Buying house - Address Checker / Gotchas I should know?

Hi,

Long time user. I'll try to be brief......

I live in an Apartment that was originally too far from the exchange to get anything above 256K. 5 years later I was lucky enough to be saved by FTTC and now get a decent 40Mb (I was incredibly grateful for it). Over those years ADSL guide/ Think Broadband community were a big help.

So now, I'm older and I'm looking to buy a house rather than an Apartment. I've seen one. Priority number one: FTTC or Cable. No cable but FTTC is there. Its an empty house with no-chain and so no working phone number that I can get somebody to check for me.

I'm working on getting the number from the estate agent / solicitors. In the mean-time I've used the BT Wholesale Address checker. All looks rosy:

M24 6TN on Exchange MIDDLETON is served by Cabinet 72
Featured Products:

High Low High Low
FTTC Range A (Clean) 80 64 20 20 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 79.6 52.9 20 12.2 -- Available

How much do I trust the address checker?

I've driven the estate and not far down the road is the cabinet with the big "Fibre is available here" poster stuck to it.

But I remember when I ordered my FTTC connection in my current address the engineer mentioning that the cabinets can get "Full" and despite being on an enabled line and cabinet you could still miss out. - How likely is that?

Would a phone call to BT as a potential new customer yield that problem before I spend all the money I have on a house that would be worthless to me without a good broadband connection?

Are there any other pitfalls I need to check for before going for this house? I would make national news if I bought this house and then found I couldn't get broadband.

Have you edited out the earlier parts of the address, or did you in fact use the pure Postcode checker?

Availability can change at any time. I don't think anybody could forecast what it will be when you complete. What were the ADSLx estimates, in case you have to wait.

Thanks for the reply. Yes edited out the full address. Didn't seem fair as the property doesn't belong to me (yet).

The ASDLx estimates were poor. Maximum 3Mb.

The electoral roll will provide te names of those living either side, if you get names for two or three houses to each side and maybe opposite you should be able to find some of them on Directory Enquiries. Once you have some actual numbers then try those in the number checker - not perfect however it should clarify what others are getting and give an indication as to whether the address estimates are reasonable.

Ooh Good thinking! Thanks.. I'll definitely try that one!

For a friends' house the BT address and number checkers (not postcode) both show speeds with a date in the availability column. Then below is a statement:

FTTC is currently not available on this cabinet due to following reasons:- Sorry your cabinet is temporarily unavailable, capacity will be restored as soon as possible.

That suggests the cabinet is full to the extent of ports installed and that an upgrade is planned.

Excellent. That is well worth watching out for! Here is the property results I get via the address checker:

Screenshot of Results

That would suggest around 300 to 350 actual distance from DSLAM cabinet to PCP to pole to house.


Just need to get some neighbours' numbers and see if they correspond.