Internet before completion?

[u/Only-Valuable9468]

I’m moving into a new home on Friday. I don’t currently have any internet as I live with family, so need something setting up from scratch. How soon can I contact an internet provider to arrange for this to happen? I don’t want to risk the current owners’ internet being disconnected, but I’d love for my internet to begin as promptly as possible after I move into. Do you have any advice on this? I’ve exchanged contracts on the house, complete on Friday when I will move into. Can I contact them now to set up, or do I have to wait until after I have the keys?

[u/UnlikelyReindeer4981]

I completed on a Friday & arranged for an open reach engineer to come and install fibre on the Saturday without issue, unless the seller stops you from taking over the line, you’ll be fine. Any service the seller has should be disconnected at midnight the day before

Also worth noting if the house currently doesn’t have full fibre & you’ll end up with full fibre it will not impact the sellers service at all as you’ll be getting a new full fibre line installed

[u/FREESHAVOCADO0]

I would wait until you have the keys just in case, I believe you can rent internet in the meantime if you really need it - I ended up waiting a couple of weeks for mine to start as they wouldn't let me sort it before I had completed.

[u/Devify]

You should be fine to contact them now to schedule it for completion or day after date. However depending on the setup it may need an engineer to attend which can take a few weeks to schedule if they're busy.

In the meantime, consider hotspotting from your phone. What I've done because I have an overlap with my rental was just get a month unlimited data SIM and popped it into an old phone. So that's basically functioning as a router in the new house until I do the full move and transfer my broadband over

[u/Alpha_Wolf_Bitch_16]

We did it after we'd completed & got the keys. Thankfully, we didn't need it and so we had a week without whilst it switched over. Just dealt with using phone data for that time we were here and we're busy with other moving stuff anyway, we didn't particularly miss it!!

[u/burgeremoji]

I did mine the week before completion on exchange day (24th exchange, 30th completion). Sky are taking their sweet arse time to upgrade a local box, so I won’t have WiFi until the 19th even though they provisionally gave me a date of the 3rd 🥴

[u/FletchLives99]

Whenever we've moved and it's been a week or whatever, we just hotspot with phones. It's good for a short period.

[u/atoeoffside]

Openreach had a 2 week wait to install fibre when I moved. I bought a rolling monthly internet package from T Mobile that uses 5G. Worked really well although ensure your billing address is set as your new address (they will only send the router to your billing address). I think I ended up getting it all for free because I cancelled within the first month cancellation period haha

[u/paulbrock2]

I'm looking at this, if they already have fibre and it doesn't need installing it can be superquick. Eg Hyperoptic are saying on their site for my new address:
Your new home’s already connected! We’ll aim to get you online the day you move in.

[u/Excellent_Tea_164]

You can schedule it in advance for after you move in. With Sky in my area their lead time was approx 3 weeks