r/UKBroadband

How do I prevent a cease on the line from happening in this upcoming situation:

I am moving house and will be ordering EE to take the line over when we exchange contracts. EE will only activate sometime in September.

The current homeowners will move out on 28th August and will cancel their Sky broadband, they are not moving their broadband with them.

Since the current Sky broadband will be cancelled before EE can takeover the line, will there be a cease on the line, blocking all orders?

Any advice on preventing the cease on the line will be appreciated here.

Moving from Virgin to Sky full Fiber (saving $$) - they are handling the move across (cancelation of virgin)

Thursday (13/8)

Installed however fault on line so needed engineer out.

Friday

Engineer comes out and fixes the issue. Text message arrives to mobile phone advising of this. Virgin Media Broadband dies... WTF? Ive not even been sent a router yet !

I call Sky who apologise and ship out a router.

Saturday

Router arrives whilst I am out with the family for the day- connect it all up - Green Slow Pulsing light on router. PWR/PON/LAN green solid lights on ONT

Reset router. power off and on etc etc ... nothing working.

Sunday

Call sky - they "run tests" cant get it working. Organise engineer for Tuesday.

Monday

Working from home I now have run out of Mobile Data and buy a bolt on.

Tuesday

Engineer Arrives early afternoon. Changes Fiber wall box (WHY?) does no port testing, Calls his support who say theres a problem and to hold... hold for 10 mins. line problem aparently fixed. Engineer says it must be the router and to call sky.

Call sky - on phone to 5 departments for 1 1/2+ hours 'testing' getting support, putting me through to another department to be told that ANOTHER Openreach engineer will be with me today (its now 3pm) before the end of the day to fix the line problem (is there one ? theres no errors on the ONT)
I call back Sky at 4.45pm who have NO RECORD of Openreach being called ! What the actual F... !!!! Have I just been lied to by a Sky customer service representative ?! I now need to wait till tommorow (Weds), nearly a week after initial installation for an "update"

Shocking SHODDY service... Appaling being pushed about from one team to the next with no-one having a clue it seems where the problem is.

AND the worse bit is that they thought it ok to process the Virgin Media SHUTDOWN even BEFORE the router was posted to me !

SKY - Whats going on !

​

Installation day looms for my FTTP. Let's have the tips and pitfalls please: how does an ordinary domestic customer best navigate the Openreach odyssey as it unfolds? The goal being to have the new setup confirmed as functional before they leave, while ensuring a neat look to it both outside and in.

It's a Plusnet upgrade from existing ADSL, so same provider. Three storey Georgian house that's heritage listed, in a conservation area, and has solid walls about 2ft thick.

Current copper supply comes in adjacent to a metal side window on the middle floor, part of a hallway/landing area, which has power on hand and for wifi coverage still seems preferable. Ladder access externally would be via a flat roof that sits above the front door, which is on that side.

One issue to start: what I don't want is any box mounted on the front of the house or visible at the entrance. Best if it sat at first floor level, where it'd be closest to the router and also wouldn't be seen from the street.

(I'm assuming the fibre feed will be via an aerial span rather than from the ground, as I'm unaware of the street outside having been dug up for any such purpose in recent years.)

How much say do I get in any of this, without aborting the process and incurring a cancellation fee? And what rough proportion of installations succeed on day one in any event?

If there's a Faq or similar pinned somewhere that covers this stuff I'd be happy to be pointed to it!

I moved into my new flat on 5 August. It’s a newly created/converted flat, and I’ve never rented somewhere where I had to arrange the broadband completely by myself before, so I’m honestly a complete beginner with all of this.

Before moving in, I asked my landlord whether there was an Openreach box/socket in the flat after AI suggested I check. He told me there wasn’t one. At the time, I didn’t realise how important that might be. I thought I could simply choose an internet provider, place an order, get a router and have WiFi.
Apparently not.

The first problem was that because the flat has a new address, most of the major broadband providers couldn’t even find it in their systems.
My landlord and I then spent ages contacting the council and Royal Mail trying to get the address recognised properly. Eventually, after about a week of waiting and chasing, the council basically told us that they had done everything they could do and didn’t know what else they could do.

So I went back to trying broadband providers.
I tried Virgin Media first. The customer service experience was awful. The person I spoke to seemed very dismissive and somehow placed the order against the WRONG address. Then they wouldn’t simply cancel it for me.

