I moved into an apartment in Manchester. It has 3 BT sockets. There is no dial tone from any of them, but the previous tenants moved out over a month ago now.

I'm unsure if they had a phone line installed, because it's a new build and I assume they just put generic phone points in for ease.

I understand that BT will charge us £125 if they need to wire us up from the telegraph pole and such, but is there any way to find out if the property had a line installed from BT? I know the data protection act might prevent this and from their site it appears you need to order first then they decide on the fee.

Since we recently moved we need to be careful with money.

if there is no (stopped line) dialtone its probable that
there has never been service to the flat so as the first
request for service you would get the charge for the
install, i am sure ive seen on here that is possible to get the £124 charge reduced if you call the bt customer options
team, but you will probably have to take out 18 month
contract for line rental/calls

Cheers. I'll get this checked out.

We're not sure if we'll live there in 18 months, though. We'll have a ponder.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...postcount=1035

We're unsure how long we're going to be there, so 18 months is probably a bit too long.

If we have to pay the fee, can it be taken in instalments (e.g. quarterly) like the phone bill itself or will it be upfront?

We can afford the £125 no problems but we'd prefer not to go wild until we're settled in.