A good idea I think as Openreach are effectively a monopoly and rumor has it that they significantly favour BT customers. TalkTalk, Sky etc should be happier, but it is still a monopoly and charges monopoly prices.
I recently saw a program with a builder that had to pay £14,000 to have a telegraph pole with one line on it (normal road, no access difficulties etc) moved 6 meters. The builder reckoned he could do it for £1,000. That's monopoly pricing for you and we all pay extra for it in the end.
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Guess you just watched this mornings Homes under the Hammer then!
I thought they already operated as seperate entities. My BT Broadband went down a few weeks ago, and BT just blamed openreach, but appeared to find it very difficult to get any updates from them - I found out more by walking down the road and asking the guy working on the cabinet
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>>Guess you just watched this mornings Homes under the Hammer then!
Guilty as charged! It was background noise as I wrote up a report.
I still think as a separate co, they will favour BT due to the common heritage, though over time this will diminish.
A few years back (when broadband was rare) a BT man was in a hole just outside my house and my connection to work died just as I had a vital document to get in. My phone line went down as well.
He was out of the hole and putting his tools away in the van and I went out to ask if anything was wrong as my connection as it had "died". He said he had done nothing to my connection.
So I called BT and another man came round. Opened up the same manhole and found a cut cable. Accidental no doubt, but the first man should have checked given he was just in the hole.
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I had seen the openreach guys working on the cabinet in the road, so when my broadband went down I left it for half a day before calling up - the indian call center guy suggested the fault was in my house and I would have to pay £130 for a call out "if" the fault was my fault. I pointed out that openreach were working on the cabinet I was connected to but he said that was just coincidence....
Open reach eventually called me to say the fault was outside my house so they wouldnt need access, and it was fixed - still took a week thouhj
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I had an "event" with Virgin a few years back when both my TV and broadband, which are delivered into my house on completely separate cables, went down at the same time.
When you call them up you press 1 for TV 2 for broadband etc, and the first person I spoke to (internet) wasn't able or even willing to discuss the "second" issue (TV) which, as I pointed out, had to be on their side somewhere. Nevertheless after doing the usual checks and reboots they insisted I needed an engineer appointment.
So I then called back re the TV and had a similar conversation with someone else but eventually accepted that I had to have another engineer out, which I managed to make the same time as the first one.
Magically the problem was fixed the next day without me seeing an engineer...
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Hmm had this very situation vith Virgin this morning after losing service on Sunday evening - first engineer available on Friday
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When our phone went down but internet still worked the engineer plugged a device into our master socket and found a fault. There is an area master junction box about half a mile away, he started checks there and worked his way towards the house phoning me from each check point (three) for me to relay the light colours on the attached device. The fault was in the cable between the hole in the pavement and the house. I had visions of the block paved car park (not posh enough to have a drive) being dug up but apparently we have an eight way cable with only two used so it was a simple switch from the duff lines to ones that worked.
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BT and Openreach to Split - mikeyb
