I realized today that I hadn’t given an update on my fibre saga in quite some time. After going back and forth with BigPipe, I ended up cancelling their service as was shown in a previous post. There were quite a few reasons for this, however the biggest one was them removing IPV6, as well as not being upfront about the issues I was having with the fibre installation. I moved to Voyager after doing quite a bit of searching on geekzone. The service with them has been outstanding so far, with zero issues.

When I transferred to them, my fibre installation order was still not completed. On the plus side, Voyager was much more willing to give me the information they had than BigPipe ever was. They informed me that the reason for the lack of fibre installation, was that Chorus wanted to do my full complex at once instead of doing each apartment individually as they had been doing them. This was a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I knew the reasoning for the lack of installation, a curse as it meant getting full approval from my body corp. Luckily the body corp was ready for the complex to be completed as quickly as possible, and approved the exterior work in record time!

I was informed on July 11th, that the process for getting consent from the body corp had actually started. This means between the time of my first query to BigPipe (April 10th) nothing had actually moved forward. At no point in that 3 months, had I been informed by BigPipe that they were unable to do anything, and just kept being pushed around by them with no actual updates. To say I was furious would be an understatement.

The actual install date

Photo by Ildefonso Polo on Unsplash

Finally after many many months of waiting, wanting updates, pulling my hair out, and being overall somewhat impatient the day had finally come. The installers were extremely friendly. They walked with me outside of my building and discussed placement with me. They had initially wanted to do the install in my bathroom (?) as that was the closest outside wall. They were being pretty adimant about it, until I explained I have access to our attic space. Well, more like a crawlspace but it could be used. They were happy with that and so was I.

It took the installer a few hours to run all of the fibre outside, as well as through my attic. In the end, they ran it down the wall in our office, and to the ONT (Optical Network Terminal). They plugged everything in, and ran their tests. Everything worked amazingly on their end! I was so excited I could have hugged them. I had already set up everything on my Edgerouter Lite and after they left, hooked everything up in order to run my first speedtest.

Speed test run from home

That’s the fastest internet I’ve ever had at a house I lived in. Ever. I have the ability to get gigabit down and 500 mb/s up, however that would definitely be overkill and wouldn’t actually make much of a difference for most of what I do. We have been running a 100/20 plan since the isntall last July, and it’s worked wonderfully for us. It’s been rock solid and the speeds have never dipped below where they should be. I’ve been extremely pleased with both the connection and Voyager. There are times I’m downloading something and it’s taking a tiny bit longer than I would like, but I can’t quite justify the increase in cost for an increase in speed.

For now, my install woes are gone, and my internet is nice and fast. That is until we move. If we ever find a house. But that’s another post for another time.