Switch back to copper temporarily

[vwlowen1]

Hi,

Last week, Virgin Media were pulling some of their cables through a duct shared with Openreach and they damaged some of OR's fibres.  Asking on the local FB forums, it seems they've done it in several places locally. The upshot is several "pockets" of us have been left with no decent internet access for *weeks* while BT, Openreach and Virgin Media play politics.  The 4G mini hub speed is useless and doesn't allow no-ip DNS lookup which I use extensively for my home servers.

My old copper landline is still active and I can get a dial tone but dialling a number produces "Number not recognised".

My question is, if BT, OR and Virgin are going to carry on playing silly be***s,  what would be involved in the exchange to temporarily reinstate my copper line to provide relatively decent internet access and at least allow me to use my no-ip DNS lookup.

Thanks,

John.

[NeilO]

Hi @vwlowen1 welcome to the community and thanks for posting. I'm sorry your BT service is being affected by a cable fault, I appreciate the inconvenience this is causing you. Openreach usually put a stop sell for copper orders when full fibre is available from your exchange and it's not something we can offer as an interim measure when experiencing a fault as there is no way to order it as a temporary service.

Have you been provided with an update as to how long it's likely going to take to repair?

Thanks

Neil

[vwlowen1]

Thanks for the reply.

My initial repair was 2 working days. Unfortunately it included the Bank Holiday weekend so it ran through to the 30th.

My engineer arrived promptly on the 25th but was unaware that it was a bigger problem.  I've since spoken with 3 other engineers (1 in my road, 2 in the adjacent road) who, from what they told me, arrived in "good faith" expecting a simple, single repair.  The last two engineers were about to embark on pulling  in new fibre.  When they contacted their office, they seemed to disappear!  

MyBT page simply shows, with a red background, "Sorry, we are unable to fetch the requested information"

This image shows the status page for my area..

I'm not sure where they got the "reported 29/08/2023"  from...  with the number of faults being reported in the area from 24th onwards, it should have been pretty obvious it was more than just an isolated fault.

As I mentioned, dozens of people in another local area have been waiting for just over 2 weeks now - also through the same cause - so I'm not holding my breath.  

Thanks.

John.

[garybs29]

FWIW it may not be possible, if FTTP  is available there's a chance no other orders can be placed. If it could be it depends on if engineer is required or not wtc so it's not just "flicking a switch"

[vwlowen1 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the replies... I suspected it wouldn't be possibe but it was worth asking.

The area was flooded with OR engineers yesterday afternoon and they've pulled loads of new fibre in.. They're scheduled to come back today (Friday 1st Sept)  to join all the ends together. Hopefully, most of us will be back online by the end of today.

John.