange string
The other end of the fibre cable that is connected to the fibre Network Access Point.
The Fibre Distribution Hub on the other side of the road
Putting the fibre across the road
Pulling.......
More pulling......
Finally pulling into the pit outside my house
Then pushing the fibre from the pit outside my house to the duct between the pit and my house
Fibre coming out of the wall of my house!
The NBN Optical Network Terminal
Plugging in the fibre cable into the NBN Fibre Distribution Hub. Or so we thought......
The yellow caution stickers should have been a warning sign
Installing the PCD (Premises Connection Device)
Looping the fibre around inside the PCD
Splicing the fibre cable
Splicing the fibre cable. That small thing can carry up to 3Gbit/s in one strand of fibre!
Close up. The tag at the top left is to help identify which line of fibre it is in the pit
Laser thing to send down a laser beam
The black stuff is the outside coating to shield it from the elements/water in the pit. Inside the blue bit is the actual fibre itself.
Now to bring it into the house!
The use some white cable stuff to string it into the house
And it ends up in my garage, because #australia
Installing the ONT
Installing the ONT
The ONT installed. The blue bit is the fibre, as thin as hair!
Left: into the house. Right: from the pit
Despite 3 hours of work, the installer couldn't get it to work, despite many angry phone calls to NBNCo's backend. Eventually he gave up and told me to get someone else.
It took 3 weeks to get a 2nd NBN appointment, and time off work again, to have a 2nd installer come, who was very camera shy. So I only have 2 pictures.
The reason for the inability to connect was that the 1st installer had connected to a Telstra Fibre Distribution Hub, NOT NBNco's Fibre Distribution Hub in the pit across the road!
My estate used to be a Telstra Smart Community estate, so it had the Telstra infrastructure in it. NBNCo just decided to ignore the fibre already run to existing houses, and lay (duplicate) their own infrastructure!
The green wire is apparently NBNCo's fibre. So it (generally) as case of unplugging my fibre from Telstra's Fibre Distribution Hub to NBNco's Fibre Distribution Hub, and after a bit of work everything was up and running!
