BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

My first post so howdy all ;)

We're thinking of moving from VM telephone and BB as it's just costing us too much.

We've been living in this house since it was built 7 years ago and have always been with NTL/VM here, so there is no BT line to the house (I assume). I found out installing a line will cost over £100.

First question - can you guys confirm this high cost?
Second question - I hear some people install lines on a freelance basis (and at a much lower cost); has any one heard such a thing? If so, where can I find out more?

Many thanks for your help.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

:welcome: to Cable Forum :tu:

BT line install costs have always been quite pricey. Makes sense really since BT end up installing and then find the line is handed over via LLU rules to a competitor so BT don't even get their costs bak, let alone make money from phone calls and the like.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

:welcome: to the site :)

As far as I remember, installing BT lines do cost about 100 quid, so that's not suprising. I thought they tended to provide offers nowadays, but I guess you're unlucky.

I don't know about freelance installers though. I'd guess they'd discourage this as they wouldn't want other people tampering with their network.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

You can get whoever you like to wire up extensions and stuff within the house. Can't see how a freelancer could do the stuff needed to get the connection into the house though.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

BT put it's installation prices up about 18 months ago I think and yes that is the price as far as I am aware. If you get a line installed by a third party BT will not support the line if it proves faulty. They only provide support for lines and equipment they fit.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

The cost of a new residential line is £124.99

You can pay in installments Long link

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Wow thats expensive :Yikes:

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

how is going to BT gonna reduce your bill anyway?

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

£124.99? Bl**dy he** they put it up again? Wow, they must really hate new customers lol

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

I remember when I had a line installed in my room. Dial-up internet those days so for a young, hormonal boy, that's important. I remember (to the pound) BT wanted 110 quid, but Cable & Wireless only wanted 11 quid. So that was the start of my C&W/NTL/VM career, way back in... '95-ish

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Great help guys thanks.

zinglebarb: we don't want to switch to BT, but getting a BT line will give us so many more options and give us some flexibility. The kids in the house are growing up and using the phone a lot more (I can't understand how they can talk so much!)

Our bill with VM is pretty silly at the moment and going with someone who offers free local and national calls will save us a lot. We're also paying £25 a month for broadband and monthly we're paying around £70 with the phone bill. Switching to someone else, TalkTalk for example, will save us a good £40 a month considering local, national and some international (USA and Canada especially) calls will be free. Although I hear bad things about TalkTalk...

Anyway, the line is to give us more choice. Using the example above, I guess the line would pay for itself within 3 months considering the savings but as you all know, the cheapest isn't necessarily the best value for money.

Any recommendations for our case? Lots of calls all around the UK during the day and evening, quite a few calls to USA and Canada, and moderately heavy broadband users.

Thanks.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

have you not heard of VMs unlimited local and national geographical offer then?

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ct.do?id=10258 there is an international call plan you can have

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Thanks for making me aware of that package. Unfortunately, we'd still be paying £25 on top of that for broadband.

If the BT line installation charge wasn't so high I probably wouldn't hesitate to switch, so it'll take a bit more consideration.

Many thanks for the help guys, muchly appreciated :)

---------- Post added at 00:25 ---------- Previous post was at 00:22 ----------

What exacly is involved in "installing" a BT line in a new house any way?

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Calls to the US and Canada shouldn't cost more than 1p/min. It's as simple as dialling a prefix before the number you want to connect to.

Personally, I still use Onetel for international calls, but they don't take new customers just for the international calls since they were taken over by Carphone Warehouse.

0844calls.co.uk offer a similar service. I've never used them, so I couldn't comment on the quality of service. There are several other companies offering a similar service though.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

another thing that ive started to recommend those who want to leave vm and go adsl is to ask your neighbours what kind of service they get and if they get speeds that are fast enough.If you to far from the exchange you may get a lot less than the 4 meg you get now also there are often hard caps on cheaper services Talktalk for example have a hard cap of 40 gig per month.Orange is unlimited upto 8 meg for £20 quid.Probably the cheapest unlimted service is with sky but then of course you have to subscribe to sky tv.
Dont expect to be able to find an good fast speed with high download cap for nothing we all want that ;) you did say moderately heavy broadband users so to find a package for less than 25 quid with a good high cap and then get cheap calls abroad and included calls in the uk for less than the VM packages isnt gonna be as easy as you may think

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

We actually already have Sky TV and are looking into their broadband option. 40GB a month is fine for us, we don't use more than 30GB on most months (that's downloads, not including uploads).

First thing first though, need to find out about line installation. Going to a wedding this weekend where I'll meet the person I heard about these freelance line installers from so I'll find out more and post my findings.

