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Old 05-10-2011, 14:08   #1
gingerbull
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 3
gingerbull is an unknown quantity at this point
Frustrating installation woes - BT have annexed my trunking!?

I'm after some advice - please bear with the long story :-)

I moved into a brand new house a couple of years back, a house inside VM's cable network - or so I thought. The house was built on what was formally some allotments adjacent to some established properties. The driveway, which is quite long, is block-paved, but the developer had the foresight to lay trunking from the very edge of the drive to the house itself, along with a draw-string to allow cable to be pulled through. When trying to get a VM installation I was told that it wasn't possible, since the tracking under the footpath terminated too far from my property, at the far edge of the neighbour's property - therefore the width of the neighbour's property away from the edge of mine. I was told that there was a limit of something like 3 meters that the VM installation teams would dig for an installation. That was that, until I was told that the rules had changed, and that digs of up to 10 metres were now possible. I tried again, the spotter told me that all should be well, and I signed up for an installation. The installation never happened, and when trying to find out why I was told that the distance between the end of the tracking and the start of my trunking wasn't an issue (it was about 8 meters), but that the installers had spotted that the BT cable was pulled through the same trunking. I was told in an email that "Once BT have used the duct it is their exclusive property and we cannot use it". Strictly, the trunking is my property, not BT's, but I'm sure that it too literal interpretation of what was meant. Nevertheless, given that VM's cable would fit easily alongside BT's cable, it does seem odd that VM are unable to proceed, though I accept that they feel their hands are tied.

I work a lot from home, and my work requires fast and reliable connectivity - my plan was to have both an ADSL and a fibre connection, so having the BT cable removed isn't really an option. As there is no physical reason why this can't happen I was wondering if the lateral thinking forum members could see a way around this situation that would allow me to get a VM installation.
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