How fast can you get broadband?

Just under 3 working days for phone line and working ADSL is probably a record :-)

Normally a phone line is around a week to install, and broadband is also around a week to install. Usually both can be done together though, but often a phone line can take several weeks.

However, it seems that some times we can get lucky. We have one customer who is now connected on a brand new phone line which was ordered only 3 working days ago.

The first bit of luck was the phone line install. A business line install was available on a 3 working day appointment. That is without paying any sort of expedite fee! This depends on engineers being available in the specific area at the time, but we have WLR3 B2B XML gateway systems now that make it easy to check appointment availability and book the appointment.

The other luck was that we were able to do a simultaneous provide of broadband. We do that all the time, but as broadband is normally 5 working days lead time we were not sure it would work. BT actually put a due date for 5 working days, but it was all done at once today like any normal simultaneous order.

So, just under 3 working days from start to finish, phone line with broadband.

Please don't expect this every time though :-)

Longer term plans are that we should be able to offer the appointment dates to customers on the on-line ordering (in some cases) so that people can know when they order what they can expect, and reserve the appointment there and then!

And well done to Paul, Andrew, and James for their work on the WLR3 B2B XML gateway interface over the last few months - it is finally paying off.

(Once upon a time broadband service would go in for existing phone lines in under 24 hours, but the system was improved by our favorite telco some time ago, and now one can pay a lot to expedite an order and still have no guarantee it will be that quickly)