BT Infinity in a new house
Discussion
We live in a new housing development. The older houses across the street are connected to the same cabinet which has a status of "fibre enabled", and those houses have Infinity.
BT website says they have "no plans to bring fibre to our area". I tried speaking with customer service to ask about it - but the Indian call centre staff barely understood what I was asking and just repeated the same thing over and over: "We don't have a plan for your area yet".
Is this standard for new housing developments? What are our chances of getting Infinity any time soon?
BT website says they have "no plans to bring fibre to our area". I tried speaking with customer service to ask about it - but the Indian call centre staff barely understood what I was asking and just repeated the same thing over and over: "We don't have a plan for your area yet".
Is this standard for new housing developments? What are our chances of getting Infinity any time soon?
Firstly - don't use BT if you can. Pain will come your way in some shape or form. Get BT to sort the lines out and buy from another provider that piggybacks on the BT network - as most will offer better customer service. If something goes wrong - any provider has to deal with the Dante's inferno that is Openreach anyway.
Secondly - i lived in a new development and when i continually spoke to (UK) customer services i finally got an honest answer - BT will gauge to see how much demand there might be from new residents before deciding to prioritise that area/hub/exchange for faster connection speeds.
It's a bit chicken and egg, if they provided Fibre to everyone at the outset , maybe more people would buy it anyway. But that's not how they think or work.
Bad news for you though - it took BT 4 years after development started being inhabited to get from ADSL (8mb but gave me 2mb most of the time) to Fibre (up to 22mb realistically settled on 15/16mb) in my last house, and even then there was only 32 connections in the cabinet in total. Our infrastructure is so out of date and BT is not really investing in it where it would make a difference to the customer. I know their openreach teams are running at full stretch and cannot keep up with the local or network upgrade work (because they tell you about the overtime when they visit after you have waited 6 weeks to get installed in a new house).
Hopefully your area is different - but all you can do is get your new neighbours to ask BT regularly for upgraded service and hope they listen.
I seriously made a buying decision of current house based on connectivity - we are 100m from the cabinet so are now on the 75-20 fibre service and it works well, but we pay that to a different provider (utility warehouse as it happens). Partner and i both work from home so a good connection is vital to ensure the kids/media/TV/gaming habits do not impact on work etc
I'll never directly give BT another penny as long as i live. Same goes for Vodafone. Epically bad customer service from both. If BT paid me to have broadband for a year - i'd still say no because it would result in grief and stress so it's best to avoid. It's not just call centre issues - i've been lied to by many different parts of the BT organisation. They have little or no internal accountability to customers in my experience. /MiniRantOver
Secondly - i lived in a new development and when i continually spoke to (UK) customer services i finally got an honest answer - BT will gauge to see how much demand there might be from new residents before deciding to prioritise that area/hub/exchange for faster connection speeds.
It's a bit chicken and egg, if they provided Fibre to everyone at the outset , maybe more people would buy it anyway. But that's not how they think or work.
Bad news for you though - it took BT 4 years after development started being inhabited to get from ADSL (8mb but gave me 2mb most of the time) to Fibre (up to 22mb realistically settled on 15/16mb) in my last house, and even then there was only 32 connections in the cabinet in total. Our infrastructure is so out of date and BT is not really investing in it where it would make a difference to the customer. I know their openreach teams are running at full stretch and cannot keep up with the local or network upgrade work (because they tell you about the overtime when they visit after you have waited 6 weeks to get installed in a new house).
Hopefully your area is different - but all you can do is get your new neighbours to ask BT regularly for upgraded service and hope they listen.
I seriously made a buying decision of current house based on connectivity - we are 100m from the cabinet so are now on the 75-20 fibre service and it works well, but we pay that to a different provider (utility warehouse as it happens). Partner and i both work from home so a good connection is vital to ensure the kids/media/TV/gaming habits do not impact on work etc
I'll never directly give BT another penny as long as i live. Same goes for Vodafone. Epically bad customer service from both. If BT paid me to have broadband for a year - i'd still say no because it would result in grief and stress so it's best to avoid. It's not just call centre issues - i've been lied to by many different parts of the BT organisation. They have little or no internal accountability to customers in my experience. /MiniRantOver
I had the same issue at our house that we moved into about a year ago. However, it's not BT that's the problem, it's Openeeach. And they don't like talking to the public!
It took many emails before I got an answer from them, even then they said they weren't going to provide fibre, 2 days after that email, a fibre option appeared on the BT website!
It took many emails before I got an answer from them, even then they said they weren't going to provide fibre, 2 days after that email, a fibre option appeared on the BT website!
Just moved into a new estate, similar situation in that the local cabinet was Fibre enabled but we were constantly told we couldn't order it. It's simply that the cabinet's Fibre connections are all used up, and BT won't expand with new cards (or new cabinet if no physical space for extra cards).
All you can do is keep checking on the Openreach site details for your local cabinet to see when availability opens up (which it can when people cancel, move away etc). We checked daily, and after about 3 weeks a slot opened up, which we ordered up straight away.
If you use this link and enter your number it shows the details for the cabinet, along with the FTTC capacity.
https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.htm...
As the other poster mentions though BT aren't great - our service is currently down waiting on Openreach fixing a problem at the cabinet (occurred on Friday). The service status was updated at 5:30 this morning to say the problem was fixed at 1pm today, which it still isn't (!).
All you can do is keep checking on the Openreach site details for your local cabinet to see when availability opens up (which it can when people cancel, move away etc). We checked daily, and after about 3 weeks a slot opened up, which we ordered up straight away.
If you use this link and enter your number it shows the details for the cabinet, along with the FTTC capacity.
https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.htm...
As the other poster mentions though BT aren't great - our service is currently down waiting on Openreach fixing a problem at the cabinet (occurred on Friday). The service status was updated at 5:30 this morning to say the problem was fixed at 1pm today, which it still isn't (!).
jonnyb said:
I had the same issue at our house that we moved into about a year ago. However, it's not BT that's the problem, it's Openeeach. And they don't like talking to the public!
It took many emails before I got an answer from them, even then they said they weren't going to provide fibre, 2 days after that email, a fibre option appeared on the BT website!
Openreach do not talk to the public as they do no work directly for the public , all openreach work is on behalf of a service provider be it bt sky plusnet talk talk or whoever .It took many emails before I got an answer from them, even then they said they weren't going to provide fibre, 2 days after that email, a fibre option appeared on the BT website!
bimsb6 said:
Openreach do not talk to the public as they do no work directly for the public , all openreach work is on behalf of a service provider be it bt sky plusnet talk talk or whoever .
Openreach Is/was a BT company. Sky would call BT who would call Openreach. Be nice to the first chap and see if you are lucky like me to get a direct line. I took 6 visits to connect a new line! 4 months in total!chasingracecars said:
bimsb6 said:
Openreach do not talk to the public as they do no work directly for the public , all openreach work is on behalf of a service provider be it bt sky plusnet talk talk or whoever .
Openreach Is/was a BT company. Sky would call Openreach. Be nice to the first chap and see if you are lucky like me to get a direct line. I took 6 visits to connect a new line! 4 months in total!Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff