I think the dross is in all telecoms companies marketing departments. They seem to delight in producing highly complex tariffs with multiple options that alter the tariffs in such away that making direct comparisons is virtually impossible.
As for the marketing puff they do their damndest hide the real rates so plugging the values into a spreadsheet with your own useage pattern to work out the real cost is almost impossible.
It's a new build - I'd imagine that it'd be in the builder's interest to market the property as having phone access, and that *they'd* therefore pay BT for the work to be done up-front, recovering the costs from the individuals who bought properties. 120 quid tacked on the price of a flat/house doesn't add up to much, %age-wise.
No, I agree there. It just seems odd that BT would put it in "for free" (because they didn't know for sure that anyone would ever need it), and then it might just sit there decaying slowly for years until someone did ask for it.
For existing builds there's not much they can do when it comes to digging up the street and laying a bunch of cable as part of regular maintenance, I agree - it's just the new build case (as with the OP) that seems a bit odd to me. Unless of course they've "billed" the constructor already, and then they get to bill the individual when they sign up too, but you'd think there would have been some upset about that if it were true.
cheers
Jules
Oh. all the ones that have peak time TV adverts yes.
But look here
Line rental plus clear call charges. Or packages that include free calls up to a limit.
I'm paying less than half what I paid BT + A.n.other ISP.
And I still have two lines to play with courtesy of
Why spend money on what may not be necessary?
Typically a builder will lay in a pretty fat bundle - say 20 pair or whatever - into a block of flats, and wire that up to maybe two pair to every flat.
That will end up in BT conduit or pole somewhere.
Now BT wont have 20 pair back to the exchange free. So they don't want to connect it all up - they do it on an as needed basis.
The £120 is not really enough to cover costs. But it nearly does so,
Its easy money iof all te wires are in good nick and have been poreviuously connected, but often they people want brodband, amd its a sad fat that 20 year old cabling often doesnt cut the mustard. I've never seen so many Openreach vans rushing around pulling cables as I have seen since the village went broadband. They've pulled TWO new cables past my house in ten years.
And there's a fir bit of shiny new overhead as well.
I dont think they bill anyone., because they don't connect anyone.
The cable will lie curled up in the nearest BT cabinet or manhole until such time as its needed.
Not familiar with British situation. But seems rather naive to assume that just because there are some wires there that there will be telephone service! And even if there is dial tone on a pair of wires doesn't mean there IS a specific telephone number associated with that!
There are a lot of technical and procedural steps, to setting up the service in the name and address of the customer. Assigning or transferring the telephone number, listing in telephone directory, arranging for billing, any extra options etc. etc.
Someone just doesn't wave a hand and it all happens magically. And then someone has to have sufficient pairs of wires and telephone cable connections to serve the area. No point in having unused telephone numbers/lines in say Leeds if service is needed in say Farnborough.
With the exception of 'wars' you could move to the USA?
There despite some taxes they pay for everything!
They are calling Obama a socialist because he has the temerity to suggest that US health care should cover everybody, that better education is a citizen's right.
Hasn't got the war thing straightened out yet.
Despite Bush's "Mission Accomplished" rant from an aircraft carrier (in the Pacific of all places)!, the USA tends to not win the wars they themselves start!
: Assuming there is spare pair back to the exchange. At some point new : cable will be required; according to :
I would have thought they would use a single fibre optic cable with that capacity at significantly lower cost.
Roger R
and how will they power the repeaters?
BT has no fibre downstream of the exchanges except by special request.
And the termination equipment is not as cheap as the D-SLAMS.
It will happen eventually, but not today.
Fibre's cheap. What goes on each end is expensive.
Owain
Unfortunately if the line works for voice without excessive noise or crackles etc but will only support 512kbps ADSL then that's just tough.
Half the village was probably on DACS, broadband doesn't work over a DACS lines only dedicated pairs so they have to pull in more pairs to provide the service. This is slighly odd as BT only have a universal service obligation for voice not broadband, but maybe BT Openreach get enough revenue from BT Wholesale selling broadband to justify the costs of replacing the (unreliable) DACS units with dedicated pairs.
They've had to do that in a couple of places round here recently but not the ancient bit of aluminium cable that I'm on. It can't be economic to retain it, if a random fault occurs and they have to delve into any of the (many) joints they create a whole load more faults and there are Openreach vans working on that cable for about a week before it settles down again.
