That's fucked up!  I'd have a bill waiting for them when they did actually show up for lost wages!

I'm sure that's what used to happen here in terms of it being remotely activated.

I remember at my uni house there was a phone line installed, just not active. I called BT to activate it, once it was done about 48 hours later I then signed up to some ADSL with an ISP and all that didn't require any engineer visits to the property. 

At my flat a BT Openreach engineer had to turn up (after not turning up the first time) to fiddle with the cabinet on the street to activate the phoneline.

Unfortunately BT own all the telcoms infrastructure so breaking into the market is a bit difficult.

Normal ADSL doesn't need anyone to come to the house, but fibre does.

You and your fancy fiber! Fibre?

That still happens in a lot of houses, it's all down to whether the line had recently been active and whether it's still usable. If the line has never been used, then you'd obviously need an engineer to attend.

Does someone actually manually disconnect a phone line at the cabinet or exchange once it's not been active for a while?

I could be wrong but I would've expected the previous tenants to have had an internet connection. Or at least the ones before that.

No they shouldn't, but who knows.. maybe they re-use ports if they're inactive, or the line might've been damaged since? I'm pretty sure they can test the line remotely and if it doesn't look to be the right length then they have it checked.

As for FTTC, that does need an engineer install - definitely first time it's done at a property anyway.

I just had a similar (not really) thing happen.

Two weeks agoish we started having daily disconnects at one of our remote locations.  Nothing had changed. Then the modem died and I replaced it, but the drops kept happening.  So they came Tuesday and wiggled some wires and said they think it's fixed.  Wednesday it dropped again (actually, in 40 minutes it had disconnected/reconnected almost 500 times) so they came back out.  Turns out the lines are buried and they are going to have to dig up an area where a splitter is installed.  Depending on the location and type of split it will take 2-6 weeks for the repairs to begin.  So this is going to be fun, when we lose connection they can't do any type of work because everything, even the equipment requires connection to the main office.  /fuckme!

Is it possible to drive over there and install a temporary DC?

I have a DC there but the SQL server and everything else is at the main office.

Ah, s'a bit like our setup - DCs at remote sites and local dictation servers, so they can work a bit if the circuits between go down, but everything else is hosted at the main office. It gets too damned expensive to go down alternative resilient routes.

I have three buildings at this location and they each have DSL. Only one is going down so I'm going to build a wireless link between the three, cancel all but one DSL account and get cable installed. Then I should have pretty good redundancy. 

What're you going to use for your APs? We're trialling a Meraki device at the moment, seems pretty good. Plus we got it free for watching a webinar.

I know it's a bit home-hackery, but have you tried the Mikrotik stuff?

I'm not sure yet, tomorrow I am going to begin researching.  If you have any suggestions I'd appreciate the help!

And I picked the least hurtful choice in the poll!

No - any good? Is it as simple as the Meraki kit?

(hug)

Naturally, BT turned up while I was at work to do the install I cancelled the day before. (fail)

It's like a 3 Stooges episode isn't it?  I presume they didn't do anything and maybe even left you one of those fancy door hanging souvenirs?

They leave you door hangers?