Apparently Sky Disconnected My BT Line?

lexiflowers

Hello, I hope I've posted this in the right part of the forum.

I am no longer locked in to my Sky contract (which was for TV, landline, and broadband), and wish to leave Sky altogether and switch to a cheaper provider for landline and broadband.

Through trying to organise this process I have discovered that although I had an active BT line before I signed up for Sky, I now do not. Why on Earth is this? Maybe there's some technology I don't understand, but Sky insist they've done no wrong in disconnecting my BT line - how does this work? I'm now in a position where in order to leave Sky I have to pay to have my phone line reconnected.

I'm guessing I'm just going to have to suck it up, grumble angrily to myself, and try to somehow scrape the money together to pay the connection fee, but I thought I'd check here first in case there's something else I can do (other than lock myself into an 18 month contract with BT in order to get free reconnection). It doesn't seem right somehow. I wasn't ever made aware that my BT line would be lost.

Thank you for your help,

Lexi

Heinz

You would only have retained your BT line if you continued paying line rental to BT. I assume you did not and, therefore, Sky will have transferred your line onto their own network.

Although it should not be the case, you will normally have to go back to BT (minimum contract 12 months) to change to any other provider.

Contact BT, they will normally agree to take you back without charge.

Ypaymore

BT will normally connect your landline free (12 month contract) under the return to doner scheme,and you can choose a isp of your liking.

Who were you thinking of switching to ?

lexiflowers

Orange. "Broadband & Anytime Calls" (Apparently I'm not allowed to post a proper link, so: http:// shop.orange. co.uk /broadband /compare-all )

It'll only be £21.50 a month to us (including line rental and everything) thanks to my husband's rarely used PAYG Orange phone, which as far as I can see is the best value deal that fits our requirements.

Before we went with Sky we had Post Office Home Phone & Broadband, and we paid line rental to them, but they did indeed pay it on to BT. I understand the difference now. If I'm paying Orange line rental I assume they'll be paying it to BT too, if they require an active BT line to begin with?

lexiflowers

Hang on though, shouldn't either Sky or BT have warned me that I would no longer have a BT line? *puzzled*

peachyprice

lexiflowers wrote: »

I am no longer locked in to my Sky contract (which was for TV, landline, and broadband), and wish to leave Sky altogether and switch to a cheaper provider for landline and broadband.

Through trying to organise this process I have discovered that although I had an active BT line before I signed up for Sky, I now do not. Why on Earth is this?

Because you had your landline with them. Assuming you weren't just paying sky for the calls package and BT for the line rental?

Why/how would they leave the BT line active if you had a sky landline? You can't have two companies running your land line for you.

peachyprice

lexiflowers wrote: »

Hang on though, shouldn't either Sky or BT have warned me that I would no longer have a BT line? *puzzled*

I think they would have assumed that you would understand that if you were taking out a contract for Sky to provide your landline the BT contract would have to end.

lexiflowers

Okay, the reason it confused me is because I was previously paying The Post Office line rental and they were providing my landline. Yet my BT line remained active (because The Post Office pay BT on your behalf, even though you pay The Post Office less for line rental than you pay BT directly). I assumed it would be the same deal with Sky. I get that I've made a mistake by making an assumption but I don't think it was a particularly stupid one under the circumstances. All I'm saying is shouldn't Sky have to make it clearer, or mention it at some point? But I guess not.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Sky can offer good deals, especially on broadband. That's because rather than using BT as a middleman and simply reselling their stuff, they install their own equipment in the exchange. This makes it cheaper for them and better for you both in price and on the broadband side, better in terms of the performance, at least, more able to govern and control the network.

As a consequence when you move to them (or indeed any other provider which does this - called "full LLU") then BT Openreach charge the provider a fee to physically move some wires from one bit of kit to another.

If you decide to change provider later on, BT Openreach charge again to move the wires again.

For some curious reason, many ISPs and providers tell the customer they "have to go back to BT" because you can't for example have a Plusnet broadband connection on a Sky line or a Talk Talk one rather than arrange the above with Openreach. The provider would rather wash their hands of it and have you do the work sorting it out.

So you can technically migrate anywhere to anyone. However what you might find is that all the cheap providers tell you it can't be done.

It's a complete mess. OFCOM were looking at this, so expect an announcement in about five years when enough people have been pushed into 18 month BT contracts to "avoid charges". Nice work if you can get it.

I think some of the surprise comes with people imagining that phones work like they used to - generally free to connect up, but that's rarely true any more.