Do a google on TPON.
I has already happened, but it wasn't as successful; as they'd hoped, so they probably wont be updating any more existing locations, but it does exist in some and could be used for new build estates.
tim
Not half, but quite a bit, yes.
Here they seem to be replacing and adding whole chunks..
if a customer complains, they go onto a new pair on the new cable..
I think that is something that the (apprently) hopeless PO management should look at. I'm sure the couriers would buy a delivery service by PO van in many rural areas. We now have the PO, PF, UPS, DHL, Home , going past us every day plus others.
The "OT - Parcels" thread has thrown up a few options but none manage to provide the "anyone to anyone else" system that we currently enjoy from the PO or other couriers.
Or if they want the licence they have to provide the service within a given time scale or face a fine for every year that service is not provided or loose all the licences they hold.
Presumably media cable virgin (or what ever they call them selves this week) now has all the cable franchise licences in the UK. I say that the licences for areas that have not had any service provided are taken from them and given, along with a grant, to smaller companies to provide the service. These days it would be fibre to the premises and there are large pots of grant money available for this to happen.
Being able to provide "cable" TV services as well as broadband would make it easier for these small companies to survive. They probably wouldn't have to actually do much other than sell bandwidth on their network to "media cable virgin" who actually provide the content.
BT will rent duct space but I don't know how big the price tag is...
I have a questions that sort of relates to this thread. My husband moved to the UK one month ago from the US. We moved to a two floor flat that has two phone jacks on the lower floor and one phone jack on the upper floor where the phone service comes in to the structure. The landlord who previously lived here, had all phone jacks working - but I don't know with which service provider. We ordered BT phone service and received our phone number and they activated the phone jack that is on the upper floor. When I called to tell them that the lower floor phone jacks no longer work, BT told me they are only obligated to hook up the line where it enters the structure and it would be another 125 pounds minimum to activate the lower floor phone jacks. Does this sound normal?
It is if they have to come back.
IIRC they will install an extension in with the basic cost but only on the same visit.
However you are entitled to wire up extensions yourself if you have the right type of main socket.
You need to provide further information
tim
If the extension used to work last month when the landlord lived here, but no longer work since we have changed the BT service to our name, it seems that there is some sort of 'switch' that needs to be turned on. I have hooked up many phone extensions in the US, but do not know how they work in the UK. Is it as simple as having the wire run downstairs connecting the extension? Or does BT need to 'turn something on'?
BT doesn't do anything beyond the master socket and doesn't need to turn anything on. They may even have removed the private wiring to the slave sockets when they enabled the service, assuming they even came to site, and they were having a problem. You will have to reconnect this and fix any problems to get the private part of the installation working again.
For the wiring, see telephonesuk.co.uk/wiring_info.htm or
All you need is the connections 2 and 5 wired in parallel to each slave socket from the back of the removable faceplate of the master socket. The "ring wire" on pin 3 is there to provide ringing for the older type of phones produced to BT specifications. Some modern ones also need this but most do not. If a phone doesn't ring, then either connect pin
3s or use an plug-in ADSL filter obtained in the UK.If you want Broadband (ADSL) then more work may be needed... (e.g. not connecting the ring wire is a good idea for ADSL installations)
.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html.
Thanks, I'll give it a shot!
Annette
Something I don't understand here.
A bit further down this thread it's said that BT don't install fibre because the cost of the terminating equipment at each end is too expensive and also they couldn't then power their downline repeaters.
There appears to have been only one BT full scale trial of an entire fibre exchange to subscriber network (TPON) at Milton Keynes, where customers found they can't have ADSL because BT fibre cannot carry it and an addition copper connection is necessary.
How is it that fibre cable companies provide a full range of services whereas BT fibre cannot ?
Also how is it that 'pots of money' are available to companies for fibre installation but BT can't get the funds for fibre upgrades limiting (crippling) the national commitment for ADSL to 2 Mb.
Roger R
The utilisation of the non-Royal Mail vans is, if anything, likely to be better than the Royal Mail vans.
It is stretching credibility beyond breaking point to suggest that Royal Mail vans chock full of parcels have been replaced by 10 different firms each driving around with near-empty vans; there is more than enough work to go round.
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