No dial tone

Hey guys. Moved into a new house and got Virginmedia moved with me. This area has high utilisation so my virgin speeds slowdown to sub 10Mbps daily.

I am considering moving to sky again although there is no dial tone on the current BT socket.

Does this indicate a line fault or is it standard practice for a BT line to not even have a dial tone when disconnected?

Standard practice AFAIK

Having a dial tone would require it being connected to active equipment - BT won't generally do that for lines they aren't receiving income on, especially in a VM area where a fair percentage of lines may not currently be active. Even if it was a line fault BT should fix on install - personally if I was doing what you are considering I would order the BT line, get it installed then cancel VM - that way if there are any delays you won't have time where you don't have service but you will pay twice for one month.

Great thanks guys! I just wont be home during any of the install dates so was hoping it would be a quick connect and go. That's what the ISPs all suggest, all say I don't need to be home. We already have a fibre socket on the wall.

I'm only paying VM £10 a month with line rental right now though (as they have acknowledged my area has high utilisation which is service affecting) so it's tempting to just deal with the peak time issues until they get resolved. I can generally stream on the TV in non-HD even during peak times.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 22-Dec-15 15:44:15)

If they can see a line that can be restarted then you would not need to be there and if after it was re-started it did not work then it could be logged as a standard fault.
If it was not a simple line restart then an engineer would need to call at your home to get it installed, there is a possibility he may not need access but if your not there and he does call then that could cause a charge to be raised.

Just make sure if its a line restart then you should be OK but if its a new line then someone will need to be home.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Having a dial tone would require it being connected to active equipment - BT won't generally do that for lines they aren't receiving income on,

They do it all the time. The line is flagged as stopped, so there is a dial tone but the user can't dial out. It means that the line can easily be reactivated.

What has probably happened here is that the line has been stopped for so long that the copper pair has been reused (or partially reused) and the OPs line is sitting disconnected somewhere.

Ok update, my phone was just faulty.

There is a dial tone, I can even dial out and make calls. However there is no broadband active, the previous owners left their router plugged into the socket.

Strangely if I ring the landline number back which can call me, my landline phone does not ring or register the call? Although I can ring out just fine. What does that mean?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 24-Dec-15 15:16:10)

If you can dial out, but can't phone the number, it sounds like the the previous owners haven't actually ceased the line but have possibly got the number on divert somewhere.

Dial 1470 17070 from it to see what no. it has now.