r/openreach

Bit of an odd question but hoping someone may have some insight.

Recently moved to rural wales and the broadband is shocking.

Fibre has been in half the village for around a year and Openreach are currently installing FTTP cables in the rest of the village.

Fibre cables were run to the pole outside our house almost 2 months ago now and despite calls to my current provider nobody is able to answer when I can get it installed from the pole to our house.

Has anyone else had similar and were you able to chase it up on anyway?

As you can imagine it’s extremely frustrating not being able to stream Netflix in peak hours when you can see fibre cables from the lounge window! 😂

Last week on behalf of bt they came and did the outside and inside box and connected everything up. On the admin panel for the router it shows the 1000mbps up and down and all the cables are connected properly, however the speeds are still the old speeds. Stuck on what to and hope someone could help with what i could try to make it force the new speeds

Feels like the second WiFi slows down for five minutes people act like the engineer personally cut the cables with scissors. I know broadband issues can be frustrating but sometimes the reactions are mad considering most people don’t actually know how the infrastructure works.

Hello everyone,

Got a technician coming to my property on behalf of openreach on the 15th of may to connect me to a Vodafone 900.
He connects everything, the ONT blinks PON and he leaves saying, he needs to escalate.

I speak with Vodafone who says that there is a wrong routing and that they will need to do a survey to fix it, next update, 1st of June.
In the spite of the moment I said I think I should cancel and stay with Virgin, the lady…proceeds to cancel my order immediately without asking confirmation. I ask to revert, nothing.

At this point I spot a cheaper deal from EE, they confirm appointment for Friday 22, but yesterday they cancelled my order saying I did it?! Then reinstate it, but then cancel the installation as the technician could not attend. I called them again and they said that OpenReach still need to do some work, likely the rerouting.

Obviously thanks to the efficient Vodafone lady I’m out of compensations, Open Reach and EE now cancelled my order so that they could also stop paying or in this case start paying for compensation.

Im not sure how to proceed, I’m stuck with a VM M250 @ £55/mo.

I personally can’t understand why it takes so long for a re-routing when I live in an MDU and only 2 people are connected to fibre on 36 more available double connections.

For sure the ONT advertises on Openreach, why they can’t simply swap me over from the original allocated line?

What do you suggest as in next steps? I was thinking going back to Vodafone as I think I can have better leverage for any compensation and for reopening the ticket with openreach for the repair.

Last week on behalf of bt they came and did the outside and inside box and connected everything up. On the admin panel for the router it shows the 1000mbps up and down and all the cables are connected properly, however the speeds are still the old speeds. Stuck on what to and hope someone could help with what i could try to make it force the new speeds

I have been with TalkTalk for over 12 years and have not had any issues so far. I am on fiber 67. I am planning to upgrade to full fiber 500/900 and shortlisted Plusnet, EE and BT.

Plusnet comes out cheaper and then EE and then BT. EE offers wifi 7 router.

Any recommendation on which provider is good?

https://preview.redd.it/0cze48wgu22h1.png?width=1168&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc24c9efc411ecc40fb9fcf4765d1d815af26d72

For the past year the Openrach site has said "We're building in your area" so I've been checking periodically. Had an OR engineer out last week to fix a copper cable fault up the road from me, and he was quite confident my street would be getting FTTP within the next 6 months. Now the website shows this. And now I'm sad.

ISP kept telling me everything looked fine remotely. Engineer arrived, opened the cabinet, did something I could not see, and my speeds doubled. What are they actually doing that no diagnostic tool apparently can?

Hi all,

I’m moving to a flat with Openreach already there - how long will broadband setup take?

I’ve already put my postcode int the Openreach website and they said full fibre is available. My estate agent said I can just pick a provider?

Do I need to wait for a router (how long does this take as well), and simply plug and play?

Thanks in advance!

Here follows my tale of woe. If you can stick with me and offer any solution I'd be very grateful.

I moved into a rented flat November 2026. I ordered FTTC internet from BT thinking if there were any problems they'd be best placed to fix them. LOL. Almost immediately there were intermittent drops. Three new routers later and speaking to just about everybody who's ever been employed by BT we were no further forwards. I even presented them with a 24 hour ping log which showed drops every 2 minutes or so for a few seconds.

Out comes an Openreach engineer who goes to the cabinet - thinks he's fixed it but actually leaves me with no internet. No matter what buttons I push when I call up, they're not coming out to make it right.

I decided the simplest way was to give BT the flick and go to someone completely different. I fully understand that every ISP uses BT's copper, but thought they wouldn't have such a cozy relationship with Openreach.

So I moved to SKY. Immediately the same problems. Intermittent drops (pinging Goggle on a wired connection) every 5-10 minutes meaning streaming, gaming and calling is dicey. SKY sent someone out and decided that, in essence, they'd not be able to get openreach out to investigate as my fault doesn't fit nicely into any of their boxes. They agreed that I should cancel.

I would say that the fault is somewhere between where the wiring comes into my block (of six flats) and my flat itself. They disconnected all of the additional sockets that were installed from new at build (2016). When the Openreach engineer DID visit the once he said there was no problem between the building and the cabinet.

