Full Fibre Upgrade Nightmare

[Eye]

Good afternoon,

I thought I'd share my full fibre upgrade story:

Nov 17 - Openreach sort out internal wiring etc but also disconnect my copper cable before discovering they can't finish the installation. When I asked about them reconnecting my copper cable at the box they said 'No' and drove off. I've subsequently discovered that they aren't supposed to disconnect until the new connection is in and tested.

About a week or so later another Openreach person turned up to mark out the route to follow for the connection.

Later I get a call from Openreach claiming I live on a private road - I point out this is incorrect.

In my subsequent call to BT they agree to reconnect my old connection at the junction box, I later find out this has been passed to BT Wholesale.

The latest update is my old connection should be restored on the 6th Feb - so that's 2 1/2 months without broadband or a fully functioning BT TV box so far, oh and Openreach will be updating me again on the 7th Feb as to where we are. The last I heard they were getting the utilities maps, quite why they weren't doing this on the 18th Nov when they informed me a civil engineering team would be needed I don't know.

Oh and I forgot to mention that I've also had no phone service over this period.

[Eye]

PS Forgot to mention the house two doors down had no issues at all.

[Checked2013]

@Eye It does sound a bit of a nightmare and indeed the first engineer should not have cut the copper cable.

How far are the neighbours that have been connected? It might be that you are too far away from the dp point and further work needs to be done, hence why they need maps and need to seek permission by any land owners and permission from the council to do the civil work.

What I'm surprised is that all this should have been known and therefore really you shouldn't have been allowed to order the full fibre until the works were completed.

[Eye]

The cable passes a few feet in front of my house, they need to dig a small channel across the path and then up the short side of my garden. The neighbouring house is just two houses up from me. Speaking to other neighbours it appears that none of them have had these problems. The main frustration really is the old service being disconnected when it shouldn't have been and the refusal of Openreach to reconnect it. The only land owners involved are me and the Council, it took them two weeks to correct their assertion that it was a private road. 

[Checked2013]

@Eye in that case you are too far from the dp point and they are trying to get around the issue by running it on a shorter route.

As Openreach send inspectors around to check after an area has been connected with FTTP this should have been noted and therefore allowed for during your installation, as for the first engineer, they need a little re-training.