Hello,

I have just moved to a new house which hasn't been lived in for 10 months. I placed a order with BT for the phoneline to be reconnected. 2 weeks later they got back to me to say that my old phoneline is now being used by somone else on my street and there is no longer enough lines to go back to the enchange!

I am so annoyed because i have to travel to the library every day to use the internet!

Has ANYTHING like this happened to anyone else out there and how long did it take BT to sort you out a new line?
I asked the lady how long it would take and she said "how long is a piece of string" I am so upset!

-Luke

This could be down to a "line plant shortage". With the exchanges being so old and there only being a limited number of ports in each exchagne it is difficult to get enough lines sometimes. You may be surprised with turnaround times as they can sometimes get them done quite quicly if there is engineering resource in your area!

I would get cable.

Doesn't BT have to supply you with a phone line, what about the USO (Universal Service Obligation) ?

Yes I'm sure they do have to supply you by law.

Can you not get www.ntl.com or www.telewest.co.uk ?

How do you know he can get it?

Cable is not available in 60% of the the UK

Hi

When there wasn't enough lines in my area they added Dacs to the existing lines

info here

http://frank.gwc.org.uk/~ali/dacs/

Yes (unless you live in Hull).

http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/Regula...ionintheUK.htm

Don't think you can have Broadband if you have a DACS line, If the housing estate where you live is quite large, it may well be there will be someone ceasing there service shortly, and, you may get a line quite quickly. Is the estate fed from poles or directly underground?, if directly underground you may be kept waiting for a line, it can mean a lot of excavation to provide extra cable capacity.., it can be quicker if the area is fed overhead...

Do what I did. I moved house to get cable.

I think I would rather persevere and get BT then get cable. BT have to allow access to all directory enquiries operators and all 3rd party carriers, where NTL don't.

I also get a good choice of ISPs.

Seems a bit extreme...!

I'm more concerned about getting broadband more than anything. unfortunatly NTL Telewest dont provide any services in southampton yet. (they said they will be upgrading to digital cable in the next 10 months)
Your comments make me feel hopeful that this might be sorted in a couple of weeks... but BT wont tell me anything. I'm going to speak to them tomorrow and try to emphasise how important it is to get my line installed...maybe they will speed things up!

And some bad ones

It used to be true that sometimes lack of exchange plant was the reason that BT were unable to supply service, but not any more.

The reasons now are that when cables were laid out to the various areas, some sort of factoring would have been done to assess demand. Of course back then people didn't have the likes of fax machines/second lines at home.

BT have started to use the dreaded DACS in areas where lines are limited which is fine for voice/fax, but of course not for ADSL.

It is very rare for BT to be unable to supply service to anyone these days. It must mean that they are already fully DACS'd up in a particular area. In this situation i would have thought that engineering work is planned to increase the availability of lines in an area - there's obviously a need for it.

I am a openreach engineer and yes we have got a problem around most of the uk with lack of cables running from the dp (pole/manhole) back to the pcp (green boxes on side of roads).

But in all fairness BT are doing something about it, Billions has been allocating over 3 years to upgrade wiring to streets.

Since January of this year we have been unable to order new dacs units for our vans. With the huge demand for broadband nowadays, fitting more of them just causes more problems in the future, so bt started a campaign called "ditch the dacs".

So thats why you will have to wait for a solution from bt. but as a rule this takes 2- 3 weeks and more than likely they will stick more cables up to your pole. Its not as big of a job as it seems, its just costly and needs approval from various managers before the new cable can be laid.

As someone has said, BT have to provide a line to your property, some law that covers 999 calls aparently.

oh, and keep on nagging!!!!make sure they have referred your order to the planning dept.
Last edited by martino2539 : 13-10-2006 at 22:53

Introducing 21CN....