bt fibre optic

im wondering could someone please HELP!!
I live in a fairly rural area in northern Ireland and since I moved into my new house about 7 years ago the fastest broadband speed I had tested was about 1.2Mbps until approx. 2 and half years ago got letter in the post from bt saying fibre optic now available in my area. Delighted I signed up right away and within 2 weeks the engineer had my bt infinity up and running at 17.5Mbps. All was good until the start of this year when I rang bt to see If I could get my bill down any(£58 per month), after a minute or 2 the lady I was speaking to told me she could bring it down to £42 per month, I agreed and that was that. The next morning we had know broadband at all, I tried resetting the router etc but nothing worked, rang bt and got their call centre in india, the guy talked me through some stuff and said I should be back on line in few hrs, next day still nothing, rang again at least 4 times over the next few days until eventually got them to send an engineer out again. 2 weeks later engineer informs me I don't have fibre optic anymore but was able to switch cables and get my [censored] 1.2Mbps back, not amused I rang bt again and told the whole story again, the lady checked my line and says fibre optic isn't available in my area, when I explained that id had it for over a year she didn't understand how, ive since tried on several occasions and each time its the same answer, not available in my area!! Could somebody please help??

The usual reason for this is that BT messed up and you were mistakenly disconnected. By the time anyone did anything about it, the connection you had at the fibre cabinet had been re-used for someone else because the cabinet is/was full. When the cab is full, it does show as "Not available".

How you get it sorted out I don't know sorry . It expect it will have to wait until someone does leave, as they aren't likely to kick someone off to put you back on. It isn't going to be easy.

Cheers Bob, my best mate who works for HP and is well into all this sorta stuff had said the same thing and more than likely is the case,thanks again for your reply, very much appreciated.

Well . Good luck. I hope it gets reinstated before too long. It will need your ISP to stay on the case though I think. Unless Openreach upgrade the cabinet - that's your best chance.

How does he stand with his contract?
I'm guessing in order for his bill to be reduced he would've entered into a new 12 month contract that the ISP would provide him with his fibre service for that minimum?

Would be interesting to see the wording of the contract. A lot of contracts are potentially a minimum term that the customer agrees to rather than a binding contract that the supplier will provide it for the minimum term.

Would be interesting to see a legal viewpoint on whether the 12 month minimum terms are applicable to both sides or just to the customer.

Minimum Terms relate only to the customer committing to not terminating the contract within that period unless they pay a penalty, the early termination charge.

Otherwise the contract is almost invariably open-ended for the ISP to supply the services and the customer to pay the fees. It is rare to find a fixed-term contract in telecoms.

All contracts are binding on both parties; that's part of the definition of a contract.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Would be interesting to see the wording of the contract. A lot of contracts are potentially a minimum term that the customer agrees to rather than a binding contract that the supplier will provide it for the minimum term.

Would be interesting to see a legal viewpoint on whether the 12 month minimum terms are applicable to both sides or just to the customer.

The true construction of most contracts for telecommunications services imposes ongoing obligations on both sides, with a minimum period of service imposed on the consumer.

In this case, it sounds as if the original poster entered into a contract to amend the original contract for services. The terms certainly involved an obligation to pay a different (and lower) monthly charge, and likely imposed a new minimum contract period. The key thing here is that this amending contract appears to have been for an ADSL service, not the FTTC the original poster previously enjoyed.

It is unclear whether the switch to ADSL was a mistake on the part of the customer, who failed to understand what is clearly explained to him (which does not create any entitlement to leave the contract), or misrepresentation on the part of BT Retail, who might have claimed nothing would change in the type of service (which may well create an entitlement to rescind the contract).


The contractual position probably matters very little now, in that I'd expect any minimum contractual term for the ADSL brnadband service to be close to elapsing (unless it's more than a 12 month minimum). The main problem is the unavailability of FTTC, likely due to some sort of capacity issue at the cabinet.

If the problem is a lack of tie cable pairs and/or line card ports, this can be solved relatively easily and will likely be done in time. If the entire cabinet is full, it's either a case of hoping a second cabinet is installed or waiting until someone ceases their FTTC service.