I had to call them repeatedly over the next two or three days just to get this incorrect order cancelled.
Eventually that was finally sorted, but I was still stuck with the original problem.

Later, some broadband providers finally started recognising my actual flat address, but then I discovered that they could only offer relatively slow broadband there and not Full Fibre.

What makes this even more confusing is that the original/main address of the building appears to have Full Fibre available.

So I tried ordering broadband using that original address.

Then I received a call saying they couldn’t provide my new service because there was apparently already a BUSINESS broadband service using that address.

I asked my landlord about it and he told me there is no business broadband being used there.

At this point I genuinely had no idea what was going on.

So the broadband provider changed the order back to my actual new flat address. They have now raised a case with Openreach because the situation seems contradictory: the original building address apparently has Full Fibre, my newly created flat address doesn’t, and there isn’t even an Openreach socket/ONT inside my flat.

Now I’m waiting for Openreach to investigate.
I don’t know whether they need to correct the address records, connect my flat to the existing fibre infrastructure, send an engineer, install a new ONT, drill through the wall, or something else entirely.

And that’s where I am now.
It’s been almost 20 days since I started dealing with this.

I just wanted internet.

I genuinely don’t understand why getting WiFi in one flat has required me to speak to my landlord, the council, Royal Mail, Virgin Media, another broadband provider and now Openreach.

I’m doing a PhD and I really need a reliable internet connection at home, and I’m honestly exhausted from constantly calling different people, waiting on hold, being told different things and never knowing what is actually happening.

Has anyone else had something like this happen with a newly created/converted flat?
Does anyone know what Openreach normally does in a situation like this, where the parent/original address has Full Fibre but the new flat address doesn’t, and there is no Openreach socket or ONT inside the flat?

At this point I would genuinely just like to understand what I’m supposed to do next. I just want internet in my flat.

I am soon shifting to Mile End and I am shifting for the first time out of uni so unaware about finding providers on my own. Especially wifi I am currently debating whether to just upgrade my voxi plan and use hotspot or pay for wifi as I am gonna work 5 days a week in the office.

All suggestions are welcome. Thanks

Did anyone have similar experience to me and is able to give me any advice on how can I bring this further?

In December, shortly after signing the tenancy for my flat, I contacted BT sales to arrange broadband for my move-in date in mid-January. I signed a contract, received a router and an activation date. However, despite me contacting BT several times before the activation date, I was only informed about a week beforehand that BT could not provide the contracted service because the necessary cables were not available at my property.

I was given two options: cancel the contract, or keep the service temporarily using a 4G router provided by BT free of charge until the required infrastructure could be installed. I chose the latter based on BT’s representative’s advice.

Today my service stopped working and my account showed as inactive. After spending approximately 1.5 hours on the phone with BT, I was told that I should only have received the temporary service for around two months and that it continued for eight months due to a BT system error.

I am extremely frustrated that I am now facing the consequences of an internal BT error without any prior warning. I have also now been told that broadband may actually be available at my property through a Fibre2 service, which contradicts what I was previously told.

I work from home and am now unable to work normally, causing potential financial loss.

To make things even more confusing I do have sockets in my flat that says OpenReach BT on it so I have no idea why I could get service to my flat.

So i need some advice im moving to a new flat and want to transfer my Plusnet connection to the new address im on month 2 of my 24 month contract and i work from home so i cant miss a minute on broadband and my work pc only works via ethernet. So now the question is how do i get plusnet to activate my line at my new house without any delays or cutting of my current line i thought about applying for a new provider at the new flat but If i cancel plusnet id have to pay a huge early termination fee so im kind of stuck, i called virgin media and they said my new address has virgin media connection already so i wont need an engineer it would be self installation so i thought to myself can i not get a 30 day rolling contract for virgin media at the new flat and use that for work while i put in a request to transfer my line on plusnet to the new flat and that way the day plusnet activates il just cancel virgin and wont loose a day of connection. Can this work can a house have two lines virgin and open reach at the same time?

TL;DR does a part-fibre service prevent a one-touch switch process when changing provider to a full fibre service. Original provider I'm cancelling with says it shouldn't be an issue. New provider (Vodafone) says I can't have one-touch switch, after spending 3 hours setting up a broadband package with them over chat.

Would love some input/experience here as I'm at a loss.

