FTTP as New Order While Maintaining ADSL

[rbz5416]

A friend has awful ADSL(with another provider) but the address has recently been provisioned with FTTP. What he wants to do is place a new order with BT for FTTP while at the same time maintaining his ADSL connection. The reason being that they both work from home & a loss of service would be catastrophic. Seen too many reports in here of migrations going spectacularly wrong resulting in that exact scenario.

So how does he order FTTP as a new, separate entity?

Once FTTP is up & running & proved stable, he will migrate the phone number (hopefully!) which should cease the ADSL.

[licquorice]

Just order it as a second line. Ensure the agent understands its not a working line takeover.

[rbz5416]

Sounds simple apart from the issue of potential **bleep**-ups, as posted on these very forums. Whilst accepting that the risks may be small, it's still a risk too far to place an order & hope you're one of the lucky one's. Especially when you read that BT's response to a **bleep**-up resulting in loss of service is "We'll try to get you reconnected in a few weeks but you've lost your phone number forever".

Given how critical a connection is to their livelihoods, I can understand his paranoia.

[licquorice]

You have to remember people only post on forums when there is a problem. The countless thousands of successful transactions don't get a mention. Having said that, if the order is placed as a second line, there is no risk attached of it going wrong, the original line is totally unaffected.

[gg30340]

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@rbz5416 wrote:

Sounds simple apart from the issue of potential **bleep**-ups, as posted on these very forums. Whilst accepting that the risks may be small, it's still a risk too far to place an order & hope you're one of the lucky one's. Especially when you read that BT's response to a **bleep**-up resulting in loss of service is "We'll try to get you reconnected in a few weeks but you've lost your phone number forever".

Given how critical a connection is to their livelihoods, I can understand his paranoia.

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Mistakes happen and there is no guarantee that something won't go wrong but if he wants to have ADSL and FTTP at the same time then he will need to place an order as suggested other wise he will need to stay as is until such times as Openreach/BT force the move sometime in the future. 

[imjolly]

if connection is that critical to their livelihood and income maybe they should consider a business connection with a far better SLA just in case of future problems 

[pippincp]

The best way would be to ring the FTTP team as they are pretty savvy. 0800 587 4787.

[-Richie-]

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@rbz5416wrote:

So how does he order FTTP as a new, separate entity?

Once FTTP is up & running & proved stable, he will migrate the phone number (hopefully!) which should cease the ADSL.

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FTTP as a standalone product won't impact the current ADSL connection, your friend can verify this when they raise the order and the ADSL provider don't send notification of the transfer.

The snag is the FTTP will need to come with either no voice service (SOGEA BB only) or with a voice service and a new number assigned, the hardest part will be porting the number later on, if the number is important then it will impact the ADSL connection as the number port will be on the FTTP order, which can sometimes lead to delays.

[rbz5416]

Thanks all for the input. In the absence of a multi-quote facility...

It's not so much that mistakes happen, that's a fact of life for anything with human input. The real issue is BT's apparent response to such mistakes. Which going by the posts of those on here who've experienced it, is one of "Oh dear, how sad, never mind".

A business line would make perfect sense, if they were running a business. But like thousands of others they're expected to work from using residential infrastructure & could be recalled to the office at any time.

Good point about the lack of cancellation notice from the existing provider. The loss of ADSL when the old number is ported isn't an issue as that would only be done once FTTP was up & running. If there's no voice service originally taken with that it should be fairly straightforward.

I'll point him to the thread.

[conrad]

Depending on how important the phone number is, using a residential VOIP with a  03 non-geographic number is an alternative. Once all relevant contacts have been notified of the number change then the adsl can be cancelled - also any future moves would mean the VOIP just goes where they move with the same number regardless of location. This would need to be confirmed with the VOIP provider.