A warning for the yearly broadband switch

cleverdicky

Hi, I'd like to share an issue I have had that could affect many.

Not able to work for few months, I've had to be careful with the pennies. So when my yearly subscribtion with skybroadband (now tv) ended they doubled the price as is normal practise these days.

I then switched to EE who insisted I had fibre. Two visits from bt & openreach who said they couldnt do it. EE cancelled the order. Requested to return box and offered £100 discount ??

Tried vodafone, same fiasco. Order cancelled. This is now two months later.
Tried plusnet or talktalk, cant remember which, to continue just using adsl and was told I would get a new telephone number ???
The number I had for twenty plus years, that all my family friends, friend from uni years ago, and overseas who knew my number will now not be able to ring my home phone number. As it was now in the ether and could not be re-used by me, but will be re-used by someone at somepoint. So I rang ofcom, you can imagine how that went, that this was indeed the case who told me my number was originally allocated to Virgin (NTL back in the day).

After hours of drill & rap music I eventually got to speak to someone at virgin who sounded like the annoying Omaze woman (my sympathys to anyone still using them) , who could not reinstate my number but would try and reserve it, but ONLY after I signed up to their FIBRE and phone package £39 pm. Which I refused as there was no point.
And I've had to do all this from my mobile.

The reason for all this down to open reach. Because there is a fibre manhole in the street about 30 meters from me, they designate it as fibre available. So all the providers / isp's will ONLY supply fibre. Due to the groundworks needed, land owners permissions needed and so on, bt say it's not feasible to get fibre into my building. Aside from the phone cable, I still have the original NTL coax which virgin say they dont use anymore.

Not asking for help, but just a warning for people. Although I don't know what the solution is for anyone. I think we will be living in caves before not to long.

Grumpy_chap

Why do you say there is no point in the Virgin fibre offering?
Virgin have their own network, unlike all the other providers who share the same Openreach network.

cleverdicky said:

Hi, I'd like to share an issue I have had that could affect many.

Not able to work for few months, I've had to be careful with the pennies. So when my yearly subscribtion with skybroadband (now tv) ended they doubled the price as is normal practise these days.

I then switched to EE who insisted I had fibre. Two visits from bt & openreach who said they couldnt do it. EE cancelled the order. Requested to return box and offered £100 discount ??

Tried vodafone, same fiasco. Order cancelled. This is now two months later.
Tried plusnet or talktalk, cant remember which, to continue just using adsl and was told I would get a new telephone number ???
The number I had for twenty plus years, that all my family friends, friend from uni years ago, and overseas who knew my number will now not be able to ring my home phone number. As it was now in the ether and could not be re-used by me, but will be re-used by someone at somepoint. So I rang ofcom, you can imagine how that went, that this was indeed the case who told me my number was originally allocated to Virgin (NTL back in the day).

After hours of drill & rap music I eventually got to speak to someone at virgin who sounded like the annoying Omaze woman (my sympathys to anyone still using them) , who could not reinstate my number but would try and reserve it, but ONLY after I signed up to their FIBRE and phone package £39 pm. Which I refused as there was no point.
And I've had to do all this from my mobile.

The reason for all this down to open reach. Because there is a fibre manhole in the street about 30 meters from me, they designate it as fibre available. So all the providers / isp's will ONLY supply fibre. Due to the groundworks needed, land owners permissions needed and so on, bt say it's not feasible to get fibre into my building. Aside from the phone cable, I still have the original NTL coax which virgin say they dont use anymore.

Not asking for help, but just a warning for people. Although I don't know what the solution is for anyone. I think we will be living in caves before not to long.

Neil_Jones

We're all going to live in caves because you lost your number?  Okay...

Sounds like EE offered you FTTP which is the priority if you're in an priority exchange area.

There is no phone number with FTTP as standard (though some providers do offer digital voice, but I believe that's not an option with EE)

You could have migrated the number to I believe a VoIP provider (somebody else will be along I'm sure as I'm not well up on this) which would have preserved it.

Sounds like what's happened here is you've contacted Now, asked them to terminate it (this was the first mistake) and then went to EE, who then couldn't supply it.  In the meantime Now did what you asked (terminated your account) and that's why you lost your number.

There's no point ringing Ofcom as they won't be interested as they don't investigate individual complaints.

As for Virgin - as above, they have their own network which is independent of anybody else.

cleverdicky

Yes hindsight is wonderful.

Virgin do  have their own network but it revolves around the same issue.

I do NOT have fibre in to the premises.

Because openreach have fibre to a manhole NOT my premises it cannot be connected. Yes maybe one day but not now. 
As virgin said they wont use their own coax I have the same issue. Plus its expensive.

And no ' my mistake ' was switching NOT cancelling. It was ee who cancelled when they couldnt complete.

QrizB

cleverdicky said:

As virgin said they wont use their own coax I have the same issue.

Does anyone else in your building have Virgin fibre?

Or are you just assuming that Virgin will have all the same problems getting into your building that Openreach do?

400ixl

There is most likely a do not sell order on your exchange for FTTC as it has moved to FTTP which will be why you cannot switch provider on an existing FTTC connection.

FTTP means one fibre cable all the way from the exchange to your property. It doesn't stop at a manhole and get reconnected from there to your property, so that is not the issue.

It sounds like the issue is permission to cross land between that conduit and the property to lay the fibre cable. If it is the issue then its likely Virgin will have the same issue.

How does your current copper cable come into your property, via a conduit or via a pole? Both methods can be used, but it may be there isn't space on the pole for the cable and therefore they want to put in a new conduit.

Really need more detail on what the actual issue is, is it Openreach can't get permission (are you leasehold?)

JReacher1

Instead of switching to EE you should have just phoned now and told them you were leaving. They would have reduced the cost back to your previous price. 

iniltous

Your interpretation of the ‘problems’ isn’t totally accurate, if you happen to be in an area where Openreach FTTP penetration is such ( 75% of addresses having access to it ) then Openreach can ( quite correctly ) stop selling copper pair based products like FTTC and ADSL , but that doesn’t mean everyone on copper has to move off it , but any new work or migration between ISP ( if using OR ) have to use FTTP now it’s available….if you stayed with Now , then although possibly on a poor deal , it would have continued as a copper based service.
The fact you presumably at some point ported a ‘cable’ number to  an ISP using Openreach is not necessarily relevant, if by chopping and changing providers has lost the number and it’s on its way back to the number range holder ( Virgin ) then eventually they should be able to reissue it to you , but obviously that would need you to have a redundant VM connection at the address .
Even in areas where OR have a stop sell on copper , if the FTTP network cannot be introduced into a building for whatever reason ( landlord refuses, or construction costs excessive ) the stop sell can be removed for that address to get the copper line back into service, but the ISP you use has to be willing to do the appropriate interaction with OR 

cleverdicky

Thank you for comments. Situation remains the same - sadly.
Im considering getting a 3 or 4g package although toob are promising their own fibre shortly.

Regarding comments, its rather unfair to assume this or that. I explained what and how it happened. The fibre from bt for example IS available only to the manhole. The fact they couldnt (be bothered ) to connect the manhole to premises is why im in this predicament. Neighbors are still using landline copper broadband except for one, who is on virgin and presumes he still has coax as its never been updated.