Moved into this place with an existing 25mb Package with Plusnet which is now £31 a month. I'm cancelling this month as I got an offer from Vodafone for 24.50 for 500mb and the contract is up.

The issue is that after processing the sale and being assured multiple times this would be a one-touch switch process. I got an email after the call to inform me of the following:

"t looks like your Vodafone Home Broadband order was not processed via One Touch Switching. 

This means we may not have been able to contact your existing broadband provider to cancel your old service when your new Vodafone plan activates. 

If you are switching from another provider, please check with them to make sure they turn off your old service. "

I spoke to their broadband team today and was furious because I spent 3 hours setting up this package just to be told "nah, sorry you'd have to cancel the plan and set it up again but we can't assure you it won't fail the one-touch switch check.

The person on the broadband team at Vodafone was assuming this is because my connection is part-fibre, and Vodafone is full fibre so the different service is the issue.

I then spoke with Plusnet retention team and even he was like "what? that shouldn't be an issue". I'm guessing this is some backtracking to try cover up for a mistake, but the fact the owness is on me for an issue that shouldn't have happened or should have been avoided/acknowledged earlier is mental.

I ordered from Highland broadband up here in Scotland. They offered super fast fibre. And they said they would set up so that i could get strong connection in my outdoor office.

It's hard to get much response from them but needless to say, I cannot get any connection in my outdoor office and the speeds are up and down throughout the house. Can I cancel this? Or am I stuck with it?

Hi all, as the title says I’m having a bit of an issue with the placement of my sky broadband box following installation.
Long story short I had a problem with the person that installed my sky service (working for Kelly Communications), he didn’t speak to anyone about wire placement which caused conflict with my neighbour which meant a different engineer had to come out and redo it all.
Following the wiring im thinking of other things this idiot might have messed up, mainly the fact that my wifi box is in a closed cupboard where it is impossible to connect anything via LAN. When I asked the engineer what to do he just said “buy yourself a long Ethernet cable” which shocked me as I assumed that would be part of the installation.
My question is, do I complain to Sky about this cowboy installation engineer and how we are losing signal because the wifi is in a bloody cupboard? and as I’m unemployed due to redundancy I feel like I should not be having to pay for an Ethernet cable to reach my tv/playstation/smart home stuff!
(Sorry for the rant)
[Edit - added photo of the wifi in the cupboard to the comments]

Hi all, I moved from a flat to house back in May and have had nothing but issues with the max hub. I was on full fibre 150 which Is not the max hub to full fibre 300 and then 500 in the space of 3 months. I was having terrible buffering and wireless strength on 300mb and complained and they offered me 500mb at a discounted price.

Today I had open reach come to extend the white open reach box which connects the fibre to the hub as it was positioned far away from my PlayStation and I have always been wired so wanted to maintain that.

I plug the Ethernet in to my ps and I’m getting the exact same strength as if I was wireless…

I know this because on efootball you have a maximum of 5 bar connection when you join an opponent online. When I was wired on full fibre 150 I never saw a 4 bar connection only 5. I am absolutely shocked to see that even wired on full fibre 500 I am getting 4 bar connection and not 5!

Does anyone have a clue on what’s going on at all?

Is it worth it to get broadband with Rebel internet? I’ve not heard of it before I found it on compare the market.

I don’t know much about it but I wanted to know of others experiences.

But it was the only one available for my postcode on a rolling monthly contract- not a 12 month or 24 month.
Both of which would be of detriment to me and my roommates as we are students and all going abroad after this year.

TLDR: EE too expensive for what it is. But Dad doesn't want to lose BT email. Can you get cheaper EE broadband or is a new provider worth the hassle. Am I missing something?

Hi. My parents have asked me for advice on choosing a broadbrand provider, as they are not technically minded, although I'm out of my depth. After being with BT for just over 20 years, they switched to EE a couple years ago as BT became outrageously expensive (£60+).

EE (100MBPS) was cheap for the first few years (25 quid or something), but now sits at £40 a month. It's become too expensive. But getting a better deal is almost impossible. The guy at EE keeps telling them how 500 mbps is "faster", which is completely misleading, and his "best deal" goes up to £40 a month after a few years. I know 100 mbps I more than enough for them.

Now the difficult bit which I hope someone could provide some advice on. My dad is self employed and has used a bt email for work and everything (though he's slowly transitioning to a gmail I made him a few years ago). EE let him keep the email, as BT and EE are together somehow. He really doesn't want to lose it as it will be a hassle with customers etc.

