Which provider offers the quickest BB set up?

ultimax

Hi!

Much has been said about broadband monthly costs, access speeds and customer service. But I haven't seen much discussion on how long it takes to actually get that connection in the first place.

I've just relocated to London, moved into a new flat with a phone socket and all, but no working line or broadband. Previous tenants obviously cancelled their account.

Being new to the country, I searched for a provider based on price, assuming set up times would be all bog standard. I was shocked to find out that may not be the case, as all providers rely on BT engineers to connect the lines (?) With Sky, it'll take 2.5 weeks to first set up the line, and another 2 weeks to set up broadband.

Is this normal for the UK? Or can any other provider set the broadband connection up quicker?

Would going with the previous tenant's provider speed the process up? Unfortunately, the letting agency does not know which provider they used. My neighbours all have networks which all start with "Thomson" (ie. ThomsonXXXXX). Is that BT?

Getting the home broadband connection set up has proven to be really costly as I'm using a mobile dongle in the interim, which is not cheap! I'm hoping to hasten the process as much as possible.

Thanks!

spike7451

All work in BT exchanges is done by BT Openreach Engineers on behalf of the ISP's,If the's no working phoneline in the flat,then about a month as you stated to set it up from scratch would be about right.Unless you have an active phone number which appears on BT's database,you can't even order broadband.
You might get a connection quicker if you went with VM Cable,NOT VM National.