I don't think I can help much further; apart to reassure you that it is BT that are insane, not you. The rest of the post is to say what I think is going on. It
might help you directly, though I am afraid not. It may very well prompt other posts that correct my rather muddled understanding, and maybe help a little bit more.
I'm not quite sure about the rules for telephone lines and calls. They are clearly all pretty artificial, dreamed up by ofcom to permit competition. To be fair, the whole situation is so artificial that I'm not sure they could have done much better; and I don't think sure sticking to the GPO would have seen us any better off now either. Apart from LLU, the differences mainly seem to be software only differences about charging, and who arranges for Openreach to fix any problems.
There seem to be a few styles of line/call rental, starting at the most BT oriented. Very approximately:
1) Openreach line, rental paid to BT retail and calls paid to BT retail.
2) Openreach line, rental paid to BT retail and default calls paid to someone else (eg Primus, ..., using CPS).
3) Openreach line, rental paid to someone else (eg TalkTalk, BE) and calls with the rental provider.
4) Openreach line, rental paid to someone else (eg TalkTalk, BE) and calls with yet another provider. (ofcom rules force BT to accept CPS and carrier override numbers like 18866; but I'm not sure they are 'equal' and force this on other line rental providers. Not too relevant to broadband anyway)
5) non Openreach, non cable line. Unless you live in Hull, I don't think this is possible in the UK????
6) cable. I think the only normal one nowadays is Virgin cable.
Clearly, if you have cable line, ADSL/FTTC in the normal way is not possible.
I don't think there is any
technical reason BT or TalkTalk can't provide their broadband service (ADSL or FTTC) to anyone with an Openreach line, regardless of how you are paying for line rental or for calls. However, such bundling is fairly common. For example, BE will only provide landline if you take their broadband. As far as I know, there are not any ofcom rules to prevent or discourage such bundling. Such bundling seems universal in the FTTC arena.
It seems that it is people in situation (3) that BT just can't manage at all properly. Even though BT FTTC is only sold bundled to BT phone; BT order completion/delivery systems are not properly connected; so you can't get a single 'order' that delivers you a BT phone and Infinity in one. Worse, BT order acceptance system is not properly connected to BT order delivery system. It will accept a combined order for phone and Infinity that BT order delivery system cannot then deliver.
If this is correct, it seems that ofcom should intervene. It seems that a company should not be allowed to accept an order that they know they can't deliver on.
I was in situation (2). BT managed the order with only minor errors which didn't change the delivery date and the installation of Infinity. Installation was also fairly clean, though with another minor error by Openreach meaning they did not regularize my old GPO wiring to Infinity.
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Moved (with trepidation) to BT Infinity 2 for upload speed. Happy BE user for several years.
Edited by StephenTodd (Wed 22-Aug-12 11:41:38)