Thanks for the useful advice.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

i moved to my present home in 1978 and had a shared bt line with a neighbour across the street it cost me then £92 to get my own line,the bit that sickened me was when the opposition started coming in bt was offering all kinds of deals.i have continually been contacted by bt to come back[no chance ] they always have been and still are greedy ******s.:mad:

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Yeah regulation has forced the costs up only 2 years or so ago they were £75.

Previously the install costs could be lower and simply absorbed by BT, now BT is all broken up and each department has to justify its expenditure with some like openreach making very little money. LLU as you said is also a big demotivator to reduce costs as BT have less chance of getting it back over time from subs.

---------- Post added at 19:52 ---------- Previous post was at 19:50 ----------

Bear in mind if the line is already in place its free.

Here I had no line going to the house but wasnt charged, I forgot the reason it got waived but the engineer said something about it been easier then expected. I expect its to cover installations that require a lot of resources to complete.

---------- Post added at 19:54 ---------- Previous post was at 19:52 ----------

Perhaps an answer as to why BT make money and VM dont :)

---------- Post added at 19:56 ---------- Previous post was at 19:54 ----------

Sky is probably your best option then as you can get 8meg BB free (in LLU areas) and they are soon to launch a cheap phone package. I would first check that you are in an LLU area and your phone line will be good enough quality, can check at samknows.com with your postcode but would be wise to ask a neighbour who has adsl.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

I had aline installed in February and have not received a bill for it. The guy who installed it said i might not get charged because the builder has in fact done most of the work and all he had to do was connect it up. If your house is only 7 years old, is there any possibility some of the work up to the house may have already been done? Maybe ask a neighbour....

I was told when ordering the reason why BT charge such an amount for installation and they stated they allow for 3 hours worth of technician time :dozey:

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

After looking at our options, Sky seems to be the most appealing.

Chrysalis: samknows.com tells me Sky has enabled my local exchange (Glenfield in Leicester) for their services. How can I check the quality of the line? Is there any website that can estimate what speeds I might get? Unfortunately, all the people we know on our street have a cable service.

superbiatch: I don't have a clue whether work up to the house has been done. Is there any way I can check myself? Otherwise I guess I'll only know once an engineer comes down.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Do you have a bt socket in the house and is there a line from the pole to the house unless its a underground system :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

There is no BT socket in the house, only NTL.

There are no poles or cables in the air in this area, so the cabling must all be underground.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Is there a grey point on the front of the house .I live on new estate and there are grey boxes on the front of the houses its a underground system .Or there will be a grey pipe at the front of the house :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Just checked and there is a brown box on the side of the house - I'm pretty sure this is the NTL box. There are no grey boxes (or any other boxes). However, there is a cable coming from underground going into the front of the house, as shown in this picture:

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

This goes directly into our living room and has never been used before. Here's a picture of where it comes in:

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Could this be an already installed BT line?

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

you can put in postcode on samknows and it will tell you direct distance from exchange.

if its under 0.5km it will very likely be good, under 1km it will more likely be good then bad, under once over 1km is when it becomes a big gamble really as its possible for a 1.5km distance to be very good but also be bad. Remember these are straight line so reali distance will be more. ofcom state the average is 1.4km distance to 1km straight line but in many cases I have seen much larger gaps.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

That looks like it maybe it, ive seen a very similar connection to BT before in another house. You could check by carefully taking off the blanking plate and seeing whats behine there. It will most likely be twisted pairs.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

I opened it up today and this is what I found:

http://www.wajidyusaf.com/hostedstuf...409(Small).JPG

What do you guys think? Likely to be a BT line?

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

That looks like twisted pairs. In theory it should just need connecting up at BTs end and a Master Socket Installing in your property. So shouldnt cost BT much. It might even be worth getting your own master socket and fitting it on to try and blag BT that it had been used before (by the builders or something!)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

See what can happen when you ask ;)

When you get onto BT, be armed with information and although not appearing cocky, explain you don't wish to be charged the full amount as you are aware some of the work has already been completed. It simply needs connecting.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Well a number of other forum users have said BT waived the installation fee because there wasn't much work to do (in their new'ish homes), so if this is in fact a BT line I'm hoping they'll waive the fee for me too.

When I last called them a couple of months ago I told them it was a new property and a BT line had never been used in the house. I was told in that case I would need a BT line installing, costing £125. But now that I've discovered this I think I'll tell them there's a cable coming into the house which I think may be a BT line, and see what they say.

Thanks for the help. :)

---------- Post added at 15:42 ---------- Previous post was at 15:29 ----------

OK now a few more things have occured to me. (Note I don't have any experience with ADSL)

1. Is it standard to have only one BT line point in the whole house? We have 3 NTL ones at the mo.
2. Is installing points in other rooms in the house part of the BT line installation cost?
3. If this line in the living room is the only one, I presume both phone and BB will need to be connected to it (through one of those filters)?
4. If other points are installed in the house, would it still be best to hook up BB to this 'master' line in the living room for the best speeds? Or would that not make a difference?

