We’ve (finally) moved away from Sky broadband, our extortionately expensive “superfast” fibre to the cabinet then rusty copper line to the house broadband after another round of casually upping their prices and degrading their speeds. (Friday afternoons when the neighbourhood kids all hit Fortnite were often a bit of a trudge!) We’ve moved to a full fibre supplier, saving money and getting 5x+ speed down and 10x+ speed up - so it’s a win all round (with the added bonus that I’ll never have to deal with another Sky call-centre). The account transfer seems to have gone well but the experience with the ground installation crew from, let’s call them “CosmopolisFilament”, was somewhat bemusing. Two guys turned up after the 8am-1pm window (calling to say they were 40 mins out at 12:40) then proceeded to bullishly decide how they were going to do it in spite of a shorter, more logical and preferential route available for the cable. If it’d been my granny rather than me I’m pretty certain they’d have railroaded on and just done it, potentially killing a couple of trees and wrecking the garden in the process. So I had to say no to their plan and ask them to go in a straight line beside the path and the planters.

Here are some things their team said:

  • “That’s impossible” - turned out it wasn’t

  • “I have to cut the slabs, roots, grass, roots and then slabs again” - turned out they didn’t  

  • “It has to go in through your living room” - turns out it was super easy to go through beside front door where the existing line went in

  • “I’ll be back to take photos” - they didn’t ever come back

  • “The office will call you in 15 mins” - they didn’t ever call back

  • “… and they’ll reschedule us to come back tomorrow” - next day appointment reschedules are impossible due to the account computer system taking an overnight run to close out that day’s work

  • “We’ll be able to get back to you on Friday morning or Monday morning” - also not possible, earliest appointment was 7 days later

  • “We only get paid £30 per job” - I have no idea what this was about, making me feel bad that they are not well paid? Making me feel bad that retro-fitting fibre to a house is harder than fresh install? Making me think that I had to take their destructive route rather than the obvious one?

After they said it was “impossible” to run the cable beside the path I spent 40 minutes and had the trench dug to 20cm as per their requirements… and that included the time it took me to change clothes, find tools and a tarp and eat a sandwich. So I’m pretty certain they were just being lazy and late and that it was easier to bounce the job having shown up than to actually do the job. So, trench dug by me, a different team OF FOUR ENGINEERS came a week later (the earliest the company could do, despite those promises).

This time there was less weird and they put the cable in the trench in no time at all but…:

  • “The external box needs to go at least 300mm above ground so that it’s above the dampcourse” - they then fitted it lower than that

  • “We’ll put the soil back when we’re done” - they in fact did not put the soil back

🤷‍♂️ I’m not sure that they’ve lived up to their “We recognise that life’s easier when the things that should work, just work” marketing slogan.