T'Fayther-in-law has done this at his house, with help from the eldest son.

The previous router was in the garage at the furthest point from the rest of the house, wi-fi was poor as a result and the speeds over the copper lines abysmal.

A length of the correct cable (and I believe the correct plugs/ends?) was obtained and run through loft and down cavity into the lounge, where the new router is now. Much more central to the house and where devices are used most often.

Opennreach were surprised but connected it up no problem. Speed is phenomenal now, 21st century.

They also insisted that they ran the cable to the house underground, as before - rather than overhead, which would have been easier for Openreach. They obliged, good result all round.

There is another way and that is to have the modem which normally goes externally on the wall indoors. This the way I did it. Open reach fit the modem and BT come along to do the internal. Open reach like to do the fixing to the wall outside as they can come along at anytime without you being there much to the annoyance of a neighbour who was not around when they turned up and was put in an inconvenient place. I had already put a duct in the ground into the house but there is no reason why this could not be a hole in the wall. See photo. The grey box is what Open reach fitted then BT came along and fitted the white box which brings the fibre from the OR box to the white box (modem). From there the router is plugged in (the black lead on the left )which is a standard terminated lead. BT guy loved this as he said more often than not he has to clamber in lofts etc to run the fibre to where the customer wants it.

Posted By: Ed DaviesI'm pretty sure the modem doesn't normally go externally. I think it normally (always?) goes inside the house.

I think you're right. The modem (ONT) needs a power connection, apart from anything else.

FWIW, when the Openreach guys came around surveying earlier in the year, they said that if my existing copper cable was terminated inside the house then that's where the fibre would be terminated (like for like, they said).

Posted By: Ed DaviesI'm pretty sure the modem doesn't normally go externally. I think it normally (always?) goes inside the house.

My error meant to mean the grey JB. Shows you are on the ball!

I did have a fault a few months after install and a BT engineer called to fix it. It was between the OR box and BT modem He was pleased as it was a foul day and he could work indoors. Had the grey box been outside he would have had a difficult job. He had a special instrument/welder that was used to join the fibre together whilst viewing with the microscope which was part of the tool. Think he said it cost £5K.

Posted By: RexIf he was given a fibre cable, I cannot see how this works as he is assuming that he can plug the fibre into the router, which is not the case.

The fibre terminates in the modem. I do not believe a fibre patch cable would go through a 6 mm hole anyway the terminations are quite big from photos I have seen

My understanding is that BT will supply either a 30m or 20m fibre cable, terminated at one end with a connector (this end goes indoors), you can find the kits on eBay (presumably because BT does a deal with property developers - whereby they get a payment if they do all the indoor work themselves). The search term to use is: "ez bend fibre".

BT then come along and do the outside cable pulling (or drop from overhead), and join the indoor cable to the outdoor cable in a "CSP" (Customer Service Point, but previously was a Customer Splice Point, and still gets called this) box on the outside wall.

The ones they're currently using are grey and approx 150 mm wide by 170 mm high, by 35 mm deep. I believe they now actually terminate both the outdoor cable and the indoor cable with connectors and plug them into each other inside the CSP (previously they have fused the cables in the CSP, and/or fused the cables internally next to the ONT).

A slight variation on this is if you have a duct rising directly inside the property, in which case they might bring the cable up indoors, but I believe they now really hate doing this as they've had too many incidents of sewer gas etc. coming into the house via these underground ducts, and I understand they won't allow these at all for new builds now (best you can do is put the CSP outside, and run the cable entry underground and back up via a short route, where the ducts are vented outdoors next to the CSP.

BT prefer to put the ONT at the internal cable entry point, but they'll allow you to run fibre internally to where ever you want in the house (hence the 20m or 30m options I suppose). For the part of the route going through to outside, BT specify a 12mm diameter hole.

If you want to read the full BT guide for property developers, search for "openreach how to build a fibre network".

Have just been looking into this today as it happens, because I have an overhead cable drop (copper at the moment, but houses about 100m away down the same street already have FTTP available), and the CSP either has to go on the front of the house (ugly and insecure), or on the side (where it will limit access once I have installed EWI in the next few weeks), so I'm plotting a 50mm deep recess in the EWI to accommodate the CSP, when it will presumably become available (not terrible thermally, since it's right next to where the EWI terminates anyway).

I've run some 15mm PEX pipe through the wall to provide the 12mm hole (actually 11.5 mm, but hopefully they won't get the calipers out to check), and temporarily plugged it (sealed to the air tightness layer with butyl tape).

Since there was also a bit of talk about running internal copper cabling, the two worth running (in my opinion) are Cat 5e (up to 2.5 gigabit), and cat 6a (up to 10 gigabit). If you're really feeling like future proofing, then cat8. As you go up the cable standards, they become increasingly unforgiving of bad cable installs (e.g. compressing cables when clipping or at bends, or tight bends), and requires progressively higher skill to terminate correctly.