Just moved house

mroing

I've just recently moved house (as I do every half a year at the moment it seems!) this past weekend and I've looked into getting a phoneline set up. A housemate gave BT OpenReach a call (they're providing FTTH next month and it won't be unbundled, so in the interest of avoiding cancellation fees they're the cheapest option by far) and they said that they wouldn't be able to set us up until late January at the latest!!

The house has a dial tone, and we've called up the operator and got the number for it, but apparently since it's both inactive and not in our name(s), they have to treat it as installing a new line. They've said late January because they're closed over the christmas period, but to me this still seems ridiculous?

Is there anything I can do to give them a boot up the bum and get it done quicker? I need reliable internet access to manage my servers, having a whole two months where I'm dependent on a phone for access to them is far from ideal.

penrhyn

You housemate must have magical powers as BT Openreach do not deal with the general public.

macman

Unless you are looking for a business line to run your servers on, 4-6 weeks for a residential lne install at this time of year is perfectly normal. Even OR engineers like a few days off at Christmas.

mroing

Heh, magical powers. Just going by what he said to me, must have been their general public counterpart.

macman

That's BT Retail, a completely separate company. BT OR are not allowed to prioritise BTR over any other supplier.

penrhyn

You sure you are getting FTTH? Not FTTC.

mroing

Well at the moment we're just trying to order ADSL since the FTTH isn't available yet, but yes we've confirmed the infrastructure. New build, the entire development has the hardware set up already, the exchange just needs setting up.

I've opted for a wireless internet dongle in the meantime. Still seems weird that they'd be unable to work over the entirety of December and January for a week's worth of holidays, but eh, I'll have to deal.