Internet Cable Issues

trencherpilot

Hi, in need of some pointers on how to get BT to replace nearly 40 year old copper cables, as that's the phone/ internet service we have from the Broadband cabinet to our house roughly 500m away through the estate. Everytime it rains or snows etc etc, we lose both phones and internet. The engineers from BT have said to me and our neighbours that they're knackered and need replacing but BT won't pay for it to be done. Is there a way we can force BT to replace badly corroded copper junk to improve our service.

Buzby

If the cable mystically broke, they replace it as 'life expired' but not if you purposely attacked it - so be careful!

trencherpilot

Problem is it's under tarmac all the way, and supplies all the houses along the way, so that's not an option, but I would guess that some of the neighbours would happily damage it if they thought it'd be replaced. It's past it's life now, this estate was built in the late 70's and the cables haven't ever been replaced!

[Deleted User]

It's definitely BT/Open Reach's responsibility, perhaps if you can get as many of your neighbours to complain as possible the number of complaints may jog someone into action.

trencherpilot

Openreach don't want to know! They're making profits off ancient cables that they won't replace. As long as they can blag it and keep them there, the more they make. 5 years ago the engineer told me they wanted replacing.

Marvqn1

Is Virgin Media fibre available in your area?

onomatopoeia99

trencherpilot wrote: »

Hi, in need of some pointers on how to get BT to replace nearly 40 year old copper cables, as that's the phone/ internet service we have from the Broadband cabinet to our house roughly 500m away through the estate. Everytime it rains or snows etc etc, we lose both phones and internet. The engineers from BT have said to me and our neighbours that they're knackered and need replacing but BT won't pay for it to be done. Is there a way we can force BT to replace badly corroded copper junk to improve our service.

You have a fault with your broadband and voice service, so it is the responsibility of your ISP and / or phone service provider to sort out. Unless you use BT retail for your phone or BT internet for your ISP (I note you did not state which provider you are with) then you should not be dealing with BT at all, unless you get an "engineer" visit from Openreach arranged by your supplier.

So, what should happen is you report the fault to the ISP or phone service provider, they raise it with BT Wholesale, who in turn send it to openreach to fix it. It doesn't work like in difficult cases that because ISPs are rarely persistent enough - it shouldn't be that hard, but BTW are, basically, hopeless, and the mass market ISPs that most on here use don't have the will or dedication to customer service to carry through to get difficult problems fix - their approach is often to let people leave contracts without penalty so it becomes someone else's problem .

Have a read of this : http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/08/sin-349-problem-trying-get-openreach-fix-broadband-faults.html

which references this http://www.revk.uk/2016/08/hard-sell-from-bt.html (this is the blog run by the director of the ISP I use)

It's about my phone line (I comment near the bottom), which would drop the broadband connection in the rain, which it was worked out was due to a fault on the dropwire. It went on for ages, a dozen engineer visists, but did get fixed, in the end A&A (the ISP) threatened BT Wholesale with legal action for not supplying the service they were paying for. BTW then got off their collective !!!!!! to get Openreach to sort it (OR sent a crew with a hoist that were actually prepared to get it above my garage so they could replace the dropwire, the previous ones that came out wouldn't go near it and claimed it was inaccessible, I needed a new pole etc - the impression I was left with was that OR management know which of their crews will actually get a difficult job done and BTW eventually told them to send someone that would fix it to avoid a fight in the courts). I doubt any of the mainstream ISPs would persist through over a dozen engineer visits or bother to get lawyers involved, or even that you could get a problem escalated to someone able to authorise that.

So I would suggest going with a small ISP that focuses on service rather than price. How much is it worth to you to have a reliable service?