Wow I never thought this thread would turn into this :) Thanks again.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Installation of further extensions are not included although i was under the impression you could pay someone else to do this after initial installation by BT?

Both phone and broadband are connected to the same socket using a filter which may mean initially phone calls are a bit crackly - for the first 10 days or so to find out the best speed for your line. I got three filters with my ADSL modem kit supplied by VM.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Both BT and VM use a master socket as the first point in the house. These master sockets are designed so that extension sockets can be connected without the need for BT or VM to do the work.

When we bought our house there was a similar looking grey conduit coming up out of the ground and a blanking plate on the other side of the wall in the kitchen. Taking the blanking plate off there were the easily recognised telephone wires. Taking the grey conduit cover off outside you could see the other end of the telephone cable that came out of the kitchen and similar wiring coming up out of the ground and capped off. The two cables were not connected.

We had both BT and NTL for a while and both master sockets were side by side in my study. It was very easy to get the other extensions in the house connected to either master socket.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

You maybe able to get BT to do a site survey, just to confirm exactly what work is required,


1. There is only normally 1 master socket. Unless everal different people have requested installation of the master socket in different locations (generally older houses) Or if there is a second line installed.

2. Bt dont generally install extensions anymore thats why they introduced NTE5 Master sockets. With an IDC tool from B&Q and a couple of wall boxes and a few metres of twisted pair you can easily run in your own wiring and conenct as follows.

White/Orange 4 - 3 Orange/White
White/Blue 5 - 2 Blue/White
White/Green 6 - 1 Green/White

Depends whether you enjoy DIY! There are plenty of EX BT engineers in the local paper who will do it for a small fee!

3. If you want to connect both to the master socket you will need a filter. You will also need a filter installed on every extension socket in the house. You can buy wall boxes with built in filters now for a little more, they look a bit neater I think.

4. It always best to use the Broadband on the master socket. Less to go wrong and less excuses for BT not to send an engineer when there is a problem. Also less line distance between modem and exchange.

I was quite lucky as I have completely gutted my house I have ran in Cat 5e for Network and Pairs for the Telco accross my house and installed all master sockets for ntl and BT all in one corner with my router, which makes everything nice and neat. I also hid all the ntl cabling behine the skirting board. If I were eevr to move to BT changing over would be pretty simple just a new router. Sky would be the only ones able to make a mess but I wont let them near here again!.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Very useful info there thanks guys.

I rang BT today to enquire about the line and they told me (by looking on their system) that the wiring to the house has already been done by the house builders - good.

But they said they still might charge the full £124.99 installation charge depending on the amount of work that's involved at the exchange. I didn't understand what he was saying to be honest, and it sort of seemed to me they wanted to charge me £125 for simply flipping a switch on their end to make the line active.

And another thing that surprised me was the minimum term contract of 12 months - once I get the line installed I need to pay them £11 rental for a minimum of 12 months from the date of installation, which is ridiculous IMO. I asked if I could just get the line installed and not activated just yet and was told this wasn't possible. What if after trying an ADSL broadband service I find my line gives me below acceptable speeds and decide not to go long term? I would still need to continue paying BT line rental even though the line wasn't being used :mad:

Does this all sound right to you, or was this CS dude talking out his backside?

I'm pretty convinced now that all the engineer needs to do in the house is attach one of those master sockets to the wall. What's this work that needs to be done at the exchange (by different engineers I was told)?

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Look into a VoIP service like voip.co.uk, you could even get the kids their own landline phone each! If you have heavy internet use, you may need to get a decent VoIP router with some QOS

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Take the bottom bt together option and that has a min term of 3 months instead of 12, the 2 higher packages are 12 only.

I expect you wont have to pay the install fee but the problem is BT dont want to decide that before the install takes place.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

The ADSLMax training period won't affect phone calls. ADSL should be outside of the audible spectrum and well beyond the range of the human ear.

If you could hear the ADSL through a filtered socket the filter is failing abysmally to do its' job and it actually breaking the line. The whole point is to seperate them to avoid the voice part interfering with the DSL.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

When i complained to VM that is what i was told (stupidly i believed them ;))

But my crackling did subside after a few days :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Unfortunately, BT Together Option1 now also has a minimum 12 month term, since 1 May 2007 I believe.

Anyway, I'm getting a line "installed" on 18 June 2007 and I'll look closely at what work is being done by the BT engineer. Tea and biscuits will be my weapon to soften him up and try and get that fee waived :D

After looking at our options we've pretty much decided we're going to change our phone and broadband to Sky (we already have Sky TV) from VM.

