No DSLAM Ports Available After Fibre Order Accepted

Hello, here's my first post to this excellent forum.

I recently signed up to Plus Net Home Phone and Fibre after their website confirmed Fibre Optic was available in my area. I have a BT socket but no working phone line. Order was accepted and I chose 3 alternative installation dates. The Land Line was activated within 1 day & indeed on plugging in a phone, there was a dial tone. I also received a fibre router in the post.

I then received a message saying my chosen installation date would be confirmed within 24-48 hours. 1 week later I heard nothing so I contacted Plus Net who informed me the Fibre order had been cancelled due to "no DSLAM ports available". I also received an email saying "the exchange was full to capacity"!. My first question, are these DSLAM ports at the exchange or within the fibre cabinet?

My average standard ADSL speed available is 1MBs and I cannot justify paying land-line rental for this speed!

What is really frustrating is Plus Net say I am now in an 18 month contract with the land-line and can't get out of it unless I pay a fee. But the only reason I activated the landline with them is because they accepted my Fibre order after telling me it was available in my area! Had they told me it was not available from the start, then I would not have signed up to their home phone service. I don't even need a land-line for phone calls, it was only for the fibre! As they now cannot provide the service, surly I should be able to get out of the contract?

I have been offered their standard broadband at the same price as everyone else. I may as well use 3G which gives me a faster speed than standard ADSL. What should I do? Please help!

Steve

Edited by steventaylor50 (Mon 07-Oct-13 22:28:37)

It's unlikely that every port that can conceivably be installed in the cabinet is full.

More than likely, the resource exhaustion is temporary. BT Openreach add line cards as required, rather than installing a full set of expensive line cards only for most of them to sit completely unused. BT Openreach don't necessarily install a full set of tie cables between the two cabinets at initial install, but sometimes hold back on installing some of these cables until later.

The chances are that if you wait a short while and try again, the order will go through, either because the resource shortage has been resolved, or because someone has ceased their service leaving a spare port. Maybe PlusNet can keep an eye on the situation for you.

In reply to a post by steventaylor50:

Hello, here's my first post to this excellent forum.

I recently signed up to Plus Net Home Phone and Fibre after their website confirmed Fibre Optic was available in my area. I have a BT socket but no working phone line. Order was accepted and I chose 3 alternative installation dates. The Land Line was activated within 1 day & indeed on plugging in a phone, there was a dial tone. I also received a fibre router in the post.

I then received a message saying my chosen installation date would be confirmed within 24-48 hours. 1 week later I heard nothing so I contacted Plus Net who informed me the Fibre order had been cancelled due to "no DSLAM ports available". I also received an email saying "the exchange was full to capacity"!. My first question, are these DSLAM ports at the exchange or within the fibre cabinet?

My average standard ADSL speed available is 1MBs and I cannot justify paying land-line rental for this speed!

What is really frustrating is Plus Net say I am now in an 18 month contract with the land-line and can't get out of it unless I pay a fee. But the only reason I activated the landline with them is because they accepted my Fibre order after telling me it was available in my area! Had they told me it was not available from the start, then I would not have signed up to their home phone service. I don't even need a land-line for phone calls, it was only for the fibre! As they now cannot provide the service, surly I should be able to get out of the contract?

I have been offered their standard broadband at the same price as everyone else. I may as well use 3G which gives me a faster speed than standard ADSL. What should I do? Please help!

Steve

Complaint to ofcom and this sound very misleading by Plusnet when u first sign up because if they did metion to you that Fibre is available. If it wasn't plusnet fault at all because of BT Wholesale rejected the order because of Fibre is full. Then U're had the full rights to cancel the whole order even the phone too.

How would you know if the fibre is available or not? Speak to Andrew Ferguson of ThinkBroadband see what he think of this?

You may well see a date on the availability checker for when it's expected to go live again.

Check https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Complaint to ofcom and this sound very misleading by Plusnet when u first sign up because if they did metion to you that Fibre is available. If it wasn't plusnet fault at all because of BT Wholesale rejected the order because of Fibre is full. Then U're had the full rights to cancel the whole order even the phone too.

How would you know if the fibre is available or not? Speak to Andrew Ferguson of ThinkBroadband see what he think of this?

Ofcom doesn't deal with individual consumer complaints, only market failure and other regulatory issues. Any complaint would be handled first by the ISP's own complaints process then, following the issue of a deadlock letter or the passage of a certain length of time, by the ISP's alternative dispute resolution provider. As an alternative, the legal route is available (Letter Before Claim, then a County Court claim), but that's not something that can be recommended unless all other options have gone and it really requires the claimant to be clear about their legal rights if they wish to succeed.

There is no advertising standards issue here - it's not that PlusNet were attempting to mislead about what they could provide so much as a (likely temporary) unavailability of spare ports being discovered in an area where coverage would otherwise have been possible. I'm not sure whether PlusNet's point of order checker can recognise and reject orders where there are no spare ports, or whether this is only an issue that becomes apparent later on.


What is clear is that the checker said FTTC was available on the date the order was placed, but when PlusNet submitted the order for wholesale FTTC, it was rejected due to lack of ports.


The legal position depends on the wording of the contract or contracts. Did PlusNet's acceptance of your phone and fibre orders form one contract or two? If two contracts, the phone line and fibre orders are entirely separate, with the failure of the fibre order leaving the phone contract in place. If one contract, does the terms of that contract promise anything about simultaneous provision of a new line with fibre from day 1, in terms of whether it would be ordered from BT Wholesale as a "simultaneous provide", also whether the failure of the fibre order allows the phone contract to be brought to an end.

I suspect that there was no commitment to simultaneous provision, which isn't always possible, and that all orders are accepted subject to the necessary wholesale services being available to provide them (and, in any case, contract law does recognise the concept of impossibility).


As I said in my earlier reply, the chances are that this issue is temporary, and the problem will resolve after a relatively short time.

I would say that as broadband and phone is advertised by Plusnet as a "package" if they are unable to provide half the package then the whole package is void and should not hold the OP to a contract. They cannot sell a package deal and then only deliver one component (even if it isn't "their fault" - it is their suppliers fault and they contract the supplier and therefore are responsible).

How long has the cabinet been activated if this is within the first few days of it being live it may just be a database catching up issue.

The email was probably just badly worded.

I've cross-posted this in the Plusnet community forum so hopefully someone will pick it up.

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1189...

If we are unable to supply you with a Fibre service, regardless of whether or not you are tied into a 12/18 month phone contract, we should not be holding you to term because we are unable to supply the entire package that you have taken out with ourselves.

I don't know the full ins and outs of your case but as Andrew says, it may be a records issue.

I'm sure a member of the team will be along before long to clarify where we are with your order.

Whilst I don't know enough about the precise legal position, I'd say that any company that relies on strict interpretation of contract law has something to learn in the field of public relations...

Edited by billford (Tue 08-Oct-13 10:10:26)