BT Internet - ADSL - FTTC - Whatever

I have a good friend who has just been able to extricate himself from SupaNet. After nearly two months finally they got to sign up with BT Internet. At the time I tried to get him on Virgin as I've had no trouble at all with mine but in the end he decided on BT.

The go-live date was 4th of December and I went round on the 5th to set up his new router, email etc. Plugged the router in, lights indicate no ADSL. The help(Sic)line were useless, at first they said it would come on soon...........

Another phone call said it would come on 'Tomorrow' and a third passed us through to provisioning who said there is no spare capacity in the BT cabinet and they cannot give us a date for the ADSL to come on.

As of this morning it's still not on and i think he's going to order Virgin after the holiday period and cancel BT as they cannot provide the service he has contracted.

The question is, why did they let him sign up and transfer his phone account etc, when they couldn't provide the ADSL he asked for?

H

Edited by Hamster1962 (Tue 23-Dec-14 19:31:22)

If you have set up the router for ADSL it's not surprising it hasn't come on.

Yeah, thanks for the smart ars answer. BT sent him a modem\router, I plugged it in.
No ADSL, Web, Internet, Infinity, Signal, whatever you want to call it.
Apologies for not typing all the ridiculous acronyms correctly.
Do you work for BT? Your unhelpfulness and sarcasm matches theirs perfectly.

H

Edited by Hamster1962 (Tue 23-Dec-14 13:08:33)

Bob's reply was I suspect a little tongue in cheek and he is normally one of the most helpful people on the site.

As far as why BT accepted the order - usually if a cabinet is full (assuming this is BT Infinity) then they wouldn't. If it is ADSL then it is capacity at the exchange that has run out - again, normally this would stop them accepting an order. Presumably something went wrong at BT and they made a mistake.

The difficulty now will be that technically the phone contract has started and cancelling that could be difficult as BT may insist on the contract period being paid out. There may be a fight in getting them to accept that phone without broadband is a breach of contract and therefore a reason to cancel.

Welcome to TBB, Hamster. I too was a newbie a few years back and soon learned that Bob is one of the first people to offer help on this most helpful of websites. You posted under the heading BT Infinity so you should not be surprised if people expect you to refer to fibre rather than ADSL. Let's be charitable to our new guest and forget his/her ill-mannered second post.

Interesting that the OP edited his post to change the title AFTER his ill-mannered second post. A "whoops, sorry it's ADSL not Infinity FTTC" would have been much more appropriate!

I don't have BT Infinity; but have had EE VDSL Broadband since June; and have been wondering what would happen if the EE Brightbox 2 was set to ADSL instead of VDSL ( there is also an Ethernet possibility).

Just tried it.

BB2 was working fine on VDSL.

Accessed the ADMIN part, "Advanced" and simply chenged from VDSL to ADSL, then "Connect".

No obvious effects and stlll able to access various sites.


Back in to ADMIN to note that it had reverted to VDSL.

-------------

Changed again to ADSL, But saving the settings this time.

The BB2 sitched to ADSL; and first the Internet LED changed to Orange and went off, followed by the Broadband LED in a similar manner.

Not unexpectedly, NO access to the Internet.

---------------

In ADMIN, changed to VDSL; and again tried a simple Connection - None and this time it automatically reverted to ADSL.

--------------

Back to ADMIN, changed to VDSL; but this time doing a Save of the settings.

Again the Save forced a change from ADSL to VDSL; and first the Broadband LED came on, followed by the Internet LED.

Now able to access Internet at the normal VDSL speeds etc.


So learned a little bit more.

-----------------------

I also took a quick look at the BT HH5 "Self-Install" PDF - might be of use to you-

http://btsupport.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/3445634...

If you just click buttons w/out saving, on any router, then nowt changes. So 1st & 3rd 'tests' are pointless.

He's done an edit since your post as well. I haven't been around since before your post so don't know what the two stages were.

If it really is ADSLx the friend has signed up for, it's no wonder they got in a mess with BT Help, which is part of the initial complaint. He must have been talking to them about Infinity, to get the reply about the cabinet being full.

I'm afraid I was a bit abrupt, (and tongue in cheek as Mick suggested), with my initial reply, but somehow had a feeling the opening post was very questionable.

So far as I can see, and taking his reply to me about not knowing (or caring) about what things are called, we have no idea whether ADSLx or Infinity has been ordered, and neither does he. He clearly doesn't understand they are very different beasties, much more so that the difference between ADSL Max and ADSL2+.

Until he sorts that out he there isn't much point in he or his friend ringing BT Help.

We don't even really know there is a problem at all with the connection itself. The chances of an ADSLx plus phone migration failing are rather low.

You can see by eckiedoo's reply what he changed it to first.

With his careless attitude to what it was his friend actually ordered (as demonstrated by the latest choice of title) there's no way of knowing what the actual situation is, let alone offer any constructive help. If all we are going to get from him is silly changes of the topic title I think we are wasting our time (and his friend would probably be better off just talking to BT direct without his "help").

(I've replied to the OP's post to preserve the current topic title)

Edited by jelv (Tue 23-Dec-14 22:20:59)