Need advice on dealing with BT line

brisck1

Hi everyone,

I've been out of the loop for a while working in sweden the past couple of years and I just got back to the UK and sorted myself with an apartment and am now im organising all of my utilities.

The most important thing that I need to sort is my broadband connection and I have just discovered that I cannot get a fiber optic connection in my area, Devon, which means no Virgin (who usually provide the fastest connection speeds, and whom I have always delt with in the past with no problems)

The problem im faced with now is that I only have Sky satelite and a BT phoneline which means I will have to have ADSL. Im completely out of the loop with ADSL and have not heard great things about it in the past. (i.e. bad signal=slow connection and not always getting the speed you pay for, etc)

Im wondering what is the cheapest, and fastest broadband connection I can get with the BT line is and what is best way to go about it?

Right now im not looking forward to the prospect of paying £122 for BT to "activate" my landline (daylight robbery imo) and im not sure how to go about finding a good ADSL broadband provider through the BT line.

Also, how does it work? Do you pay BT to 'activate' the phoneline and pay them line rental whilst paying another provider for the ADSL? Im completely at a loss with this malarky as i've always enjoyed the ease of getting everything through one provider (Virgin).

My overall main concern is speed and reliability atm as I will be using it a lot for work and im wondering if there is some way to determine what the quality of signal is like in my area? (also the building i moved into is less than a year old if this makes a difference)

I've read through Martins guide on this but would still appeciate any extra advice you can provide!

Thanks in advance,
Rob

BT_company_representative

Hi Rob, welcome back to the UK. If you do decide to go for ADSL Broadband and activate your line with BT, this does mean that you will have to pay a monthly rental to BT for the telephone service, and also a monthly charge to your chosen Broadband provider.

As you do not have an active telephone line at your address, you can check your address on the BT Wholesale Broadband checker and this will give you an indication of what speed you can expect. Because you line is not active this is not 100% accurate, but will be a good indication of what sort speed you can expect, no matter which Broadband provider decide to go with. I have included a link blow to the Broadband checker.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25795

I hope this helps,

David

BT Support,

456789

you can have the phone line and adsl seperate

what does this say? http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

will you be subscribing to sky?
who is your mobile phone with?

Ypaymore

brisck1 wrote: »

Right now im not looking forward to the prospect of paying £122 for BT to "activate" my landline (daylight robbery imo)

Has their been BT service their before or are you the first to use it? If their has been service can you get a tone if you plug in phone.

brisck1

BT_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Rob, welcome back to the UK. If you do decide to go for ADSL Broadband and activate your line with BT, this does mean that you will have to pay a monthly rental to BT for the telephone service, and also a monthly charge to your chosen Broadband provider.

As you do not have an active telephone line at your address, you can check your address on the BT Wholesale Broadband checker and this will give you an indication of what speed you can expect. Because you line is not active this is not 100% accurate, but will be a good indication of what sort speed you can expect, no matter which Broadband provider decide to go with. I have included a link blow to the Broadband checker.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25795

I hope this helps,

David

BT Support,

Thanks for clarifying things a bit David, I checked up on the site and it seems im only able to get 6mb broadband on my postcode (TQ12 1FT) which is a bit slow for my needs but I guess if there's no other options I'll have to take it. Im guessing that this means that if I were to get ADSL through via a third-party that advertises 20mb through a BT line I'd still only get 6mb due to the connection strength?
If it werent for that huge connection fee i wouldnt be so cautious, but because of this I want to explore all options before handing over hundreds of ££s to someone to simply press an 'actvate' button

456789 wrote: »

you can have the phone line and adsl seperate

what does this say? http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

will you be subscribing to sky?
who is your mobile phone with?

Thanks, here is what I get when I enter my postcode into that site: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWNABB
Not sure what info is relevant, what did you mean by having seperate phoneline and ADSL? As for sky im not sure if i should get it yet as I prefer streaming HD media (legitimatally of course) via netflix and bbc iplayer etc but if my connection is crap then i guess that's out of the question

Ypaymore wrote: »

Has their been BT service their before or are you the first to use it? If their has been service can you get a tone if you plug in phone.

Yes supposedly the previous tenants had a BT landline (put in when the apartment was built) and I was told it was already activated and ready to go. However, I went around to the apartment earlier today and plugged an old phone in which i borrowed from a freind, and it was dead (could be a dodgy phone so might try again tomorrow). Is there any way of determining who was the previous phone provider without hunting down the previous tenants?

Again thanks for your help and any further advice you can give me!

brisck1

Hate to be a bumper, but can anyone advise me?

djohn2002uk

This is a no brainer. O2 are set up in your exchange so go to their site and check your expected speed with them. My guess is that if BT advise 6Megs then you have a good chance of getting better with O2. My reasoning is that 6Megs means you are either reasonably close to the exchange or have a decent quality line or both and O2 have their own equipment installed in your exchange (hence the LLU). On top of that, O2 are cheap and have great customer support