Sonera viihde - moving (optical fiber)

[Alex.Sm]

Hi,

I have a question about Sonera viihde. I'm living in Helsinki and about 1 year ago, I got Sonera viihde service, TV + 100MB internet connection. I'm happy with the service, works fine no problem so ever (except few weeks ago when all Helsinki was down). The thing is I'm moving to a rivitalo and at that specific address the Sonera viihde service is not available. What happens in this case as I have the contract for two years? Will I still continue paying for the service? Can this contract be "canceled"? However the main important for me is the internet connection and I can get from other operator 100MB at that address but not from Sonera.

My second question: from where can I get installed optical fiber at my new home if there is not one available? What companies can do optical cable installation at your home if there is none?
Can you install optical cable at your apartment (rivitalo)? Do you need some approval from the housing company?

Kiitos!

[Jukka Aho]

I'm moving to a rivitalo and at that specific address the Sonera viihde service is not available. What happens in this case as I have the contract for two years? Will I still continue paying for the service? Can this contract be "canceled"?

See the terms for Sonera Viihde here. It appears they will investigate the availability of the service in your new address (upon receiving your notice two weeks in advance) and you can then cancel the contract if they cannot provide it there. You will not be refunded for anything you paid, though, and apparently the equipment must be returned to Sonera.

My second question: from where can I get installed optical fiber at my new home if there is not one available? What companies can do optical cable installation at your home if there is none?

The local telco by default. In urban areas and population centers you might possibly even have a choice of ISPs if they have presence in the area. Check out the websites of the major local and national telcos/ISPs, they often have a page where you can test the availability by entering your address. Or request a comment on availability from them by some other means. Or figure out what they’re using in the neighboring houses.

In rural and other more isolates areas, the local telco might be reluctant to build and maintain expensive infrastructure on their own. Sometimes the locals have founded a cooperative fiber-to-the-homes network company just to sidestep a telco which does not see a business case in serving the more remote areas, isolated farms, summer cottages etc.

Can you install optical cable at your apartment (rivitalo)? Do you need some approval from the housing company?

Typically apartment owners will raise the issue in a company meeting and assign someone (the maintenance company, or the board, or some interested individual) to gather quotes from companies which could provide the service to all apartments (at some reduced bulk price for the basic service and different surcharges for the additional speed classes.) If the house is not recently built and thus does not include LAN wiring, it is going to be a more difficult project, as it involves first installing the necessary cabling from a central distribution closet to the apartments. In such cases it is often done as part of a larger pipe or electrical or other renovation project, and postponed until that time. See this article for some more information (in Finnish.)

If the board and the other apartment-owners are reluctant about going forward with such thing for all apartments/dwellers, I guess it is possible to get a permission to just dig a fiber through the garden to your apartment, specifically, at your personal expense... but it sounds a bit daft if it could be installed to serve the entire house and all your neighbors who will at some point surely need a faster Internet connection than the traditional copper pair lines anyway. I have never heard of fiber being laid for a single row house apartment only, though.

If the other apartment owners are not interested right now, a compromise could be bringing the fiber to the technical room — the expenses being paid by the company — and doing some ad hoc network cabling from there to your apartment (maybe with your expense), to be replaced with proper network cabling to each apartment at some later point. I’m not sure how the telcos see the situation, though, or what kind of a deal they could offer in that case.

New development (detached homes, row houses and apartment blocks all alike) get fiber to the premises pretty much as standard these days — if the location is such that the local companies can provide it. (Or it tends to be fiber to each individual apartment now... but distributed from a central technical room/closet, of course.)