How do they connect fiber to your house?
Fiber optic AT&T Internet is a popular type of internet connection that many people would want to acquire for their homes and businesses, and knowing how it connects to a house is essential to fulfill this need.
Having fiber optic internet connected to a home is one of the most thrilling things that can happen to any home. Fiber internet gives users much higher speeds, which means lower latency and higher reliability than cable or DSL internet. But when it comes to the connection of the fiber to your house how is it done? Here is a brief on how fiber installation is done Below is a brief guide for fiber installation.
Planning and Scheduling
It begins when you subscribe for a fiber optic internet connection with an Internet Service Provider such as AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and others. You will pick the date for installation and the provider will send technicians on that particular date and they will connect your house directly to the fiber line of the provider’s extensive network. Scheduling may take several days to several weeks depending on how the provider’s timeline is.
Installing the Fiber Line
During the installation process, the technician will visit your home to determine the most convenient method to install the fiber optic cable from the street to your premises. If buried fiber lines are already available within your neighborhood, they will install a drop line from the street into your house. If not they may have to dig new buried or aerial fiber lines across the houses to establish the connection.
To install new fiber optic cable, the team employs a machine to dig a shallow groove measuring about 12 - 18 inches below the surface of the ground. This makes it easy to manage and eliminate interference to your lawn. Using the drawn cable, they pass it through the trench and then bury it again with the soil. In certain sections, they might be required to take the cable above the ground on telephone poles if required and anchored temporarily. The route is somewhat different in every home because of the houses and the designs of the landscape and infrastructures.
Mounting the ONT Box
Once the fiber line comes to your house, it connects to another simpler box called Optical Network Terminal (ONT) which is located outside the house like a telephone pole near electric or telephone wires. The ONT links the fiber-optic cable to the copper cable that is wired inside your modem router. ONT stands for ‘optical network terminal’ which also contains lasers to translate the light signals that are transmitted through the fiber optic cable to electrical signals for the copper telephone/ethernet.
An ONT box fits into the palm of one’s hand is approximately the size of a large book and has power cords and numerous ports on the bottom to connect services in your home. Since fiber equipment is powered electrically, the ONT will need to plug into an outside electrical outlet on the same wall and if there isn’t one then the technician can install it.
Routing the Cable Indoors
Once the technicians have ensured that the ONT is securely in place, they then drill a small hole in your wall through which to pass fiberglass cables indoors. It will involve securing and blocking the holes around the cables against drafts or any pests. The cables then have to be directed safely off of pathways where people can walk through to the location where your modem/router will be placed. This might be, for example, in a closet, storage room, or directly on the wall on which the equipment is installed.
If you wish to have the modem located in a different room with the ONT, the techs can extend longer copper cables to those rooms through conduits or walls and ceilings. It does include pulling cables through the hollow spaces in your home walls, such as fishing.
Connecting to Your Devices
After the fiber line obtains the connection of the ONT to the modem/router setup, the installation is almost done. The technicians will connect all the networking equipment, power them on, and configure it to the fiber line to give you the best internet speed connection. The last step is plugging in the various household appliances into the power outlets such as computers and phones.
You can directly connect your devices to the ethernet ports found on the router as well as wirelessly using the new WPA/WPA2 WiFi network name and password as given by the technicians. Well done – you are now connected to ultra-high-speed fiber optic broadband delivered directly to your house!
Dealing with Obstacles
For most of the single-family structures, the above process runs as planned. But installing fiber to your door can hit snags, especially in dense urban areas and multi-unit buildings, due to
- Challenges in seeking legal permission to place and affix fiber equipment structures on the parcels of land.
- Absence of direct buried conduit that could be connected to the street to the building.
- Old utility poles that are unable to accommodate extra fiber cable
- Great design to lay cables in a multi-tenanted building with cables directly linked to individual units
Finally, I have to mention that in cases of diverse challenges, that are unique to the specific installation, there may be some toing and froing with the provider to agree on the most feasible solutions. For instance, pulling cables through building conduits or replacing existing equipment poles to accommodate new fiber strings. This can potentially stretch the timeframe from the initial consultation meeting, yet technicians will strive to bring you your broadband connection as swiftly as possible.
Fiber Optic Internet Service – Regular
Once the fiber line is extended to your home, you can utilize the bandwidth as and when you want because the bandwidth is virtually inexhaustible. In the long run, providers will allow for the different speed tiers of up to 1 Gigabit per second or more through fiber, which is extremely beyond cable and DSL.
This future-proof infrastructure is more than enough to provide an overhead for many, many decades. Thirdly, the fiber optic internet service is also relatively more reliable once adopted compared to other service offerings with fewer service interruptions. If one does require assistance, providers have dedicated teams to address, diagnose, and send out repairmen in case of the need to ensure that the critical fiber link remains connected and operational.
Upgrade to faster, more reliable AT&T Fiber Internet today! Call us at +1 844-905-5002 and get connected with speeds that keep you ahead.