To keep the bt email is £7.50 a month! If not, it will eventually be deleted after 60 days, though its very confusing if its degraded to a basic email (read only) or completely wiped.

I'm shocked because the cheapest EE broadband is "100mbps core broadband", sitting at £27 a month, then goes up to £31 next year, then £35 the year after. That's just ridiculous for 100 mbps, why is it so expensive for arguably mediocre speeds? Is it possible to get a cheap rate without it skyrocketing each year?

Edit: They are going for a new vodaphone contract. Moving over to a more open email as well.

Currently they are doing a £5 a month offer for 6 months then £32 a month which seems very reasonable. Especially at 900Mbs up and down.

I am an ex-Virgin Media customer on the old cable system, trunking is still there so I gather they install their new fibre and ONT, can they use the old trunking/hole in wall to save any new drilling?

I have had Eero before so happy enough to use that, I assume easy to add other Eero repeaters?

Lastly how are you finding uptime/speeds/support?

I want a reliable provider with a speed of around the 67mbps that I've had with my current provider. Have been with Sky and my contract is coming to an end, so I'm wondering is Vodafone Fibre 2 is any good?

I've been on Sky's Superfast so it will be a VDSL (Fibre to the cabinet) setup. Surely this should be an easy setup for Vodafone Fibre 2?

Also can the frequencies of the wifi be switched? I've had to connect a device that can only run on the 2.4gHz. With Sky they said the splitting of frequencies is actually quite outdated but the way round it with them was to lower the security level in settings from WPA3 to WPA2. Although that doesn't sound good, it's the only way to effectively get the 2.4gHz frequency.

Has anyone had experience of trying to do this with vodafone and how easy is this?

Cheers

I'm on FttC because I offended the gods or something. I originally bought a pretty cheap router that my ISP recommended, a TD-W9960 from TP-Link. However, recently it's been extremely crashy^1, and the WiFi isn't the best^2, and I'd like to replace it. I do have a decent WiFi router I would use, an Archer AX12^3 (also from TP-Link^4) but it doesn't support VDSL.

I'm thinking I'd like to get a reliable modem that I can connect to my Archer over ethernet. Has anyone bought something like this that worked? Failing that, does anyone have a recommendation for an all-in-one router that doesn't suck?

^(1 The internet stops working, though the WiFi is still connected. I'm pretty sure it's the router freezing up, not a connection drop, because all the lights stay on, and the admin interface webpage won't load, nor will the router respond to pings. The only fix is power cycling it. This happens a couple of times a day.)

^(2 The internet is slow, but I'd still like fast WiFi for local traffic, like streaming games and media within the house.)

^(3 If you are wondering why I have this, it's because I was expecting a proper FttP connection, and bought this in anticipation, but it turns out that CityFibre and Openreach will only connect to my neighbours, not me. I also have an old router from Hyperoptic that I could repurpose.)

^(4 I should probably stop buying Toilet Paper Link products, but sometimes they are actually pretty good.)

I recently moved to a flat in Marlow, and I’ve been struggling to get a broadband since. All the broadband companies I’ve checked showed that my flat is not serviceable, and asked me to register my interest. The only that were able to give me anything were TalkTalk and PlusNet, but they offered copper, with 12mbps down 1mbps up, a nightmare for a gamer.

I tried my chances with Virgin Media as well, but it ended the same as the other companies. They asked me to register my interest, so I did, and I called them multiple times after as well, but no updates yet. The funny thing is all the other building apart from mine seem to be able to get every broadband from all the companies, while mine gets nothing. Even Virgin Media gives to the ones next door, but none of the flats in my building seem to have broadband available. It’s like they just forgot about our building when wiring the network.

The only thing I have available to me is using mobile broadband, so I’m on Three now, but it’s been terrible as well. The building is completely made out of brick, and I’m on the ground floor as well, so I’m getting around -85dB at best. My ping jumps to thousands when I do anything else but gaming, so even opening a chrome tab is deadly.

I don’t know what to do at this point, I just moved here and I don’t want to move somewhere else bcs of broadband. I’m desperate for help, can someone please suggest something?

Im seriously considering broadband providers mid term, currently it would cost me £395 but the new provider will credit up to £300 for switching. Is it possible to make a payment of £95 and have £300 be cost of the final bill?