There is a way to ensure your NBN cabling is installed the way you want without having to pay a professional.
Julian Lippi had read and heard of too many people being dissatisfied with the way their NBN connections were installed, so as the HFC rollout approached his home he decided to take steps to ensure that he wasn't among them.
The issues that concerned him were stories of NBN equipment being installed in completely unsuitable places such as bedrooms, and more generally in awkward places resulting in the need for multiple extension cables for power, ethernet and phone connections.
"I heard terrible stories like that," he told iTWire.
{loadposition stephen08}He and his wife have separate offices in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. The existing arrangement of equipment and cabling meant the upstairs office was the obvious place for the HFC modem, but the floor plan meant that it might not be considered a standard NBN installation by the installer.
Installers seem reluctant to do the job the way the owner wants, even if that is within the guidelines for a standard installation, he observed.
So he researched the problem, and found Whirlpool to be a useful source of information. In particular, he found pointers to the NBN installation guide - "that's where I found out what the requirements were, and learned that it is OK to install your own conduit providing you use the right type and follow the rules for things like the minimum radius of any bends," said Lippi.
So once the cable from the street to the outside wall of the house was installed - a task that was completed with little damage to the garden, he noted - Lippi set to work.
The crawlspace under the house is big enough to provide reasonably easy access to most areas, so he purchased the appropriate conduit and elbows from a big-name hardware store, removed the air vent adjacent to the outside connection box, and pushed the conduit into place.
"The first piece was the hardest as that’s where there was the least space - it got easier after that," he said.
Lippi ran a length of cord through the conduit as he installed it, so it could be used to pull the cable through during the NBN installation.
The brick veneer construction meant the vertical run of co-ax cable would go in the cavity. Lippi cut a hole in the wall, installed a wall plate and ran a length of 'yellow tongue' plastic cable feeder down the inside of the wall from the wall plate to the end of the newly installed conduit.
"That was the most fiddly part," he said. "It took me three goes because it kept getting caught on the rough inside surface of the bricks and mortar."
It took the NBN installer about 15 minutes to pull the cable through the conduit and up to the wall plate. A short length of flexible conduit bridged the gap between the outside box and the end of Lippi's conduit.
Installing the conduit and the associated preparatory work "was actually quite easy," said Lippi. "Anyone who's got a bit of handyman nous could do it."
"This way, it's all neat. And you are allowed to do it, as long as you follow the rules."
Photos: Julian Lippi