Ensure you know how far you are from the BT exchange

We have had a customer who has been trying to get their Sky Broadband activated for the past two weeks. We have been dealing with Sky ourselves, on their behalf, to try to resolve the issue.

To be fair to the last Sky technical support person I dealt with (a NI guy as it happens), they have finally come clean and explained that everything I have been told over the last 10 days is nonsense, and Sky cannot actually provide broadband, because the customer is 10Km away from the nearest BT exchange. They have spent the past 10 days running tests, and changing cabling between Sky’s equipment and BT’s at the exchange, all to no avail.

Sky have cancelled the broadband subscription completely, after some wrangling from our side, and we are waiting on the line being ‘deactivated’ in order to have one last try at BT, to see if they can provide a solution. Failing that, we will be looking at Mobile Broadband for this client.

When you are looking to purchase your next house, and it is in a rural location, it would be worth checking to see how far you are from the exchange. Sky have told me they cannot provide anything if you are more than 7Km from the exchange, and BT tend to ‘hedge their bets’ until they run a test on the line itself.

At best, if you are quite a distance from the exchange, you will receive Broadband, but it will be at a low speed. At worst, you will not be able to receive Broadband at all, or will have intermittent drop-outs on a regular basis.

Worth a check particularly if you are moving from an urban location to a rural one - most people do not think to check, assuming that broadband is available all over. It is available in most places, but there are continual problems with the rural areas.

If you are unsure, give BT a ring and ask them to check for you They can give this information if you provide them with either a telephone number, or a post code. There is an automated check that can be run, from BT’s website, but we have found it to be unreliable - so lift the phone instead.