Fibre Connection to Flat (Block next door is connected)

[clairemackenzieLive]

Hi folks,

I'm looking or a bit of advice if possible. I live in a small block of flats at number 7, ground floor, and currently am unable to get fibre broadband - I've got FTTC at the minute and get max speeds of 32Mbps. This is frustrating because the block of flats (again very small) that is literally 2m from my front window does have a fibre connection to the building and I know that number 3 has ordered and received it. I actually went out and spoke to the engineers who were running the fibre and they told me that once they were done I'd be able to order the fibre upgrade on OR's website/portal, but this has not been the case.

The engineers literally showed me the ducting into my building where the fibre would be run, and it looks incredibly easy/simple for them to do. I had a fault engineer attend at my flat where he told me he would raise the issue internally and that it looked like it was probably an oversight/system issue but he couldn't do anything about it unfortunately. This was about a year ago and I kind of forgot about it and just let it slide, thinking I'd be moving in a year or two anyway so I'd just persevere, but now I'm going to be keeping my flat, or at the very least renting it out and it's such a negative on the property that it cannot get decent broadband when it's clearly very easy to deliver.

My question is... does anyone know who I can contact at BT, outside the normal customer service team who have not been able to help, to have someone take a proper look at this issue? There are about 10 flats in this building and I know for a fact they would all upgrade to full fibre if it was available.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks

[Keith_Beddoe]

@clairemackenzieLive 

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

Unfortunately BT Retail would not be able to help with this as its Openreach that provide the connections.

Assuming you are a BT Retail customer, you could try the FTTP helpdesk on 0800 587 4787 to see if they can place an order.

[rbz5416]

Does you BT billing address match exactly that on the Royal Mail postcode lookup?

If you do a search by address here, does it show more than one variation of your address? If not does the search show FTTP as available?

[clairemackenzieLive]

Hi.

The address matches correctly, and there is no variation of my address unfortunately.

The one entry there is for my address (number 7) shows availability only for FTTP on Demand but FTTP install process is blank. When checking my neighbour's (number 3) theirs shows as "1 Stage". Both are apparently served from the same cabinet. "Cabinet 13" on Motherwell exchange.

[rbz5416]

Then you may be stuck in no man's land unfortunately. There are many such reports within these forums & the difficulty is getting past "Computer says no". You could try contacting Openreach via the chat at the bottom right on this page & see if you can make any progress. But that seems to be a complete lottery as to whether you reach someone who wants to help or not.

Sometimes one of the forum Mods will offer assistance so one may post on your thread if you report back after attempting Openreach.

Have you looked at other ISPs to see if they also agree that FTTP is unavailable?

[iniltous]

Just because buildings are next to each other it doesn’t necessarily follow that both buildings are designed to be in the same PON area , there has to be a boundary somewhere, it could simply be the case that your building is the wrong side of the boundary, and the PON area your building belongs to hasn’t been built yet.

Cabinet areas are irrelevant when it comes to FTTP , a typical copper cabinet could serve 800 customers, a FTTP PON at best is 120 ‘connections’ and often much smaller , it’s not unusual to build a single PON area and the immediate surrounding areas are not upgraded, even if they are the same copper pair cabinet.

It may be a data problem, check the address info for all the flats in your block , if they are all the same , not showing WBC FTTP available, then the chances are it’s not a data issue,( ignore FTTPod it’s irrelevant )  but there is a formwize to fill in on the Openreach site basically asking why ‘ my neighbours can get FTTP but I cannot’ , that should get the Openreach planning community to check 

[36ULW]

Openreach aren’t allowed to build in any MDU they chose.

They need permission from the owner, without that it’ll never get built.

[Colin_London]

Until Openreach have finished their work BT can do little to help.

Try contacting Openreach through their fibre enquiry service:

https://www.openreach.com/broadband-network/fibre-availability

Also worth checking with your flat management company as to whether they have had any contact from Openreach about installation in the building.