[Gllug] Transfer of broadband and telephone to housemate

[Gundemarie Scholz]

I got some input from uk.telecom.broadband already, but I haven't worked
out yet what the best route is to solve my problem.

Currently the telephone line (BT) and the ADSL broadband access
(Eclipse) in the house I share with others are in my name. As I am going
to move out the services are going to be transferred to one of my
housemates.

Now I am wondering how I can minimise the broadband downtime. BT tells
me they cease the line when the ownership changes, resulting in a short
downtime of maybe a couple of minutes. Eclipse tell me that when the
line gets ceased they have to place a new order, and that takes five
working days to go through.

My housemate would like to keep the current number, and he would prefer
not getting cable broadband. So ordering a second phone line or
switching to NTL are not options.

However, if I could convince BT not to cease the line Eclipse could do
just a transfer of ownership, and there would be no downtime at all. The
Indian BT helpdesk guy told me (as far as I could understand his accent)
though that it is impossible not to cease the line.

In the newsgroup though I was advised that BT would do a "stop" and
"start" rather than "cease" and "provide". Then Eclipse might be able to
cancel the following cease order.

Looking for those keywords I found an Ofcom document from 1999
(http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/oftel/publications/1999/call0899.htm)
that to me sounds as if there shouldn't be any interruption of service
at all, but then again the document contains quite a lot of legalese, so
I might have missed the point.

By the way, we have a time frame of almost three months to sort it out,
so if a step-by-step transfer is needed then that is fine.

Does any of the ladies and gentlemen here have any helpful suggestions
or pointers?

Regards,
Gunde
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