Old house, elderly technophobic resident. FTTP options. Help!

GoneWestWoman

I have moved in with my 86 year old mother.  She currently has a NOW broadband and inclusive landline package at £35 per month.  It isn’t fibre but that has been put into the street approx 2 years ago.  The house is old and hasn’t been rewired for 60 years but has had various upgrades over the past 30 years (being addressed soon).  The broadband does not reach “my” part of the house (it’s not that big!) because of thick walls and the router being in the lounge which is an extension to the original building from 40 years ago.  I am SO confused by packages online and need advice please.  She insists on a landline and keeping her existing number for elderly relatives to contact her.  I was with Vodafone at my address and tried transferring it to Full Fibre etc at this address in my name (she has no issue with the account being in my name) BUT when it came to it Vodafone’s records have her address in a slightly different location (a side road opposite her property) and stated that they could not supply us as it’s the wrong address!  I’ve searched online repeatedly and can only find BT at £60+ per month.  We don’t stream, play online games, work from home etc.  What do I do now?  I understand the VOiP part, have no problem with it but her main telephone port is in a different room and the Wi-Fi would not reach her smart tv (nor mine - I currently only have a hardwired tv ariel available)  I have Netflix, Apple TV etc that are all unusable.  ANY help gratefully received!

Neil49

We use a mesh network to extend wifi coverage around the house and it is very effective. There will be plenty of deals with Black Friday coming up.

Consider a 3 device setup for decent coverage. Basically, the more you pay the faster the connection (obviously limited by what comes into the house) 

flaneurs_lobster

If you are adamant about Vodafone taking over the service then you should pursue the address issue with them to get it corrected.

Good luck, their CS is not the finest.

The broadband suppliers (and many others) use a database to lookup & verify addresses, usually the one supplied by Royal Mail, if there's an error there it might give problems with other suppliers too. Does a postcode lookup on the RM site give an OK response?

The connectivity issue might not be too hard to fix, if you had FTTP at your previous property you'll be aware that Openreach (probably) will need to run fibre to the property, how it gets there (conduit or overhead from pole) might dictate where the fibre terminates in the house and where the ONT/router could be placed. 

Various solutions are available to make internet access available from the router onward to the rest of the property.

GoneWestWoman

As an update to the original post, I got a local, independent Comms company in and they quoted me £500 to upgrade the old telephone sockets etc NOT including the power sockets (being sorted by builder early 2026).

flaneurs_lobster

GoneWestWoman said:

As an update to the original post, I got a local, independent Comms company in and they quoted me £500 to upgrade the old telephone sockets etc NOT including the power sockets (being sorted by builder early 2026).

That sounds outrageous, unless you've moved to a six-bed mansion with three stories and a couple of wings, stables, outhouses and servants quarters that all need connecting up.

Ask the person doing the electrics rewire for a quote for an ethernet network at the same time for the main rooms in the house.

iniltous

There isn’t a single location where BT are the only choice ,there are multiple providers that use Openreach , what’s more , if moving from Now to BT for a run of the mill broadband and phone package the price would be in the sub £40 area (around £25 for broadband, Fibre 2 80Mb , obviously depends on what your local distance from the cab is wether Essential, F1 or F2 is appropriate ) and £12 to £18 for an Unlimited Calls package
if PAYG calls are  more appropriate , because it’s to  keep the availability of incoming calls is what’s needed rather than making many outgoing calls , then it’s around £3 for PAYG , so a sub £30 price for broadband , I’ve no idea where you get your prices from, it’s certainly not £60+.

What you seem to be suffering from is incorrect addressing information, that is your current provider issue to solve if it’s stopping you from moving to other providers using Openreach , you call Now and ask them to get the address records corrected (matched ) to whatever the Royal Mail have recorded on your behalf, they contact Openreach to do this on your behalf, if they won’t , that’s between you and them , you can’t do this directly with Openreach because you are not an Openreach customer, you are a Now customer, and Now are an Openreach customer