Tenant rights landline Connection

ChumpusRex

princeofpounds wrote: »

This is another example of shoddy product quality control in the rental sector. It's not unreasonable to assume that sockets mean a connection; people shouldn't have to cart landline phones around to perform socket tests. You wouldn't get away with selling a bottle of Hermes perfume with coloured water inside it, and morally, if not legally, that's what this amounts to.

Nothing to do with the rental sector. Had this been a house purchase, the same issue would have existed.

It is the responsibility of the incoming occupier to confirm that the necessary utilities can be supplied to the property, unless the lease specifically states that the LL will be providing utilities, or ensuring that they can be provided.

In the rental sector, it would usually be the case that the property is immediately habitable (i.e. electricity and gas are provided) but in exceptional cases this might not be so.

Alex121 wrote:

Is £15,000 a typo?? My house had no phone sockets or phone line and BT quoted £130 to install a brand new line. Just checked their website and it's still that price (potentially cheaper depending on phone package).

If the installation of a new line just means running 50 yards of cable from your house to a nearby pole, or through existing cable ducts to a phone cabinet just down the road - then this can often be done for a low installation cost. In general, most installations cost less than £130, so there is a degree of subsidy for more difficult connections (up to a cost price of about £300-500).

However, £15k could be right if the property is in a rural area and there are no spare wires on the poles (or underground pipes) between the exchange and the house. If there are no spare wires, then someone ordering a new line would be expected to pay for new wires to be installed. If the wires required are 5 miles long - that's a lot of labour time for installation, especially if there are no telephone poles and roads have to be dug up to bury new wires (There is no charge for the wires themselves, because they will be BT's property; but the labour is chargeable).

BT do allow builders and self-build property developers to install the telephone wiring themselves (or find a suitable installer) in certain circumstances. BT will need to approve the specifications and the work must be done to BT's standards. BT will also need to do the final connection - but if you can get in touch with the appropriate person (very difficult), then you may be able to negotiate such a scheme.

nomoneytoday

Have you asked the neighbour if they will share their broadband and go 50/50?

davidmcn

buglawton wrote: »

Pity that in the UK, Internet is not a human right as it is in Finland. That would have forced the property owner to commission a line.

Is that actually what happens in Finland? Householders may have the right to be connected, but that doesn't mean someone else is going to pay for it.

jjlandlord

davidmcn wrote: »

Is that actually what happens in Finland? Householders may have the right to be connected, but that doesn't mean someone else is going to pay for it.

Well, apparently in Finland when they passed that law 96% of the population had internet access and only 4000 homes did not.

Because it is a legal right it is likely that "someone else" paid for connecting the 4000 remaining houses by way of subsidy or otherwise.

The thing is that Finland has invested a lot in internet access infrastructure (96% of population at the time in a country like Finland, though large parts must be completely empty), including in wireless access for remote areas.

Their current law, if I understand correctly, is that everyone must have access to 100Mbps broadband by the end of this year (2015).

Here we are discussing about Cornwall, which is more populated, with a milder climate, and where several transatlantic fibre cables actually end...
Clearly the conclusion is that we just don't care. By 'we' I mean the government: There is no commitment to invest and make things happen.

stuartalexmc

Under the Universal Service Order, BT are required to foot the first £3,400 of any landline installation.

Cable costs are about £30 per meter so a figure of £15k for 600 meters is about right. BT Openreach set Excess Construction charges published on their website.

thehare

!!!!!! wrote: »

How do you know that the owner or anybody was aware that there were no spare pairs to add a further telephone line. If the owner only lived there 3 months with the intention of renting it out then he would have been stupid if he signed up for a phone service as there is normally a 12 month contract.

You are clutching at straws there

The owner moved 3 months ago. They lived in property18 years. Neighbour 10 years.

thehare

15grand plus vat is to lay 600m of cable, it was not a typo

System

jjlandlord wrote: »

Well, apparently in Finland when they passed that law 96% of the population had internet access and only 4000 homes did not.

Because it is a legal right it is likely that "someone else" paid for connecting the 4000 remaining houses by way of subsidy or otherwise.

The thing is that Finland has invested a lot in internet access infrastructure (96% of population at the time in a country like Finland, though large parts must be completely empty), including in wireless access for remote areas.

Their current law, if I understand correctly, is that everyone must have access to 100Mbps broadband by the end of this year (2015).

Here we are discussing about Cornwall, which is more populated, with a milder climate, and where several transatlantic fibre cables actually end...
Clearly the conclusion is that we just don't care. By 'we' I mean the government: There is no commitment to invest and make things happen.

So they passed the law AFTER ensuring the vast majority of the population were connected.

Lets look at the scale. According to the Finnish there are 2.5M households in Finland, according to the ONS there are nearly 26M in the UK. A little bit different. Imagine the cost of attempting to achieve what Finland is proposing. There are probably more households still without better than 2M connections in the UK than there are households in Finland

jjlandlord

!!!!!! wrote: »

Lets look at the scale. According to the Finnish there are 2.5M households in Finland, according to the ONS there are nearly 26M in the UK. A little bit different. Imagine the cost of attempting to achieve what Finland is proposing. There are probably more households still without better than 2M connections in the UK than there are households in Finland

No, it's not different because, as for many things, this is a ratio game.

Yes, there are only 2.5M households in Finland (I take your word), but that also means that there are only 5.5M people to pay for it.
Yes, there are 26M households in the UK, but that also means that there are 64M people to pay for it.

The cost per capita and relative to the overall wealth is likely be the same, or perhaps less as overall the country is more densely populated than Finland.
But that would require a bit of will and a bit of thinking like perhaps using wireless technologies instead of claiming that linking a single isolated house requires a long length of fibre at an outrageous cost.

We have much, much more children than Finland has, but we still manage to send them all to school, don't we?

System

Where is the money going to be generated from to achieve this?

I suppose the cost can be worked out from the cost to the government of the BDUK initiative to provide fibre to areas that were not economically feasible for BT and then scaling it up.

However I would think that to get a solid 100M to all households would mean installing FTTP to all households rather than FTTC. The cost of FTTP install and the monthly rental is a level that the majority of households couldn't and wouldn't countenance.

Personally I don't believe that anybody, be it government, private or a mix would be prepared to finance such an expensive idea. The figures that I can find on the net looks at somewhere in the region of £30bn for FTTP to all homes. How long would this take?