Be Excellent To Each Other

I am in a ground floor flat with no phone line. Virgin have not cabled the street but I want internet.

Do I get BT to install a line and then sign up with someone? Or should I sign up for phone and broadband with a company and they put a phoneline in for me?

Help!

You sure it doesn't have a line? Or does it have a line but it isn't active?

You'll need to go to BT first off for installation.

There is no phone point anywhere. Should I get broadband off BT as well then, or do I need to wait weeks for a phoneline first?

They may well try to charge you for a line installation. It's not a huge amount (£70 flat charge I think?) but they often do deals where it's free with a 1 year obligation.

I think if you get a sky calls + broadband package and need a phoneline they'll pay for it.

Is the flat in a converted house? Make sure BT know that when you ring up.

Is there a telegraph pole outside?

He's not wanting a telegraph installed, DavPaz.

-... ..- --. --. . .-. / --- ..-. ..-. --..-- / -.- .- .-.. -- .- .-.

..- .--. / -.-- --- ..- .-. ... / -... ..- -.. -.. -.-- .-.-.- / ... - --- .--. .-.-.-

How rude.

Do bear in mind Sky fit their own equipment at the exchange which only they can use, which I found out to my expense last month. Three weeks without broadband and one week to go!

There is a telegraph pole outside, and a wire comes down to right outside my window and terminates in a cut wire.

It also looks like a satellite dish has a wire entering the house also, so maybe sky used to supply?

> CUT WIRE ON SATELLITE DISH
You cut the wire. You hear the sound of feet on the floor upstairs, presumably as their TV signal is cut off.

> GO NORTH

Call them, they'll be able to tell you immediately

If there's no existing socket or the existing one is fucked or it's a newbuild & the phone's never been connected* it's a flat charge of £130 & a 12 month contract**, unless there's an offer on.
*The sparks install the internal phonelines for BT when they're wiring up the rest of the house but that work hasn't been paid for if you see what I mean.
**I think it's automatically a 12 month contract anyway if you connect with BT with an existing line, but I can't remember offhand.

As for their BB, well... I used to sell it and spent half my time acting as customer service & sorting out complaints

Wullie what happens if you get a line installed, start a 12 month contract and then sell the house? Is it easy to transfer?

Aye, the contract just moves with you to your next address.

and once the original 12 months are up you're out of contract, unless of course you sign up for a deal or move to a new address where you need a line installed.

If I bought a socket and wired it to the wire coming from the telegraph pole would that be the installation sorted?

Yes, but you're not allowed to. Legally. By Law.

In any case it'll be on their system as disconnected so they'd be coming to fit a master socket anyway.

Legally by law? Knackers. Just had a look on talktalk's site and they're all like "ooh, no phoneline? You don't need BT to do it. We can do it."

That's correct, they'll pay BT Wholesale to do it.

And presumably charge me more.

In that case, I revise my question to: what's the cheapest way to install a phoneline and get me some broadband (not bothered about speed or usage caps (unless they're stupidly low))?

Bloody Ofcom.Nah, they have to charge talktalk the same fixed rate that they charge BT for installing lines*, but AFAIK talktalk can charge whatever they like.
*Hence Ofcom pissing around with BTw. Why do I remember all this shite?


No idea who's cheapest to install (get digging), if you can afford to pay a year in advance BT's cheapest line rental is £120 (no idea about the rest, I stuck with BT to save pissing around) & I think o2 are cheapest for BB if you've a mobile with them, if not it's probably Plusnet.

O2 is a good idea, and installation is only £86. However, my bank account is not registered to this address so I can't give them my monies. Which is so fucking stupid I might cry.

I have tweeted their account instead to ask for help as I can't even get the support section to load to give me a phone number to ring.

A word of advice - if you're thinking of using TalkTalk - DON'T! They are 100% crap.

Ooh, cheers for the warning. Still going to try o2 again but not enough that I'll be re-registering my address at the bank to suit their system.

At this point I just want a phone line in asap and some flipping Internet!

Truer words have ne'er been spoken.

Dish the dirt chappies. Must be a good story?

Thanks Wullie for the O2 suggestion. They're coming out a week today to fit a line and broadband.

The support web site finally stopped spazzing out so I got a phone number and rang them. They got round the addresses not matching by setting me up a new contract and verifying the password from one onto the other. Total cost a tenner, but I get 100 free minutes to use.

Just need to remember to cancel the plan.

Was paying £24.99 a month to Zen Internet for broadband I'd never had a problem with at all. Plus £16 a month (give or take depending on usage) to BT for phone line.

Decided I needed to cut back a bit so went with TalkTalk's £17.99 a month for broadband and phoneline offer.

From the moment I switched it over, it was almost impossible for me to do anything online - gaming, work (which, given I make a living from Internet stuff, was a problem) - the connection would drop out seemingly randomly and stay offline for 10 minutes before magically coming online again.

When the connection was up it was dog slow.

Engineers came out to diagnose the line, found no problems. Changed routers (tried three different routers, including the one they sent me) and all had the problem.

After a month I switched back to BT and Zen, reluctantly paid TalkTalk a £70 disconnection/early cancellation charge, and I've had no problems since.

I've been with TalkTalk for a few years now, got calls and line rental with them too. They've been fine, lost connections a couple of time due to maintenance but they always carried it out around 12.00 - 2.00am so pretty good in that respect.

That nearly made me spit coffee everywhere. Behave yourself!

I traced the wire. It was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!!

Shame I'm not going to hook it up.