New pole installation and costs?

Question

Dear all,
Can anyone advise me as to how much BT charge to install a pole to carry a land line? Further, what is the preferred distance between poles?
We are selling our current house and renovating the stable block, that we also own, next door. The trouble is that there is no physical line there at the moment - we will have to have one installed.
How much do/should BT charge to install a new pole? The one that feeds the current house is about 40m (as the crow flies) from the entrance to the new property, the easiest point to give access to the new building. (The line will have to cross our current/soon-to-be-former property so the new owners will have to get used to that I think). Is this distance too far to keep the tension in the wire? Would I need a second pole installed - not impossible but would impinge upon access to the property slightly. Would it be cheaper to have a new line 'moled' underground, done at the same time as the drainage is installed?
Also, we want to keep the same telephone number (have had it for 23 years) but even that is causing minor problems!
I spoke to the (very helpful) lady at the "house move" section of the helpdesk who said that:
(a) if we want to keep the old number we MUST have a physical line to re-assign the number to, otherwise the new owners will not be able to have a new number assigned to them
(b) as this is not the case, we could have the BT messaging service take our calls but this will only last for three months and is not extendable - I doubt whether we can be in a position to start work on the new property by then, never mind be in a position to have a BT land line connected.
(c) I wanted to be able to re-direct the land line calls to our number redirected to a mobile (possible via one of the items on offer in the list of packages available for land lines). However, this is not possible due to (a) aboveas you must have a physical line for this to happen (apparently)
(d) If we do not have a physical line OR have our messaging service expire after the three month period, our number is given back to BT Wholesale who will re-assign it as 'available' for anyone else to have. I have been told that there is no way of 'reserving' our number so that it is kept for us.
Why can't I simply keep my number 'at the exchange' (non-technical) and the system simply redirects the telephone call to a mobile whilst not physically having a line, and I simply tell them that I want my line established and reconnected when I am ready?
Got distracted there but I thought that I would get all the details off my chest.
I have had absolutely exceptional service from BT in the past ( one of the reasons why I wouldn't consider switching my line rental etc. to another supplier, even though it may be cheaper) but there are one or two minor irritations that could be sorted out here as I am sure that this situation must have occurred somewhere before.
Any comments most welcome

Answer 1

Hi Gsd4me,
Thanks for the post and welcome to the forum.
It is impossible for me or any one else in BT to tell you how much it will cost to get a new line installed at a newly built property, without having the site surveyed by Openreach.  The process here is, you would place an order to have the line installed at the address of the new property.  Once the order is placed we would then be able to book an engineers appointment. 
The engineer will come out to the site on the agreed date and then carry out a survey to ascertain what work needs to be carried out.  Openreach will decide on the best and most efficient way to get service to your new property, if they are able to use the existing pole then that is what they will do, however you will not know until the survey has been carried out.
Once Openreach have surveyed the site then they will let you know the cost of the job.  You can then decide if you want to go ahead with this installation.
I understand that you are trying to keep your telephone number.  The advise you have been given is sound.  You can only keep your number if you have a line to transfer it to.  BT Retail do not own the telephone numbers, we get numbers assigned to use from the pool of available numbers by Wholesale.
Once you cancel your service your telephone number will be added back to the general pool of available numbers, this then becomes available to any of the service providers that use the Wholesale network.  Unfortunately there is no way around this, we have no way of keeping a telephone number without it being active on a telephone line.  We simply do not own the number.
I hope this information has helped.  Any more question please drop me a reply.
Cheers
Sean
BTCare Community Manager
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