BT £126 Connection fee ? who else is there?

Question

having been a ntl customer for a while now we have just moved house and our street does not have cable :( ,no cable no bravo So we are switching to sky we are wanting to take there adsl broadband service but have an inactive bt line (brand new apartment )and bt will change a £126 connection charge even tho we want sky not bt sky have said we need a bt line is there any company to offer broadband without goin through bt and paying £126 remember my street is a non cabled street

Answer 1

Try Talk Talk there are the best thing that happened to me

Answer 2

try southern electric... I had the same and didnt get charged a reconnection fee... they warn you that there may be a connection charge but there wasnt for me.

Tell them you've just moved in and want to be with them for your phone.... (and if you have their gas and electric too you get further discounts!)

And they do broadband now too!

Answer 3

It is bt openreach that charge the fee. Your paying for an engineer to do the work.

Nothings free these days.

Openreach(the wholesaler) are separate to BT Retail(the provider).

BT Retail are now the same as sky or orange or any other provider - the reason they are separate from the engineers is to allow other providers like sky or orange to set up phone lines.

OFCOM told BT to separate from the engineers(and rightly so) because of the monopoly they had on the market. Now ANY provider should be able to place an order for its customer with Openreach IF they choose to do so.

Sky have the chance now to get in touch with BT Openreach(the engineers) but for some reason havent decided to take up this oppurtunity! It seems they'd rather let BT Retail(the provider) tell you it will cost £125 and save themselves a whole load trouble and system set up costs. It apparently cost BT millions to set up the new systems.

I know all this because I've just been through what you have and demanded a full explanation!

So although its good its now an open market it does mean BT Openreach(the engineers) have to make their own wonga - so that falls at our feet! UNLESS you can blag SKY or BT or whichever provider you choose to pay the connection fee.

Its always a good tactic to threaten going to other providers because at the end of the day a company should always try to keep you.

Answer 4

No man sorry, you have no choice but to pay up to BT.

Answer 5

You do not have to rent your line from BT.  There are other suppliers who take over line responsibility from BT (they actually 'rent' them from BT and then sell them to you).  The Post Office will rent you a line for example.

That does not necessarily get you off the connection fee.  Because you have not got a line currently, it needs to be connected so, instead of charging you directly, BT might charge the company you rent your line from and THEY will pass on the cost to you.  At least that means you won't be tied in to BT's line rental costs.  Some companies have their own equipment in BT exchanges so you may get a better deal for connection - sorry, I don't know who but Uswitch.com might have some suggestions.

Answer 6

Unfortunately there is no way out of this. We went through this with BT when we moved into a new build a year ago.

My brother worked for BT in another city and told me how the connection process that people pay £126 for consisted of him going out to the local exchange and soldering a couple of wires. I was furious!!!

They still have some sort of a monopoly where this is concerned and considering that it takes over an hour in a queue system to get to speak to an advisor and you end up speaking to someone in friggin Bangalor that you can't understand, it's an absolute disgrace!

Sorry I couldn't offer you some better news and good luck in your new home.