Going round in circles

New to the forum so hope I've posted this in the right place.

Long story short, I moved into a flat on April 3rd with the previous tenant moving out the previous day. He had sky broadband. I subscribed to Sky tv/broadband that day and awaited the engineer to fit it all.

My broadband engineer never came and I rang to find out open reach had cancelled the engineer and appointment because of 'lack of availibility'.

After hours on the phone over the next few days/weeks open reach are saying they have no availability for my flat even though the previous tenant had broadband and everyone on my floor has broadband.

They're telling me I have to wait until June to get an answer for a solution? Unbelievable!

Anyone heard of anything like this or any way to get round it. Any way of contacting open reach to get them to just come down and reconnect the line?

Thanks for any help.

Is it ADSL2+ based broadband or Fibre broadband? And which did the previous tenant have?

Sky are the ones who should do the leg work and chase on your behalf.

ADSL. Sky just keep saying they'll get in touch with open reach and then saying to wait a week to hear back. That's been going on for 3 weeks.

If its adsl and you are taking over an existing line on a property no need for an engineer to attend. You sure Sky has not ordered a totally new line rather than reactivate ceased line

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If its adsl and you are taking over an existing line on a property no need for an engineer to attend. You sure Sky has not ordered a totally new line rather than reactivate ceased line

This is likely what has happened. The previous occupant has probably failed to cancel the service so yours has been ordered as a new line, but there are no spare copper pairs at the DP.

I thought so too. But when I've attached a router there's no connection and when I plug in a phone there's no dial tone.

Would that be the case?

The "lack of availability" could be happening anywhere in the network. Perhaps Openreach have run out of pairs between the exchange and the cabinet, or the cabinet and DP, because someone has started to use the pair since the old service was ended. That would make it impossible to provide a service to you, no matter that the old occupant had service.

Or perhaps the stuff about openreach is a red herring, and Sky have run out of ports on their DSLAM. In which case, perhaps getting a line from another ISP is an idea.

As for an engineer attendance: doesn't that depend on the way Sky released the line for the old subscriber. Doesn't a line cease make a difference, compared with a stop? Or does that only apply for BTW-based lines?

So what can I do?

Do I have to sit and accept I won't have Internet until mid June?

Can't believe this in the year 2015.

Do I have to sit and accept I won't have Internet until mid June?

Pretty much. And hope they don't hit any issues that might delay it further.

Even with all the money in the world it can still be difficult to employ sufficient levels of skilled resource for the amount of project work BT currently have on - that results in delays at times for delivery.

Edited by ian72 (Wed 06-May-15 16:34:49)

Have you considered a different ISP. You could at least check even if you don't go through with the order.