At the moment I'm having to use ELON to get some internet which is ridiculous on an estate of 1,000 houses. It's also not totally reliable and has also just gone up £5 a month.

The greatest frustration is there's Fibre in the street, it goes to all the houses on my street, but not my block. I guess because it's a block. I've spoken to various FTTP ISPs and they all say they can't help, even though it goes to my neighbour 8 meters away.

What are my options? I could probably dick about with a proper 5g router but it'd need an external aerial as phone coverage isn't great where I am.

What about a second BT line? Forcing them to put a fresh run in from the building entry point to my flat? Would that crack it do you think?

I'm at a bit of a loss. Any help appreciated.

Thank you very much for reading.

Moved into new home.

Ordered full fibre over EE web-chat, I ask to confirm I can definitely get full fibre as I live in a fairly remote village. The agent says yes definitely.

Engineer comes to install a week later. Says we cant get it and that the street behind seems to have it but we can’t siphon from their outlet as it has to be per street. He puts a note to Openreach/EE to say he couldn’t install. Recommends I contact EE to let them know what happened.

I put in a complaint with EE that I was basically missold a service I couldn’t receive and that my wife who works from home really needs some sort of WIFI to work, which has now been delayed.

Complaints team call me back saying ‘Openreach are removing all the copper in the country so they wont install ‘old broadband’ any more. They then send out another engineer to double check we definitely can’t get fibre.

Second engineer comes, confirms again that we can’t get fibre and that he doesn’t even think the street over from us has it either as the previous engineer seemed to imply. He says it doesn’t make sense as the Openreach checker does say we can get it. He tries phoning somebody to get that changed n the checker - to no avail.

EE Complaints phone me back a few days later to see if the case got resolved, I said no, they just said try mobile broadband. I’ve now tried that with 2 different sims form ID and EE with really slow speeds, so not ideal. - we also had to buy a third party device for £40 and a unlimited sim card for £35

We tried that for a few weeks more but its not workable for my wife’s work.

I find a way to contact Openreach myself and tell them the fibre checker is incorrect, they say they will update it. That was about a month ago. Still hasn’t been updated.

I give one final try and phone EE again requesting specifically that I order FTTC (part fibre) or copper broadband. Salesperson is resistant as all she can see on the checker is that I can get fibre. After explaining multiple times that I’ve had 2 engineers confirm that I can’t get full fibre. She says she can order my a part fibre package at 73mbps. FINALLY. I go through with the order.

I receive a confirmation email. Thanks for your FULL FIBRE order. Engineer is coming on Tuesday. 

I do live in a village, but not a hut in the woods, getting broadband shouldn’t be this difficult. I don't have high hopes for our third engineer.

What shall I do if this (likely) fails? Im at my wits end.

Any idea the timescale for Openreach and the National Grid to agree on the possibility of using a National Grid pole for a fibre install?

Had my installation today, ONT installed and exterior work done but the engineer said the current overhead path of the copper line is no longer within regulations so I need a different path. We have a National grid pole nearby which is the only feasible solution.

The engineer couldn't really give me an estimate and said it's a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare.

So two questions really, 1) Does anyone know how long this would take? and 2) If granted, do I get pushed to the back of the Openreach appointment queue which is roughly a 1 month wait in my area?

Edit: Just had an email from Vodafone telling me I'm compensated £6.46 a day from the planned activation date until my activation is complete. I guess that injects some urgency from their end to get a solution asap and also suggests I'm not pushed to the back of the appointment queue to finish the work.

Edit 2: Had an email from Open Reach saying they need to put a new pole in so I guess that dictates how long it'll be until I'm connected.

Our estate didn't have fibre when we moved in two years ago. Last summer we finally saw the OpenReach vans and then they stopped coming. When I used the fibre availability checker I saw every block of flats in our state except ours can get broadband now and this has been the case for months.
My landlord confirmed the estate is managed by the same agency and they already approved all buildings. I found the enquiry form on OpenReach's website and filled it out asking about our building and sending confirmation by the agency it's approved.

Cue the first response - a generic message of "As your property is classified as a multiple dwelling unit (MDU), additional work is required to supply your building. We must obtain legal permission from the landlord, managing agent...".

I tried responding and got nothing.
I filled the form out again, this time asking very clearly about why our building is wrong in their DB. I get the generic response again. I try replying to the emails multiple times more and get nothing.
I fill out the form again for the third time THIS TIME WITH BLOCK CAPITALS AT THE START ASKING THEM TO PLEASE ACTUALLY READ WHAT I'VE WRITTEN BELOW.

Days go by. I get the same email "As your property is classified as a multiple dwelling unit (MDU), additional work is required to supply your building. We must obtain legal permission from the landlord, managing agent...".

I filled the form out a fourth time even writing in the "Who is your Broadband Provider" box ~"Please read what I've written. Every time one of us sends this we get the same generic response".
Days go by, I get an email: "As your property is classified as a multiple dwelling unit (MDU), additional work is required to supply your building. We must obtain legal permission from the landlord, managing agent...".

I appreciate they could be kicking the ball back (and I've already contacted my landlord about filling out the form again) but shouldn't they at least read the actual fucking email you send? Are they using AI and pretending they're actual people?