Hi,

Whilst you shouldn't be forced down the path of a specific supplier, in this case I think that going to BT is the best approach for several reasons:

1. They are the providers of the USO
2. They are the same company as Openreach (not that that generally makes much difference but it might here).
3. If you don't get anywhere then the BT chairman's office complaints process is often able to cut across both Openreach and BT retail, which might be necessary in this case.

I would cancel the Zen order, stick an order into BT and if you get ECCs coming back then respond with a complaint to the chairman's office.

Note that there are two possible outcomes here, one is that you get fibre (woohoo!), the other is that you are flagged as not having fibre available to you and you are offered ADSL. From what you have said, I think you'd be happy with either outcome.

Thank you more ideas. We are slightly limited by the main aim of my aunt being able to always pick up the phone and call someone. No loss of service or telephone number. Thats partly why Zen, they were the only one who said we could sign up and then once up and running move the telephone number afterwards. BT could have in theory but could only get sales droids who couldn't cope with this idea.

I do notice all the ECC pages imply it is for new additional lines. I wonder if we have confused things and not made clear we are a continuing existing connection have a manadatory upgrade... Perhaps it doesn't actually matter.

USO, we could have had the USO as internet adsl is only guaranteed at 4mbps. But only option offered was BT 4g 15mb/s for £52 a month which didn't sound attractive. Kafkaesquely now we can get fibre we are not longer eligible for the USO because in theory we can get gigabit internet even though we can't afford the charges to build it. So they will only contribute £3400 to the build cost when we can't get it, now that we can they won't help it seems...

Vodafone as above we were scared the fibre installation might fail and drag down the existing telephone number and internet into a dead end with no way back to John Lewis. Their prices are cheap but their customer service if there is a problem is not that good a reputation.

Trying again with BT is an idea. No body seems to know if they will actually swallow gerater install costs. And they are the cheapest for adsl with a call package oddly. So it could fail gracefully in theory...

The ground under the railway bridge is indeed solid rock with a large important storm drain in the way too so its not clear that it will ever be practical to duct through it without causing problems. Not sure where that leaves us.

Thanks

does the storm drain go underneath the bridge and b) who owns it?

if it goes fully underneath the bridge and out again the other side it might work. A fibre connection could go that way, its cheaper but theres is tons of hurdles

The costings supplied by the ISP show CP ( communication provider ) and OP ( Openreach ) , the CP element is what would be passed on to the consumer…the rate for excavation in unmade ground ( what Zen have inexplicably called soft way ) is around £29/m , so the duct between the poles at 50 odd metres ( approximately £1500 ) is what the CP ( and therefore the consumer) is expected to contribute , the pole/span clearance costs are borne by Openreach.
There are a few things to consider, the USO is already satisfied, the OP can get mobile in excess of 10Mb and apparently the previous ADSL/FTTC ( it’s not clear which ) was delivering around 10Mb.
There does seem to be some inconsistency in the way excess construction costs are applied , in this case , if it’s only the duct under the railway bridge that’s ‘new’ and that’s £1500 , it is less than the £3400 that OR/BT absorb under USO , but this isn’t a USO case.
The duct under the bridge could be interesting, if the surveyor has stated it’s a soft/unmade surface, but it turns out not to be ‘soft’ , and as that’s a railway bridge, it’s unlikely that any excavation can take place without some sort of Network Rail acquiescence , did the surveyor even consider this ?

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 06-Sep-23 21:38:50)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

The duct under the bridge could be interesting, if the surveyor has stated it’s a soft/unmade surface, but it turns out not to be ‘soft’ , and as that’s a railway bridge, it’s unlikely that any excavation can take place without some sort of Network Rail acquiescence , did the surveyor even consider this ?

If the customer agreed to pay the £1,500 and it turned out to be a much bigger job with much higher costs could Openreach/CP come back to the customer for more money or is it a fixed price?

Thank you though the fear is the storm drain will be damaged by the duct trenching rather than offering a place for a conduit. I'm not sure exactly where it is buried to be honest.

Just as a passing thought have you actually checked what the mobile coverage is like? There are lots of cheaper options than the £52 per month you quote from BT for mobile network internet access. If the coverage is adequate and my limited understanding of the technology is correct, would it be possible for you to arrange to ditch the landline completely, transfer the landline number to a VoIP provider and then connect one of the VoIP compatible phones as discussed in the VoIP forum to the mobile router? That way the existing landline number could be retained even though the landline itself has gone while it would appear little different to your relative in terms of picking up the phone and making or receiving calls.

Edited by GonePostal (Thu 07-Sep-23 01:28:26)

Definitely should not be placing cables through drains.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/broadband-rollout...

there was this trial.....

Just a trial. Openreach won't participate