Is it possible to estimate what speeds I'm looking at with:

1. Sky's 'Max' option (ADSL2+)
2. Sky's other options (ADSL)

given the following information from samknows.com?

I'd be happy with 4Mb really. Any higher is a bonus, any lower is a downgrade from what I have at the moment (VM 4Mb).

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

The fact you cannot get 2meg fixed is a sign of a long line and is over 43db attenuation, I have 49db attenuation and the checker says yes to me for 2meg fixed.

Also your estimated max speed is 3.5meg whilst for me is 4.5meg.

I estimate you to expect somewhere between 4 and 5meg on adsl1 and perhaps 4.5-6 meg on adsl2+.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Time for an update.

After much consideration we've decided to change our phone and broadband to Sky. In addition, I managed to negotiate a half price Sky+ box with free installation :)

We should have phone by next Wednesday, having transferred our VM number to the BT line.

Broadband will start from 22 July.

Sky+ is being installed on 4 July.

I'm glad I came here for help, you guys have given very useful advice so thank you :)

Finally, with regards to the original thread topic, the official BT line installation charge is £124.99 and all the engineer did was put a master socket on the wall and attach some wires in the green box down the street. He said I may not be charged but will have to wait and see.

Even if we do pay the whole installation charge, we will have made up for it within 3 months from the amount we should be saving on our monthly bill.

Thanks again.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Re. the Sky Broadband -

Have a read of these :)

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/speed...explained.html

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php


And consider getting one of these for the BT master:

http://www.adslnation.com/products/xte2005.php

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

I have just had my bt line 'turned on' for free, previous house owner must have had bt and the line was all intact.

This next part is slightly off topic but has to be said ::::

My current services:
sky+____VM 20mb___Vonage unlimited
37.00___37.00______7.99

Total: £ 81.99

My new services:
sky+____VM 20mb___Sky Talk___Sky Broadband 8mb___BT line rental
21.00___37.00______5.00_______5.00_______________ 11.00

Total: £ 79

So i dropped the movies ( dont watch them ), and gained a real land line, gained an extra 'upto' broadband service, and saved money at the same time :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

FYI I was informed by the guy sellin g sky in the local shopping centre that the sky+ half price offer uses reconditioned plus box's. Not sure if that will be the case for you though.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Yes I was aware of this and made sure I got a new box and not a reconditioned box. Actually, I was trying to negotiate for a free box and was told free boxes were reconditioned and they had no reconditioned ones to give me, which sounds to me like half price ones are new ones. But they could have been lying of course...

Oh, by the way, today is 4 July, the date of my Sky+ installation. I rang on Monday to confirm the installation was still going ahead since I had received nothing through the post and you can probably guess what I was told :mad: So I had to reorder (lucky the notes about half price box and free installation were still on the system) and now I have to wait until the 18th. Not so great on the Sky+ side, but got my broadband stuff quickly. I'm going to set it up tonight so hopefully it'll go smooth :erm:

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Thanks for those links Matt D, very useful, and already learnt loads from skyuser.co.uk :)

Well my broadband was activated yesterday and I get 6Mbit (750kB/s download speeds) on my line (which is 2.1km straight line distance from the exchange and has an attentuation of 50db). So looks like the change was the right thing to do: for 40% of the price I was paying for VM BB, I'm now getting 1.5 times the speed :) (with none of the annoying throttling)

Sky+ being installed next Wednesday and Sky Talk coming soon afterwards. Thanks to all those that have helped me on this forum :tu:

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

hello everyone. First post here. Quality and helpful forum this is!

Anyway, i have just cancelled my VM account due to there p*ss poor customer services, and would now like to get the O2 broadband. You need a BT account for this. I have just seen that the installation charge is 124.99 too. However, we live in an old house, which has been converted into 5 flats. Im pretty sure that someone in our flat has BT as i pick up his BT home hub wireless router! Also, we have an old socket in our living room with 'TELECOM' written on it. Would this be a BT socket? Do you think i would still have to pay the £125? Sorry if i sound dumb......im new to all this. Thanks a lot!

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

The best thing to do is ring BT. They will be able to see if there is any wiring and the work involved in getting you live on it. If there isn't too much work to do, you might get away with paying less or nothing (as i did).

Good luck :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Until the end of June (I think) BT will install a line for £29.99 if you agree to be on one of their call packages for 18 months. See:
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/p...o/SNL21-08.pdf

Or if you've got Sky and no BT line, Sky may offer to credit your account for up to £125 if you pay BT and take Sky Broadband.

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

Ring them on 0800 800 150 and they should be able to tell you :)

Re: BT Line Installation Costs >£100?
 

thanks very much for your help everyone.

toots......thanks a lot for that link, its come in really handy. i owe you a pint!!