Migration from SKY fibre to infinity 1

I am in the process of changing from SKY fibre to BT infinity 1, however i am getting concerned that I may lose broadband for a week or so during the process.
Has anybody had experience with migrating from SKY fibre to BT infinity.
What is worrying me is the first email I get states:-

In the next 2 working days we'll place an order to bring back your telephone line to BT, which will be an order for a line with relevant calling plan
You will not experience a break in your current broadband service, and you will receive an order confirmation for the telephone line order
BT will then contact your current line provider and make the arrangements to transfer your current telephone number back to BT � this typically takes 13 working days
Remember until we provide you with Infinity superfast broadband you will only be charged and billed for the line and calls element of your service, after which you will be moved to the package option you have chosen
Track your telephone line order at www.bt.com/ordertracking or call 0800 731 0286


Next steps - providing superfast BT Infinity

Once your telephone line is back with BT, we'll contact you and place your order for BT Infinity, before arranging a date for your engineer installation
We will provide you with your speed estimate for BT Infinity when contacting you to place your order
We'll then send you a separate letter confirming your new BT Infinity order details

Then I get a text stating

Hi ? This is a message from BT. We have placed your BT Line order with Ref:******* this will start on the17/10/2016 . The Broadband order wil be placed once your line is active with BT, sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Please track your order at www.bt.com/OrderTracking. Thank Yo.

After contacting BT to clarify the situation the operators where unable to confirm whether I will continue with my current SKY fibre connection once the line has been switched until the BT broadband service is activated.

Since where the voice side of things originates and your current broadband come from are separate, the original explanation sounds entirely correct.

I do understand that where the voice side of things originates and where current broadband come from are separate.
My concern is whether SKY will keep the broadband connection active once the voice side has switched to BT until the broadband order has been completed.
I now also have further concerns as after using the BT broadband availabilty checker my cabinet shows WBC FTTC status as "waiting list" as I am worried I may lose FTTC completely if it becomes disconnected.

Yes you will

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Yes you will

Sorry I will what? stay connected or lose broadband.

You will lose VDSL until the waiting list is replaced by availability

I did a migration from Sky Fibre to BT. I had line rental, phone and broadband with Sky. I was given a date, on this date absolutely everything moved over at once.

What do you mean by the phone and broadband come from separate places? I thought to get Sky Fibre you had to have Sky Talk?

Regarding the waiting list, yes - somebody will take your slot and you will go into the waiting list. You do not necessarily keep your current fibre slot as such.

To get Sky broadband of any kind (barring legacy setups) you have to have Sky line rental. AIUI Sky Talk is not a requirement on top of that.

The "different places" can arise where the fibre headend exchange is different from the PSTN exchange.

On cabinets where there is spare capacity, then yes - an all at once switchover like you had can occur. On full cabinets it is a risky business.

Edit: I don't actually see the relevance to the discussion of where the fibre supply comes from anyway.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 27-Sep-16 23:40:12)

Edit: I don't actually see the relevance to the discussion of where the fibre supply comes from anyway.

Me either, sounds like a mess due to the cabinet being at capacity - that's my gut feeling.

Surprised BT took the order if cabinet was in that state, certainly could not place an online order when my cabinet was in that state.

A friend of mine did a house move with BT. BT were happy to put them on ADSL for 11 months as the new cabinet was full. This sounds like ending with similar result

Once your telephone line is back with BT, we'll contact you and place your order for BT Infinity, before arranging a date for your engineer installation

House move is a different scenario, since only other option then would be no broadband

Looks the same to me, the order for broadband is placed after the line is moved to BT.

Well that is not the normal way that BT handles an inbound migration of voice and broadband from Sky, since I've done it to (as has another poster in the thread) and it was seamless apart from the downtime during the switch on the day.

Well, that's what they told the OP

So the puzzle is figuring out why this order has digressed away from the usual pattern for migrating from full LLU onto BT WLR and SMPF

Perhaps because of the waiting list.

In reply to a post by krustykrab:

I now also have further concerns as after using the BT broadband availabilty checker my cabinet shows WBC FTTC status as "waiting list" as I am worried I may lose FTTC completely if it becomes disconnected.

I think some people are saying "he already has a port, he can keep that" but in my experience moving from BT to Sky I lost my port and was moved to another one.

