Being without internet or phone for 8 days

I am quite vunerable for various health reasons including poor mobility. The day before yesterday got up to find had only lights and nothing else , as I was forced to have electricity only here and no gas as an alternative, so no heating, coooking or hot water, and that included my landline phone which I did not know would also go off. It is back up now but I need to check it all out especially the phone. However this week have had a variety of difficulties and just cannot cope with chasing this all up and of course that will be at my cost on my phone etc!! You dont know who you can trust and who is just telling you rubbish to get you to use their system. Right now I feel as though this is the last straw and wish I had someone who could come and do battle for me, but will have to wait =until I feel up to dealing with them myself. Depressing and another blow to my self estime and comfort.

If Smartie was no good, change network? We have blackspots here, my mobile can be next to mums and both can read different signal strength even though they are supposed to be full coverage.

Mum pays £7.95 a month on talk mobile (vodafone) with way too much talk/data/min, but it's what she wanted.

I'm on £5/month with O2, 10gb data (that I can't use as my phone is a basic doro flip) and unlimited texts/mins. My average use is about 40 texts per month. I've tried payg on my phone and I kept topping up. I found pay monthly at £5 gives me contact without risks (running out of topup!)

However, I do have a smartphone that runs on 1p mobile (orange/t mobile) as I needed something 7 years ago to pick up internal cameras to watch a dog that had been diagnosed with epilepsy. The camera idea was soon given up as it evolved to the stage that she couldn't be left. But the phone has been kept, and updated etc. So has the sim, auto top up £10 every 1/4.

The 3 network doesn't work around here, even though it says perfect signal!

My dad, 3 miles away, also has a dual SIM payg phone, one is orange, the other 02 and sometimes neither connect, depends on which way the wind is blowing. He lives in what is classed as a small village, new houses going up in it, yet no mains gas, all new homes being built with oil CH! But they promote broadband as being super fast! Ha!

So, I would suggest, if you don't want to change network, get a back up.

That's the thing ExDancer. You may not be able to physically go for help.
In the future think how able you may be. Also. you need to be able to drive

Our village fought long and hard to get high speed Internet through a firm called B4RN (stands for something like Broadband For Rural ?something?).
About a fortnight ago the whole district lost electricity power during a storm. I was flabbergasted that we not only lost out Internet connection but ALSO our landline - because its now plugged into the electricity supply.
Had we needed the emergency services for any reason we would have had to physically get into the car and drive to somewhere where we could use our mobiles.
I am anxious about it but my husband can't see the problem.

Just 15 minutes ago I was fully connect to Digital Voice after it was installed on 7th November - I could receive calls but couldn't hear the caller's voice and, with no dial tone, couldn't make calls. It seems that of the 2 phones (one - a very ultra modern one the other a 20 year old corded one) I had tried to use and didn't work an even older corded one did! They didn't want to give me compensation because it was "my equipment" but of all the previous engineers I spoke to none had done the correct tests and had thought about the phone - good job I did - but got just £20 for my inconvenience!!

I got automatic compensation from my internet provider when things went wrong during the switch over to then. However I'd actually been with Sky before so my landline has been on the internet for several years.
It is a pain when the internet fails (which it does) and you really do need a mobile phone for these occasions. Mobile reception isn't great here, whichever provider you are with.
Instead of the current huge switch over I think it would be better to ensure that every area had decent mobile reception. Apparently the main problem here is that just one planned tower was never actually erected. And every area needs to be cabled for TV and internet provision.
We're living in greater London again now after leaving in 2006 and even at that time there was cable in most streets. Where we are now there is just one provider who is fine but I would like to have some choice.

I can understand how people feel about this change to Fibre Optics - it's actually taken since March until last week for BT/Openreach to connect us! even now it's not totally complete! We've had SO many problems with them that it's impossible to list them.

We had terrible trouble with our changeover to fibre optics.After the initial installation - nothing worked- no phone, no computer, no printer, no iplayer- 6 engineer visits over 5 weeks and various extra boosters in different rooms, eventually got it right. I think many of the engineers are new to the job and some literally didn’t know what on earth to do. A mobile phone is now essential in case the whole lot goes down again.

Due to a drunk driver crashing into the pole which carried the 'internet', we were without it for about 28days!. We were paid £140 compensation. It should be automatic if your provider is signed up to the scheme.

The infrastructure doesn't seem to have been thought through properly, sounding by the amount of people having trouble and being without phones.
Luckily we are now back in the land of the living! DH put something on Facebook and Talk Talk got back to him pretty smartly, and have offered compensation.
But, something has changed re the phone. We have call barring, and until the swap over, worked fine. Now we get our Call Log filled with "No Number" calls. They don't come through, but every 30 minutes, day and night, are logged. Talk Talk tell us that it is an 0800 number. On automatic dialling??
I had to change my mobile provider, and am now on a monthly DD.
Maybe in the future, when all appears to be working properly, we will be able to do away with the landline. We shall see.

