Timetable for new landline to go live after moving into house?

[#1]

Hello, wonder if anyone could advise.

Friends are moving shortly though have already taken posession of their new house (their current place is rented so there is an overlap, and work commitments etc mean they're not moving in for another week or so - a very civilised and relaxed way of doing things!).

However they've just realised they'd like to get their phone and broadband up and running soon so they can advise people of their new landline number along with their new address.

The old residents were with BT on FTTC (so obviously an Openreach WLR based service, same as Plusnet). For some reason the previous residents landline still appears to be live - outbound calls to chargeable numbers still connect. Presumably they have cancelled this service with BT meaning the line will go 'dead' at some point shortly. (It's possible the previous residents vacated in a bit of a rush - exchange and completion of the house sale was all a bit last minute!)

How long does it take for Plusnet to activate a new home phone (landline) service on an Openreach WLR line such as this, i.e. one that is still connected at the exchange?

My more recent experience with a new service at a new address was ordering an LLU (Sky) based line at a residence which might not have had any service for perhaps a month or maybe longer - that took around two and a half weeks for the line to be activated (including for phone calls). However I appreciate that as it was an LLU service it likely required engineering activity at the exchange.

As the line at their new place is already on Openreach WLR, my thinking is that it should be quicker than that.

So, any idea of how long might it take for Plusnet to get the line activated for phone calls? (I think Plusnet do advise new customers of their new landline number before it goes live, but as this is just provisional it's always safer to wait until the line is actually up and running to be sure of the new number.)

(P.S. I do appreciate that for the youngsters, this talk of getting a new landline number and giving it out to people must seem pretty quaint! Though for my friends in question, I think it's part of saying they've moved into their own place and will be staying put, at least for the forseeable future.)

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi there Jorvik, as the landline appears to be working for calls it's likely that the previous provider has a "cease order" in place which hasn't completed yet, if that's the case we can run a check against their new address to see when that's complete and we can work around that by placing a "start of a stopped line" order which takes one or two working days to push through, we'd then order broadband following that which would take up to a further 10 working days. 

The other possibility is that we might be able to place a working line takeover, that takes 10 to 12 working days and allows us to move both services over at the same time. 

Please feel free to send me a private message with their address if you have it or ask them to get in touch directly and I'll be more than happy to check and advise how we can move forward. To put a request through to move the services to their new address they'd just need to contact our customer options team on 0800 432 0200 and they'll make the necessary arrangements. 

I hope that helps and that the move goes smoothly for them.

[#3]

Thanks Adam.

Sounds like the path of least resistance might be for them to wait until the previous provider's "cease order" has been implemented - I assume it's possible to tell when this has occurred as outgoing calls (or at least chargeable calls) should then fail? (Possibly also incoming calls to the old number should fail too?)

I don't think they'd want a "working line takeover" as that sounds like it'd retain the old number, which they don't want to do. Plus it takes longer.

For them the wait for the broadband to go live is not an issue, it's just a case of getting the landline up and running so they can give out the number at the same time as the new address. (I think they've just thought about sending out some sort of pre-printed 'we have moved' cards... if so they've picked the ideal time for that, what with the Royal Mail's stamp price rises!)

[#4]

Cheers Jorvik and no worries!

There is a chance that a cease order hasn't been placed so I'd not want them to be waiting for that and it not happen if that makes sense but as mentioned I can check against their address and see if there's one in place. 

As for a working line take over that doesn't carry the existing number over by default so if it's possible for us to do that we can easily provide a new number for them.