It seems to be the case for all FTTC migrations that if the cabinet is full the only sort of order that can be placed is an entry at the bottom of the waiting list.

In the case of the OP that may be why BT Consumer don't want to place the order until there is availability.

If we knew the exchange and cabinet, then perhaps "the one who knows" will be able to tell us if additional ports are planned, or if it's just a case of waiting for a release at the moment.

Personally, I would cancel the migration until the cab is showing availability, and try some renegotiation with Sky instead.

Missed the full cab post.

But (sit down please) would agree with BatBoy and cancel the migration, either renegotiate with Sky (might be able to push them to £10/m plus line rental if you sign up for 12 months) or wait it out until cabinet is out of capacity state. If I recall I waited 10-12 weeks for that - hopefully when I do next years experimental move there won't be a capacity issue.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Personally, I would cancel the migration until the cab is showing availability, and try some renegotiation with Sky instead.

I agree I would 100% not proceed with this migration. My experience is that the port will be lost as well. Due to a lack of available ports I expect the user to either be stuck on ADSL for a long time or to have no broadband what-so-ever as they are in the waiting list. Either is not pretty. Once you lose the port you are at the bottom of the waiting list.

Just been in touch with BT again, it appears that the problem stems from my property being still down on their system as the original plot No instead of the official post office address number, which I thought I had previously sorted out through SKY.
The operator is getting back to me tomorrow to see what they can do for me.

In reply to a post by krustykrab:

Just been in touch with BT again, it appears that the problem stems from my property being still down on their system as the original plot No instead of the official post office address number, which I thought I had previously sorted out through SKY.
The operator is getting back to me tomorrow to see what they can do for me.

Fingers crossed for you, all I can say is when migrations go bad they usually go real bad ie no connectivity for a while. You might be jumping into the frying pan here and chances are you can negotiate a decent deal with Sky retentions which is likely to be the same or better than BTs offer without the risk. Where my broadband is concerned I am risk averse ie I cannot live without it so I would be seriously considering whether to proceed with this migration.

You have multiple issues here:
1) Address not correct on BTs system
2) Waiting list at cabinet
3) BT to-date have failed to migrate you normally ie seamless broadband and phone at once (further suggesting an issue down the line)

All of the 3 things above should be raising some alarm bells. Certainly just number 1 alone has caused significant delays in many cases. When we factor in the waiting list as well it becomes too risky for me. I feel here there is more chance of it going wrong than going right, especially with a mass market provider such as BT.

Have now cancelled the order.
Does not inspire any confidence when they were sending mail correspondence regarding a new line installation which was not required to the incorrect address (old plot number).
Strange thing is when I rang them they confirmed that there is a current telephone line connected to my correct postal address yet this does not bring up any result on the BT wholesale checker.
I really need to get my property sorted out correctly in the openreach database before trying to migrate at any time in the future.
Can anyone suggest a way forward, have tried to do this before by contacting SKY but it does not appear to have been successful

A Sky phone line will not normally show up in the BT Wholesale dbs. Sky phone lines in nearly all cases being MPF LLU which don't involve BT Wholesale. The BT Wholesale phone line dbs being a subset of that of BT Openreach which should include all lines.

So is there anything I can do to ensure a trouble free migration in the future

Honestly the most likely route is going to be BT sort it out. I would deal with that bridge when it comes to it. I hope sky offered you a good deal, ensure to call cancellations and speak with retentions. Obviously do not cancel, but the best offers to be had sit with that team.

Just to update I was looking into re negotiating with SKY then discovered that my address is now registering correctly on BT database and the cabinet has come off of waiting list to FTTC available.
Had another go at ordering infinity 1 and it all appears to be proccessing correctly this time (including £140 tracked through quidco) hopefully it all changes over smoothly this time.

Great stuff! Keep us posted.

All up and running now.
No problems on the day just a break in broadband of about an hour during change over.
Amazing how much simpler it is when the database is correct.

I'm glad to hear it's all up and running now!

In reply to a post by krustykrab:

All up and running now.
No problems on the day just a break in broadband of about an hour during change over.
Amazing how much simpler it is when the database is correct.

Agreed.
The Guy next door from me had his FTTP and FVA (i.e. phone moved over to fibre) all go live apart from the broadband LOL.

But yeah its great if it all goes to plan.

Paul