Sky Activation date but have not got fibre cables or anything installed in our house yet?

[Gemgemgem]

So my household updated from sky broadband unlimited and changed it to sky ultrafast fibre. We received our sky hub box a few days ago. It says "activation date- Friday 24th" which is tomorrow. 

But my house hasn't gotten any fibre cables or the box that is supposed to be installed on the outside/ inside of our house. Our house is old and uses copper cables. 

So I'm confused. The hub we got won't work because we don't have fibre equipment installed. 

Conveniently, our neighbour had a openreach van outside our house today and so I managed to ask him about what exactly needs to happen.

He said that we have this long grey tube leading from the mains to our house, he said it was big enough to fit the fibre cables down it. An engineer should have been arranged to come fix it to our house. 

He then said that if our activation date is tomorrow and no one turns up to do the fibre then I should ring sky to see what is going on. 

But I would of thought that I needed to arrange a date to have an engineer come and install the box thing in our house? 

So does activation date mean the date that an engineer is suppose to come round and fix it? Or is it just referring to when our package is now "activated" ? 

[simon194]

@Gemgemgem 

My guess your install is '1 stage' install so all the work will be done tomorrow.

[TimmyBGood]

@Gemgemgem 

Putting the address into the BT Wholesale Availability Checker should indicate which provisioning type is applicable.

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome 

It's the table and the two text lines below it which are most useful.

Remove any personal information (such as the address itself) if you post an image.

[Gemgemgem]

@TimmyBGood I don't understand what these mean. 🥲 help please 

 

[TimmyBGood]

@Gemgemgem 

The key line is 'UG partial Direct in Ground' 

That means a new optical circuit doesn't currently have an duct to go through because the existing copper cable is buried directly in the soil: unfortunately that might well complicate the upcoming installation.

[Gemgemgem]

@TimmyBGood just got a text saying that it will be "activated remotely". I don't see how, as we got no fibre cables 😂. 

So I'm assuming Sky will see that we got no fibre cables when they try to activate it remotely? 

[TimmyBGood]

@Gemgemgem 

Is the address in the Sky order definitely correct?

There certainly can't be remote activation of an FTTP service when there's no FTTP infrastructure in place.

[Gemgemgem]

@TimmyBGood 

Yup. Definitely my house on the mysky app. The sky hub was also sent here about 3 days ago now. So they defo got the right address. 

It says that they will send a text when we are up and running after the "activation". But they can't remotely activated it. 

I'm hoping that they will realise this when they try to remotely active and then they will send engineers out. But I think I'll have to wait until tomorrow and then give them sky a ring to see what is going on if they won't tell me. 

They must be able to see it from their systems that we don't have fibre cables or the box installed into our house. Just from records or that site you gave me to check. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Gemgemgem wrote:

They must be able to see it from their systems that we don't have fibre cables or the box installed into our house. Just from records or that site you gave me to check. 

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Absolutely.  Unfortunately the risk is you could find your current service cuts off but face a significant delay for duct provision.

[Gemgemgem]

@TimmyBGood 

We've been without Internet since the 16th (that was when our broadband contract expired).

Work definitely needs to be done before fibre can work in our house. I don't know how long it takes to get the work done but I wonder if sky would give us money off on our monthly bill.

Considering we haven't got no internet that we are paying out for.

A person on FB said that they had to wait for an engineer with sky, and it took 7 months!

[TimmyBGood]

@Gemgemgem 

Ours (through BT Broadband) took around three months, mostly because new ducting was required.

I'd think you should be eligible for the delayed activation compensation.

[Gemgemgem]

We finally have our Internet fixed. I thought I'll right here what was the answer in case anyone else has a similar issue. 

Openreach came round and the first thing he did was upgrade our very old master socket to a new one. He said that that was one of the issues.

The second issue was our broadband cabinet is located 2 streets away from our house. 

In that cabinet at some point another engineer had put someone elses Internet with ours, so somehow we were sharing it with someone who lives in the street that lives closer to the cabinet. (I don't understand but he went "basically you have been sharing with someone that lives in ****** Lane, who live closer to the cabinet than you. So they always had better Internet because they live closer to the cabinet". 

He said it was an engineer fault. So that might explain why we had around about 5mb download speed all these years. 

So he fixed the issue in the cabinet for us. 

He also said that my area doesn't have full fibre yet. That sky have fibre cables to the cabinet, and then from the cabinet to our house it's copper cables. He then said "you should get around 30-60mb, you're getting around 40mb now which seems right considering the distance from the cabinet to your house". 

So my area doesn't have full fibre. Openreach installed a grey cable outside READY for when full fibre is available but for now we still have copper cables to the house. 

This has been such a stressful month. I'm glad it's fixed. I'm glad the engineer explained it to me so now I understand what has been happening and what exactly we have. He was such a nice guy explaining it all. 

Thank-you also to those who posted on my posts to try and help solve the mystery! 

Getting 40mb now is such a luxury compared to the 5mb we had been getting these last 16 years~ 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Gemgemgem wrote:

So my area doesn't have full fibre. Openreach installed a grey cable outside READY for when full fibre is available but for now we still have copper cables to the house. 

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Interesting that the BT Wholesale checker result says differently: perhaps that's associated with the other confusion you mentioned.