We switched from BT to Community Fibre, twice the speed, half the price. It stopped working after two days because of industrial sabotage, took a month to fix but we haven't been charged for two months.It was like living in the eighties!

I have similar concerns about the loss of landline and the 2025 change to VOIP calls made over broadband fibre ljne, as Openeach have no plans to upgrade my copper wire broadband and in wet and windy weather the WiFi signal drops out and 4 g mobile is rarely available either. 3 g is being phased out but there's no plans for 5 g to be rolled out across the whole country by 2025. I have queried the emergency provision and apparently IF you have access to any charged mobile phone, your mobile is enabled for 999 calls only to roam across any network, not just your own provider. I remain to be convinced as I imagine will be the unfortunate family whose house was virtually demolished by a reckless 15 year old driver who ploughed into them while they were watching TV. They were injured but could not find their mobiles in the rubble but had to crawl to the landline to phone 999.

I imagine the emergency services will not be best pleased with extra 999 calls when an elderly person calls 999 and who would have rung a relative for a minor fall .

This is not joined up thinking.

People in towns and cities will soon have direct fibre to house installed which will be more reliable but for those of us with overground copper wire, it's apparently just tough luck, if you were to fall or injure yourself and can't make a 999 call .

Moved 2 weeks ago to be nearer to my DS & DDiL as my health is getting worse. Have everything through Sky as was easier to have one company to deal with! So no landline, Broadband etc. Survived using Data saved with Sky Mobile but kept getting told it was down to Open Reach who had to try to get everything up & running. Dates kept being cancelled & later dates given then broken again! No one cared that I am 79, disabled & need to have more than just my mobile phone to keep in touch with family, new Doctors etc. So my son took over & because everything for Virgin Media was already installed in the property he cancelled Sky Broadband & set up Virgin Media. Within 3 days I had a landline& Broadband! OpenReach still stating that the date I was given, still 10 days away could be put off yet again! Just shows how BT/Open Reach cannot be bothered with other companies customers. Too busy favouring their own it would seem! So they are not allowed to openly do that but who sees or knows what goes on behind closed doors. Will never have anything to do willingly with BT/Open Reach!

BT recently transferred all the landlines in my area to digital voice. My nephew just plugged his phone into the back of the smart hub and bingo, worked streight away. Unfortunately it wasnt so simple for me and despite my nephew's best efforts we had to get an engineer out. He was able to make the existing phones work - sort of. But none of the special features like call blocking would work. I had to buy another phone.

The engineer had done something to edit the existing phones to make them go wifi. Now, belatedly my nephew has discovered how to do it. In the meantime I had to take out a contract on my PAYG smartphone which I really didnt want to do.

You can be sure that I will not be putting in a claim with BT for the lost service on my landline (approx 2 weeks).

I asked the engineer if many people had problems with the changeover. He admitted they did!

Not everyone can afford to go out and buy new phones or take up a contract on an existing one. There are people living alone who cannot work a smart phone so how are they supposed to manage when the internet goes down?

Uk Phasing out by 2025 of all copper wire landlines This doesn’t mean you need to have WiFi router if you don’t already one as telephone company suppliers will install a box but it does mean in a power cut you wont be able to make landline calls (unless you use a charged up mobile phone. )

It’s not acceptable if they know you’re vulnerable, every effort should have been made to reconnect you, rather than trying to shift the blame.

Big mistake to stop landline.. what are the really vulnerable people going to do? those without any access to other than landline... similarly banning cash.... God help us all.

I do try not to think about these things

When we moved house earlier this year we we left without internet for almost three weeks. As we had a 'smart' tv that didn't work either. You can imagine how different life was for a while. It was all down to BT, we have phone, tv and broadband from them. Each service seemed to have its own problems and its own company to deal with it. I've never been so frustrated as different engineers each blamed other parts for the faults and it took ages to sort out. We don't have smart phones either just ordinary mobiles. In a strange area we felt even more vulnerable than usual with no family near either. Technology is okay until it goes wrong.

If you don’t have any luck put a poor review for BT/Openreach on TrustPilot that usually gets a response! Good luck

Thank you Mizuna and GSM.

We will read through the info and find a way to go.

This may be helpful Auntieflo:
www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/automatic-compensation-need-know

Complain and see what the response is. I live in a town centre and I'm surrounded by small businesses. A few months ago we were without the internet for over two weeks due to a mast failure and oh boy, did I miss it! An estate agent near here created a big noise about it and got some sort of compensation.