Changing supplier - cabinet full

I currently have fibre broadband through Sky and once my contract runs out at the end of the year I will be looking to change to a new supplier (possibly talk talk or plusnet depending on who has the best deal at the time).

One possible issue is that my Fibre cabinet (Halifax 87) appears to be full and has a waiters list according to BT wholesale. What I don't want to happen is to lose my "slot" and be without fibre broadband as I waited years for it and cannot go back to the ADSL speed of less than 2Mb. Providing I switch properly by dealing with the new supplier will I keep my fibre "slot" or could there be problems with this?

Wondered if anyone else had any similar experiences?

Thanks!

I think you may well lose your slot and it will be awarded to the first waiter on the list.

Surely, as long as the OP goes for a migration he should be fine, shouldn't he ?

How can his new supplier place an order if there are no slots available?

He already has FTTC, so on the day Openreach just reconfigure his existing port to his new ISP.

Makes sense to me, but then that doesn't mean it makes sense to CP's and Openreach.

What I'm thinking is that the new ISP will order ADSL because they can't order FTTC.

Could be, common sense will doubtless go by the by. [sad]

When I switched from Sky to TalkTalk for FTTC I had to wait for availability on the connected cabinet even though I already had FTTC. As mentioned above, the new ISP cannot place the order if there is no availability. Your best bet is to keep an eye on the checker and order as soon as there is availability.

Thanks for the replies. Definitely sounds like there is some risk or not possible at all. Was thinking of changing to save a few £ as cancelling sky tv but not prepared to risk being put back on ADSL. I will monitor and not change unless there is spare capacity.

When i migrated ISP's both BTW based i didn't really give it a thought, A FTTC >FTTC migration shouldn't require there to be spare capacity in the cab because as far as i'm aware there is no engineering work required at the FTTC cab for a migration , only the head end GEA Cable links get changed if going from BTW to GEA LLU such as sky and talk talk ,But it must be to complex for their systems perhaps or who ever is placing the order are doing something wrong

It's just the lousy information and systems within Openreach Tommy. If the cabinet is full the ISPs get information from the database saying that, and that as a result they cannot order anything to do with FTTC.

The Openreach system at that level don't seem aware of the possibility of FTTC >> FTTC migration. End of. It needs amending to recognise the number submitted as an enquiry already has FTTC on it and reply so - then allow a migration order to go through if submitted.

Obviously at migration time they are aware that the line is already on FTTC and act accordingly.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It's just the lousy information and systems within Openreach Tommy. If the cabinet is full the ISPs get information from the database saying that, and that as a result they cannot order anything to do with FTTC.

So would they manage any better if they were not part of BT?

I doubt it. As it is now it stops people migrating in to Infinity, which can't be a request from above.

batboy is right if its not BTw to BTw which it wont be as he is with sky and moving to talktalk.

If a LLU provider is involved then its ceased and reprovided, so not advisable on a full cabinet.

(note, it is possible the cease and provide process reserves the port, but I havent read anything that says that).

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 04-Dec-15 05:05:46)