Can I terminate my contract without penalty?

[PTF1]

We moved home to a rental place in late May. It took over 40 days for BT to connect us at our new property.

We've now got our permanent home ready and I rang the Moving Home team on Wednesday. They say the earliest they can get an Openreach engineer to get us going is 23rd January. This is ridiculous.

I hope that this effectively means I can terminate my contract without penalty. Our permanent home has full fibre and the previous occupants had Vodafone. I checked on the Vodafone site and they can turn up their service on Monday 19th December. So I want to go with Vodafone but need to confirm I can cancel my BT contract without penalty. Any advice welcome please.

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@PTF1 

BT would not allow you to cancel without penalty unless its not possible to provide any type of BT broadband connection at your new home.

Openreach are very busy this time of the year.

BT will loan you a 4G mobile hub until your service is activated.

[iniltous]

The delay in supplying service at your current address is immaterial with regard to your move to a different address ( and presumably you were compensated for those 40 days anyway ) , so cancelling your contract with BT , and not avoiding ETC by taking BT service at the new address , should attract early termination charges….over what network are Vodafone offering their service ?, they offer service over multiple networks not just Openreach  , so it may not be Openreach network they can turn on quickly , but if it is , there is no reason why VF can offer quicker service over Openreach FTTP than anyone else ( including BT ) even if the current occupant is using OR/VF , what’s more there is no reason why an OR engineer visit is needed , hence no need for a lead time that long….who is the FTTP network provider at the new address ?