BT line on caravan site

Malcste

I have been trying to get a phone line put into my static caravan on a large site but BT are wanting £1100 to put one in. There was a BT armoured cable sticking out of the ground near my caravan, so I asked the site if I could dig it in and connect it to my pitch. They said yes as long as I put it down at least a foot and made the ground good again, which I did. I connected the internal wiring and had a dial tone.
I then rang BT who said they would have to send out a surveyor. He came and plugged into my phone point and took the number which used to be allocated to it and said he would get back to me. About an hour later he rang back and told me the line belonged to a caravan pitch next to mine and I would have to take it out immediately. There is no caravan on the other pitch and very few people on here even want a phone line. He said that it could be changed physically to become my phone line but they wouldn`t do it. Is there anything I can do?

macman

Probably they're taking a dim view because you had no authority to work on the cable, that is BT's property and not the customer's.
The site didn't have the authority either to let you do it if it was BT's cable.

Mark_In_Hampshire

In theory if the line is working now then you ought to be able to just order a new line. At survey they would find that there is indeed a serviceable line already at your property which nobody is renting and therefore could connect you. However maybe that is what the £1100 charge is for: to send an engineer to connect it to your caravan perhaps by splitting the existing line in two to form two lines (which would preclude you from having ADSL on it, if that's what you were after) or putting in a new line.

The presumption in the above is "that nobody else is renting". By the sound of their response, someone else is renting it even though it isn't plugged into anything, or at least it wasn't plugged in at the time. Did the people using it leave suddenly without closing their account, and technically that line is indeed still leased to (as macman says, not owned by) the neighbour?

In any event, you'll need to order a line from a provider, so if no joy with BT try going somewhere else and placing an order and see what they say.