FTTC: Two weeks ago my line went down due to "Pair Theft" and now reconnected using an old legacy aluminum line at half the speed
Last month, my broadband suddenly went dead. Turns out, an Openreach engineer went to our local street cabinet, found it was completely full, and instead of sorting out the capacity issue properly, they literally disconnected my active Sky Broadband line and re-assigned it to someone else (classic "pair theft").
Because of the UK's copper "stop sell" (since Openreach is phasing out copper), getting a replacement copper line turned into a bureaucratic nightmare, do I have any hope of getting a new copper line or do I have to wait years for FTTP?
- The engineer admitted that because all the copper pairs were taken, they had to hook me up to an old legacy aluminum line instead.
- Aluminum lines have worse electrical resistance, fewer twists, and degrade over time. Because of this, my line speed has been permanently hard-capped at 40 Mbps, down from my previous 80 Mbps copper line.
- The engineer literally told me that out-of-area contractors pull this stunt all the time because it's the easiest way to close out a job, and Openreach simply doesn't want to invest in fixing the copper network anymore.
The Potential Next Step: Since Openreach won't fix the infrastructure I believe as they won't steal my line back from whoever has it now, I'm considering ditching them entirely and moving over to an EE 5G Home Broadband setup which pulls 150+ Mbps in my area, and leaving Openreach in the dust until full fibre finally reaches my flat. Sadly, I think this is going to be the only resolution as Sky technical support believe Openreach can come again and fix a new line out of nowhere for me.
Oh, to add I live in London SE8 area