How to confuse (almost) every broadband provider in the UK

Some time ago I was one of the first people in the UK to have FTTC, which BT brand as “BT Infinity”. It basically works by plumbing your crappy old copper line into a green box near your house instead of going all the way back to the exchange. The gap between the box and the exchange is bridged by fibre optic, meaning you get less “line noise” and better / faster broadband.

Anyhow. I’m in a situation now where I’m looking at moving to another FTTC provider. Trouble is, it seems almost impossible to do. I’ve even started to give up and asked about “downgrading” to ADSL again.

So far…

– BT Broadband said.. “You need to pay an installation fee to get BT Infinity. We don’t know what FTTC is.”

…when I eventually got though to someone who was AWARE that FTTC IS BT Infinity, they told me that I still had to fork out to have it installed, even though it’s…. installed.

– TalkTalk said… “We cannot provide FTTC on your line”

…this was confusing as they have their LLU kit in our exchange. I pushed further, and they eventually said that YES, they COULD, but I’d have to downgrade to ADSL, then get a MAC code, then move. Sure, I could do this, but it would mean me entering into another 18-month contract with my current ISP.

So I started to give up and tried getting ADSL instead. I’ve got a MAC code all ready, so it should be easy. Right?

– Orange (and other ADSL providers) told me, “Your line is returning some strange information. We can’t process your order. Call our customer services team on this expensive 0844 line.. bub-bye!!”

So, I’m stuck. I want to save money on calls and internet. I’ve discounted some of the more specialist ISP’s because of this.

Now I’m down to two options..

One – PlusNet. They actually understand terminology and what I’m trying to achieve. Cheap too.

Two – Cut the BT line and get Virgin.

Thoughts? Recommendations?

Update – BT have started sending me tweets, which is jolly nice. However, they’re still adamant that I need to pay £25 to have it installed. I told them that I already have it installed but then they told me that a BT Openreach engineer still needs to turn up and install it. I’ve now sent them these pictures, just to show that I already have it installed… :(

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Update 2 – After sending BT the pictures if my ALREADY INSTALLED FTTC they still maintain that I need an engineer to attend. There is absolutely no reason for this at all, so BT are off the list for being crazy.

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