I have recently moved and applied to take over an existing line and upgrade to fibre with BT. Since I moved in, BT have told me that the last available cable in my local cabinet is not up to scratch and it will take several weeks, possibly months to fix it. In the meantime they have offered me copper broadband. The forecast speed is only 3-7Mb.

I am now wondering if I cancelled and went with a different provider would they have the same problem giving me a fibre connection or would they have their own cables in the cabinet?

Can anyone advise please?

Apart from Virgin Media and Kingston Telecoms in Hull most ISPs piggy back off the BT Openreach network. They may install their own equipment in exchanges but they still use the Openreach copper out to your home.

Therefore it is entirely possible that you'll get the same reply/excuse from any other ISP you contact.

What they have told you only makes sense if they mean that there is a problem with the link cable between the phone line cabinet and the fibre cabinet. If they are able to provide ADSL then that suggests your line is intact all the way back to the exchange. Otherwise you'd have no phone or broadband of any type.

So therefore it has to be a problem routing your phone line via the fibre cabinet to pick up the fibre broadband signal. Possibly they haven't put in enough capacity linking the two cabinets to meet demand. If so then all ISPs using the Openreach network will be affected until such time as Openreach stick in more cable.

Thank you for your very informative reply. It seems I may as well stick with BT then.

apart from BT are the most expensive provider even PLUSNET which THEY OWN are over half the price of them