[chbot] Recommendations for fibre in CHCH

[Helmut Walle]

On 05/03/2021 16:02, Eliot Blennerhassett wrote:
> On 5/03/21 3:55 pm, Spencer Travers wrote:
>> Talking about Christchurch, the ONT is owned by Enable and is part of their network. Enable is not a retail ISP.
>>
>> An ISP typically supplies a Wi-Fi router that connects to the ONT via ethernet. Confusingly, this is often still called a "modem" by many ISPs (to be fair, many of these do also contain ADSL/VDSL modems). If your ISP provides a VoIP service, this normally plugs into the ATA built into the ISP router. In some less common cases the phone plugs into the ONT.
> 
> AFAICS (at my mother's), Spark's ONT also provides the ATA (i.e. telephone), and connects to the wifi router to provide internet access.
[...]

This is where it can get complicated... as I mentioned before, both my ONT and my router have
analogue phone ports. However, again to a large extent thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the SIP
protocol architecture, VoIP over a TCP/IP connection with CGNAT may or may not work, depending
on the SIP complexity being recognised and worked around in the design and implementation of the
firmware of the device that provides the physical interface. Devices that may provide VoIP
services just fine over a connection with a static IP address (usually costs either a one-off
set-up fee, or even a periodic extra service fee) may fail doing so without.

Now the ONT and router will usually not be from the same manufacturer, and they are in this
regard completely different systems that have nothing to do with each other. The complexity on
the customer side then simply is in the desire to have the phone at a certain location within
the house, whereas the ONT and router may be in different rooms.

Mark, you mentioned VoIP from 2talk, and I have the same as they know what they are doing in
that space, and they offer reasonably priced services that work. But if there are any issues
getting VoIP to work correctly as was the case for me there is a risk of getting into a
finger-pointing contest between the ISP and the VoIP service provider (oh, and one of the two
will probably also point the finger at you - most likely the ISP, asking you why you are not
simply buying their VoIP service...).