How does residential phone line rental work?

Phew! Well there ya go. I'll bet the engineer will find it's still connected and there will be no charge.

If you'll all excuse what will turn out to be a rather verbose post, I'll see if I can explain the situation from the technical side of things in a little more detail. 

Let's start with the basic setup, assuming that only BT is involved (as was the case some years ago, before other companies could offer line rental).   With today's telephone system, when somebody moves out of a property and cancels telephone service, nothing needs to be physically disconnected, since the switching equipment is all remotely configurable in software.  A command is simply sent to his local central office (telephone exchange) telling it to discontinue service on his line.  At the same time, the line records are amended to show that every pair of wires used between the C.O. and the house is now spare.   The wires linking the pole outside the house to the exchange aren't permanently fixed to that single route.  There will be a huge cable carrying many hundreds of pairs which runs from the exchange to the first distribution point (those big green cabinets you see along the street), then smaller cables which fan out from there to more distribution points around that neighborhood, and so on, until eventually it gets down to the smallest roadside pedestals or pole-mounted junction boxes from which the individual drop cables connect to each house.  At each of those distribution points, any pair from one cable may be cross-connected to any pair on another cable to get service to a particular address.   

So the pair of wires to the house in question might, for example, be on pair #495 of the big cable to the first distribution point, then on pair #106 on a cable which runs from there to a green cabinet at the end of the street, then on pair #18 which runs  along that street to a junction box atop a pole, then finally onto the drop wire which runs to the house.   So when service is discontinued, pair #495 in the first cable, pair #106 in the second cable, and pair #18 in the third cable will all be marked as spare, but for the moment they will all remain connected together, still linking the telephone jack in the  house back to the C.O. 

Now, if you move into that house while that state of affairs subsists, then all that is necessary to start new service is to send the appropriate command via the software back to the switching equipment to tell it the new number and to start allowing incoming and outgoing calls. 

The telephone network in a particular area is always changing as people move in and out, request new lines and terminate old service, etc.  So if a new line is required somewhere, any section of the cable route which previously served the address in question is "fair game" to be reassigned to somebody else.  So, to continue the example, if somebody else in the same street requests a new line, pair #18 in the cable which runs along your street might be disconnected at the pole outside your house and then jumpered to a drop wire to a nearby house.  Or a new circuit might be needed between the first and second distribution points I used as examples above, so pair #106 in the cable which formerly served your house might be diverted at the second distribution point to connect to a cable which runs into some other nearby road.   Basically, it all depends upon how much of the line capacity is already in use, how much demand for service there is the area, and so on, but the longer the house stays without service the greater the chance that at some point part or all of circuit it once used will be "stolen" and reassigned to some other line.

If you move into the house and request service after that has happened, then it will be necessary for an engineer to find whatever pairs of wires are spare at the time along the entire route and then visit one or more of those distribution points to make the appropriate cross-connections to get service back to your house.   Depending upon local conditions, it might mean just climbing the pole outside your house, or going into the underground chamber by your front gate.  But it might mean visiting five or six different locations between your house and the exchange to make all the connections.   In some cases it might involve running a new cable along several spans of poles if there are no other circuits spare.   

This is why BT will quote a standard reconnection charge for "new" service, even if there was a previously telephone service at the address in question, since until the order is put through to the local area nobody will know exactly how much work is entailed in re-establishing service.   But as many of you have discovered, this tends to be negotiable at the billing/accounting level.  Engineers generally aren't too worried about it, and certainly at this time of year you don't want to be climbing up poles and messing around in underground chambers any more than necessary!

O.K., now we get to LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) which is where it gets messy due to third parties being involved.  All of the outside line plant still belongs to BT, although it has now been transferred to the still-fairly-new OpenReach division.   BT/OpenReach is still responsible for installing, maintaining, and doing all that outside cross-connect work on the cables which run around town.   

There are two ways in which LLU can take place.   In most of the major cities and larger towns now, many alternate providers now rent space inside BT telephone exchanges where they install their own switching equipment.  In these areas, when you get LLU service from somebody other than BT, your line is physically jumpered to that provider's equipment at the C.O., while BT/OpenReach is still responsible for doing all the outside line work which is necessary to get the line to your home.  In places where LLU operators do not yet have their own equipment, service for your line is still provided by the BT switching equipment, and your chosen provider simply pays BT for that use out of the line rental you pay them.

But either way, the outside line plant is owned and maintained by BT/OpenReach, and under the applicable contract once a line has been transferred for all billing purposes to another provider, only that provider may then order any changes or cessation of service on the line.  That's why things like reporting a fault then become a two-stage process where you notify your provider, then if he decides it's a physical fault on the outside line itself, he calls OpenReach to get the problem fixed.

Unfortunately, this is what gives rise to the problem of BT being unable to simply "take over" an existing service unless and until the current service provider relinquishes control, even when the occupant is vacating the premises and clearly will no longer need the line.  In that respect, it is not entirely BT's fault, since as the incumbent telco those were the conditions imposed on it by governmental ruling.   There certainly is room for a much smoother way of dealing with everything and for the average subscriber to find out who is providing what though.

DSL service adds another level of complexity to the problem, but that's another long post in itself.

You're the man, Paul! 

 

Wow, very informative, Paul, thank you. You have put in perspective alot of the problems I've been having.

As it stands, I have kept my order with BT for an engineer to come out three days after we move in. I phoned and tried to add broadband onto my existing order, and was told by the sales agent AND his manager that this would not be possible. They would need to cancel my order completely and start over, which would mean losing my appointment and probably having to wait an extra week for the engineer.

