I took out a package with BT last October (phone, tv and broadband) mainly because we wanted BT TV for the sport. I wanted fibre optic ideally but was told that although it was available in my area there wasn't enough capacity at the moment but as an existing customer I would be a priority for fibre optic within 3 months.

I have contacted them twice since last October because we are finding that frequently when more than one person is using the internet it freezes. On both occasions they talked me through a way of changing settings to improve the speed but it hasn't helped.

I am really fed up because I feel they conned me into taking out the standard broadband and were not truthful about the timescale when I could change to fibre optic.

Ideally I would like to cancel my contract early, but I'm not sure this would be possible and if I do what is the best option for me to change to?

Thanks in advance.

Check out www.superfast-openreach.co.uk as it will tell you if fibre is going to be available to you any time soon. Did you get anything in writing about BT's promise to give you fibre priority? If so then great. If not, you'll need to follow BT's complaints process. If that does work work you'll need to contact ombudsmen services to mediate between yourself and BT to try and come up with a resoluion.

Thanks for the link, this is the message I got...

Your area is enabled for Superfast Fibre but demand is high on your cabinet right now. This means you may not be able to order fibre today but we're working to increase capacity. Please check back for an update.

Unfortunately I did not get anything in writing about the promise of fibre optic shortly, but it was mentioned by 2 different people in separate phone calls (I have the name of one of them as he later emailed me confirming how to change the settings)

I will try one more phone call and see if they can give me an idea of a timescale, if not I will have to start the complaints procedure (which fills me with dread as I had to do this with Vodafone and it took 8 months and Ombudsman involvement to find in my favour!)

Moving ISP wont help you if there is no capacity available in the fibre cab. The only exception being if Virgin happens to be available in your street.


An internet connection doesn't freeze. If you mean your browser is locking up then it is an issue with your computer.

General slowdown (pages taking longer to load) is to be expected the more people are utilising the connection. What speed have they quoted you as having and what are the other persons doing at the time of the problems?

I'm not sure what the speed is but the problems arise when my son is trying to play PlayStation games while I'm online aswell

This is basically to be expected from an ADSL connection unless you are lucky enough to live right near the telephone exchange. Gaming, streaming video and downloads tend to use the most bandwidth.

If you put your landline number into the BT checker here it will tell you what speed range your line should be capable of. Once you have this info go to SpeedTest (when nobody else is using the connection) and it should give you an idea of what you are actually getting. If the figures vary wildly then it could indicate a problem somewhere.