Orcon Fibre - Our office Installation and Internet Speed
When we originally considered signing up to use the Ultra Fast Broadband being installed on our street, we couldn't find a lot of information around about peoples experiences with it, so here is a brief write up on what went down when we signed up.
We contacted Orcon, who have a specialising team that deal with Fibre, called the "Complex Provisioning team." While a little difficult to get hold of at times, once we signed the contract things started happening very quickly. We received a couple of emails advising of when Chorus would be installing the fibre and other details. Unfortunately the install date was set almost a month later which was strange. We were hoping to maximise the Orcon deal which was a massive reduced price through to the end of the year and then a one year contract at the full rate.
To our surprise a couple of days later on a Sunday morning we received a call from Chorus advising that they will be around to the office for an assessment. The Chorus team advise that they install for free but only on the first floor. So bear in mind you may need an electrician to run wiring up to level 2 if required.
Initially the job is to get the fibre from the street to the house and the Chorus team install a couple of new box's outside the building at our usual copper entry point. They returned that week to complete that task. Now they would need to run the fibre connection into the building. Supposedly they would now need to wait till the fibre install date we received in the initial email to complete the work and advised us that resources for the job would be ordered and take some time to arrive. During this time the Orcon supplied router arrived in the form of a Cisco. This is very different to the Genius routers supplied by Orcon for residential installs.
On the day of install, our electrician had prepared the termination point inside the building with power and cat6 to upstairs. The Chorus team ran the wiring inside and into something called a ONT. This ONT plugs into the router supplied by Orcon. Once Chorus completed their install they advised that no service was being received from Orcon. This was concerning given we had the IT technician due to resolve the server and the new system. A last minute phone call was made to Orcon using the number supplied in the documentation that came with the router. This was a mistake as the business help desk had no clue about assisting with the connection or anything about the Cisco router. They also would not facilitate us talking to the correct department. So we managed to get hold of the initial Orcon account manager in the Complex provisioning team and they ended up turning it on. Again the process was confusing, as they had expected Chorus would ring them to advise the setup was complete, yet Chorus had expected the service to be already working.
We have been testing the fibre service to date hoping for impressive speeds. To this point on the super fast plans of up to 100MBS download, and up to 50MBs upload we are averaging about 20MBS both ways so a long way short of the promised land.
We will update this post once we have used the service for a while and let you know if that changes.
Update: 11.10.2012
So its been a couple of weeks and since then we have had a few phone calls from Orcon about our issue. After running a 100MB test file over FTP from our office to Orcon and back again, they advise that our actual speed is, 40MBS Up and 30MBS Down. Still slow but better than the 20 MBS that the speed test websites show. They also reiterated the terminology around internet transfer speeds which you can read about here...
Update: 04.12.2012
Another month or two has passed and still no further ahead regarding our speeds. Orcon seem to offer no answers or solutions to the issue. We received a phone call this week advising that they have been testing the Cisco Routers they have sent us and conclude that it it not capable of reaching the fibre speeds required. So this week they sent us a Genius router, which is their consumer product. We brought in our IT technician again and set up the new router. The speeds at first that night appeared faster. Someone tested 60 Down and 30 up, and then a few 100 Down and 30 Up. But unfortunately in the morning everything was back to the same old speeds again, at around 10 MBS each way.
After talking to the client side people at Orcon, they now advise that this issue is a national one, and it appears to be a problem that Cisco and Chorus are required to address.
Update: 27.02.2013
Things have taken a turn for the better with speeds in the new year. The speed issues appear to be resolved when we returned to work in mid January. We are now getting some very good download speeds on the upper end of the promised speeds. Upload caps out at the mid range of the advertised speeds. Unfortunately, we have experienced some continuity issues with Orcon experiencing several outages. This meant we lost internet for several hours at a time. At this point no one has apologised for the problems we experienced and we are likely to switch providers when a better opportunity comes along.