So they advised me to go ahead with appointment as it is to install the phone line, and then as soon as that's up and running, call and order my internet package. They will send out the equipment immediately (and won't require an additional engineer's visit), and I should have broadband 3-4 days after getting the phone line.

I hate having to use BT for broadband as well because they are the a**hole overlords of the phone world, but all of the other companies don't even want to know me until I have a live BT landline - I have been quoted anything from 5 to 15 business days for active broadband after getting my phone line installed. WTF?!

Anyways, that's my story as it now stands. I'm sure you're all on tenterhooks waiting for the next installment of Kate's Phoneline SOB Story.

Paul, again, thanks for the informative post. I will do my best not to assault the engineer when he comes - it isn't his fault!

O.K., to complete the story, here's how DSL fits into the picture.

The DSL (broadband) signal is "piggybacked" onto your existing telephone line, which is why you use a filter in your home to separate the DSL signal from the normal telephone voice and signaling functions again.   At your central office there is a piece of equipment known as a DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer -- Often called a "dee-slam" verbally) which provides the interface between the network and your phone line.  Providing new DSL service on a phone line means that a jumper connection has to be made between your existing phone line and the DSLAM, so it always involves an engineer visiting your serving C.O. at the very least.   Given that many exchanges are unmanned and an engineer only attends when necessary, this accounts for part of the delay, since the order system will try to group jobs at a particular C.O. together as much as possible so that several orders which involve physical wiring can be carried out with one visit.

As with phone service, you have the choice of service provider for DSL.  Once again, at many larger exchanges alternate providers rent space from BT for their own equipment, and if you subscribe to their DSL service (or via another company which uses that provider for its customers), then your line will be connected to their equipment.  At smaller exchanges where it's still only BT equipment which is present, your line is jumpered to BT's DSLAM and your chosen provider simply contracts with BT Wholesale to provide that part of the link to your home.

Don't go away now, there's more!

My basic description of the phone system last night implied that your home telephone line always has its own pair of dedicated wires all the way back to your C.O.   While that's true a lot of the time, it's not always the case.   In many instances demand for service can outstrip the available pairs of wires which are available out to a particular distribution point, and running miles of new, larger cables is a time-consuming and costly exercise. 

So where pairs of wires are starting to run short due to demand, there are a few "tricks" which are employed to ease the situation.  At the most basic, two subscribers can share one pair of wires by using a carrier system (your BT/OpenReach engineer might talk about DACS - Digital Access Carrier System).  You don't need to know the details, but you can look upon it as another "piggyback" system which puts two lines into one pair of wires at the C.O. and then separates them again at a box on the pole near your house.  It's the nearest modern equivalent of the old party line, except that neither person is aware of the other's presence and both can use the phone simultaneously.  You wouldn't even know you were sharing the circuit.   Remote devices (also found in roadside cabinets) called line concentrators can extend the line-sharing principle even further, although with a slightly different technique.

The reason this is important is that DSL will not work through any of these systems (which have been in use since long before DSL came on the scene).   For DSL you must have your own pair of wires all the way back to the central office^*, so you can probably see now where this is headed.

Many people assume that if they already have a working phone line then getting DSL is just a matter of "flicking a switch" or carrying out a simple connection at the C.O.  This may be so if your line is on its own dedicated pair of wires, but if you are running through DACS or a line concentrator, getting DSL to your home will involve an engineer making all the necessary changes along the route to put your home on a dedicated circuit, so as with connecting phone service, this can involve a visit to several different distribution points around the neighborhood to cross-connect.

What if there aren't any spare pairs along some point of the route at the time of your order?   The engineers will have to try a "free up" a pair by seeing if somebody else can be moved to DACS or a line concentrator.    For example, imagine three houses along your street, where you are house A and the others are house B and house C.  Due to the way lines have been assigned in the past, you are sharing a pair of wires (via DACS) with house B, while house C has its own dedicated circuit all the way back to the central office.  None of you have DSL at present, and there are no more spare circuits to your street when you request DSL.   What could happen is that the line to your house will be transferred to the circuit which formerly served house C, while the line to house C will then be put onto the DACS circuit to share the circuit with house B which you shared before.  (Of course, changes have to be made at the C.O. as well so that everybody remains on the right numbers!)

So even if you already have phone service, requesting DSL can involve considerably more work than just "flipping a switch" at the C.O., and that's partly why provisioning can take a while where it involves a certain amount of reconnecting of existing circuits to make a DSL-suitable line available to you.   In fact it can involve as much work at all the external roadside cabinets and poles as providing a brand new phone line!

^* Note for other telephone techs who may have strayed in here:  In some cases in the U.K. there is provision for a remote DSLAM to be installed along with a line concentrator to make DSL provision a little easier, but I didn't want to complicate things too much!

I'm having the same confusing phone line drama.  DH and I move on Saturday into a rental house and I want to get phone and broadband from Tiscali.  Their monthly payment includes line rental, but the only way I can sign up through them is if I have a phone number, which I do not.  The people at BT said I have to get the 12 month line rental contract through them and then get the services through another company, but there's no way I'm paying line rental twice!

Also, I've been told my the letting agent that the previous tenant had BT and BT told me twice that the phone line wasn't through them, but it was active.  I have no idea what to do or think and I'm just getting sick of this whole thing.  I've been recommended to TalkTalk but my BIL had it and had so many issues that he canceled after 6 weeks.  The in-laws use Tiscali and haven't had any problems, also they include international calls in their price which is a big deal.  Tiscali will only set up a line if I know the phone number though so I'm soooooo confused!!  I don't have a phone number!

Roar!  This thing is so stupid confusing.

Stop. You're depressing me.