FTTC phone line severed - fix it, or move on?

Hi. My mother lives in a 1970s-80s poorly made bungalow with a copper line that, for reasons unknown, runs from her house, underground for 2m, up the neighbour’s external wall, into their loft and…out again onto the street. She bought the house 21 years ago and it’s always been this way. The neighbours forgot about this cable and last night cut it in two places. They’re distraught. She now has no phone (digital voice/BT) or broadband. She’s 81 and on her own.

I’m in a dilemma and need your advice. I have been on the verge of buying Starlink Residential, porting her phone number to a VOIP service, buying a DECT-to-VOIP/ethernet adaptor, and dispensing with the phone line. She lives in rural Devon and only has FTTC. FTTP is planned for this year, but even if that does happen, they’ll need to run fibre overground from the street. Starlink offers a) cheaper service b) faster speeds.

I’ve booked BT to fix the cable cut - or should I just use this opportunity and move to Starlink completely, not fixing the line? Part of me worries that there’s no backup line; if we want a physical phone line again, that might involve greater costs in getting her reconnected as the line will need to be placed away from the neighbour’s house.

I should also say that she has almost no mobile phone signal.

Thoughts and advice welcomed. I don’t know which route to take!

Cheers

Will

I would take the fix to the existing line and wait for fttp

Also feeding her line through someone else loft really isn't acceptable.

Wait for BT to fix - do they know that your Mother is vulnerable (just her age would qualify her)?

When BT are onsite, query the routing of the line - hopefully they'll be able to reinstate without going via someone else's building.

Not sure what you're paying for the current service but if Starlink is cheaper then I would venture that you're paying too much for a basic broadband and phone service.

Thanks for both your replies. Will get it fixed.

Agree. Whose responsibility is that? When she had Digital Voice installed, the engineer noted how ridiculous it was but mumbled about it being too hard work to fix.

First thing I’d be doing is ringing BT (if that’s who the phone service is with, and stressing to them your mother’s vulnerability. If access issues 24/7 then just have them send out an engineer ASAP.

The engineer can the reroute/renew the cable.

The call out charge for this can be passed on to the neighbour … they cut the line.

Get the existing service fixed, and connectivity restored to your mum. That’s the focus of this.

Worry about FTTP when it arrives.

I’d not use Starlink myself

In reply to a post by deiwise:

Agree. Whose responsibility is that? When she had Digital Voice installed, the engineer noted how ridiculous it was but mumbled about it being too hard work to fix.

That cable routing is for Openreach to fix as it should have never been installed like that, I would raises it with the engineers when they attend and if you don't get anywhere with them I would raise it with her ISP and if that fails escalate upwards.

Thanks

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The call out charge for this can be passed on to the neighbour … they cut the line.

If I had cut it in my loft, I would be asking for wayleave payments at least equal to the cost of the repair ...

I think this one is down to OR for using that route.

At a guess this is a bungalow next to a house and they were built at the same time, the cable routing was done to keep the overhead line at a sensible height. The fix will be a new drop wire and a fairly large bracket to get some decent height.

I would expect the cable route to have been agreed, maybe even suggested, by the owner of the house whose loft it passes through.
It seems highly unlikely that BT or Openreach just broke into a neighbours house, scampered up into the loft and slyly ran a cable through it.

If repair charges are raised, these will be onto the customers bill. It will be up to them to seek redress from the person’s who have damaged it.

Yes, that's about our understanding. Neither my mum nor the neighbours bought the houses from new, but both were built at the same/similar time. The main issue here is it being rural Devon - there are no straight lines, line of sight is not a thing, etc. I can't see a telegraph pole from either house, so how they'll get a new line to my mum's house ... no idea. For now, I've asked it to be fixed and patched, and maybe in the future we'll ask it to be done properly.

When the OR peps come, hopefully your neighbour will be in (if they can) and hopefully between the three parties a more suitable solution can be found.