yup, the saga continues..
the install itself is done

woohoo!!
the phone is fine.. so the missus is happy.. but.
it seems my NTL account has not been activated/transferred correctly as i can only get onto the "autoreg" registration page. the modem and line are definately up.. as the traceroute gets several hops into the route before it times out.. and the DNS is resolving the names.
what now