BT/Openreach New Connection

[MikeSharp01]

13 minutes ago, AliG said:

Really I would use Sky as my provider, but I am not sure if they are as good at organising a new connection as BT.

Did some work with BT / Open reach in about 2010 and all the 3rd parties including BT use exactly the same form to request a line activation / build and open reach take it from there. There is high level connection at almost / including board level but you can only use that network if you know someone in the house of Lords! So it does not matter who your provider is the service from open reach is the same!

[AliG]

I am going to apply to get both installed.

 

TBH I was thinking of having Virgin broadband and Sky Q anyway. Virgin offer a rolling 1 month contract so I can sign up to that just to get it installed and see how it goes.

 

I will try Sky also then although everything tells me that Openreach are pretty hopeless to deal with.

[Bitpipe]

@AliG I did something similar - its detailed in a thread somewhere  might even be this one.

 

Here's how I finally did it.

 

1) I did my own ducting (with draw rope) up to property boundary from basement plant room

2) call regular BT sales dept and order a new line w broadband or whatever you need

3) OR will arrive on site to do something and at this point you show the OR person what you want to achieve. They will arrange for an OR surveyor to come to site in a week or so.

4) show OR surveyor what you want - he will produce a quote and will advise on what you can do yourself to save money. 

5) you either accept the OR quote or let the order lapse for 28 days, do the pre-work yourself and start again from 2). This time the connection can happen on the first visit.

 

In our case, pole was other side of lane to us so we needed to trench over to that (4m) and then pull 45m of cable into house. OR quote was quite high as expected as they charge £5/m to supply and pull cable, road works were a couple of grand - plus VAT, plus surveyors fees etc, etc. Surveyor recommended that we do it all ourselves as the crews they use (3rd party) are notorious for finding reasons to increase the cost of the job.

 

Proper 10 pair gel filled cable was 50p/m from TLC and we left 4-5m at the bottom of the pole - took them no time to hook it up and test the connection from inside.

 

[AliG]

I would rather it was underground as it is neater, but having read your saga I decided to put a pole in my garden and then a duct from there to the house. In that case I don't think I should be charged.

 

I was more concerned that they will come out, and then extra work needs done etc which will take lots of time.

 

A nice woman from Virgin has sorted me out though, they are coming December the 4th, I made it then as the electricity will be connected up. We can lay a duct to where their cable enters the garden and just pull it through. When Virginmedia are easier to deal with you know you have problems.

 

Now I am going to try Sky to see if they can order a new line with them too. It's going to cost me a couple of hundred extra over a year if I end up with both, but then it will make it a lot easier to play them off against each other to get a discount in the future.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 10, 2017 by AliG

[ProDave]

There are two sides tho this. Getting the physical cable in place, and getting it connected.

 

I did persue the Open Reach route at the start of the build. About all that did was to identify exactly where the cable had to run to, and a drum of free issue SWA 6 pair phone cable.

 

I then knew the phone cable had to cross the road, so was able to provision for that when the other services also crossed the road. That left me with a phone cable from the house to the grass verge immediately above where I was told the BT cable was.

 

When it came to connection time it was a call to BT as a new connection. The OR engineer that attended first was the one I saw 2 years ago who gave me the drum of cable. As it happens the connection took way longer than it should have done and I got my connection fee refunded and 12 months of heaviliy discounted broadband as compensation for the delay.

 

If I had missed out the Open Reach bit at the start, and just gone to BT for  new connection, I would have missed out on knowing where the connection was to be made. That would almost certainly meant OR digging a fresh road crossing. I would also have missed out on the chance to bury the cable into the house before I did the basic landscaping, so would have resulted in my lawn being dug up.

[AliG]

Lawn will wait for next year.

 

They are dropping the scaffold in a couple of weeks and putting in all the service connection so I can put in duct for BT and Virgin when I do that.

 

The slightly awkward thing is not knowing if they will connect to a pole I put up in the garden. The old connection went all the way to the corner of the house which looks awful. It was also around 40m of cable and bizarrely stretched around a tree which didn't exactly fill me with confidence.

 

If I can just put in a pole and duct to it then I am sorted. If Virgin is connected then having to wait is not such an issue.

 

Of course if we were not trying to do the last two months work in a month it might be a little easier.