Hi all, have spent a while browsing through the forum over the past month or so and have read a lot about everyones' UFB install problems.  My situation is a bit different as we are trying to get Chorus to build a new copper network for our house to connect to.

We've had quite a frustrating time trying to get connected, and I've got a few questions that I hope someone here can answer for me as I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to this stuff, but first I'll give the background details.


Background
We are in a newly built house in central Auckland that was completed February 2015. We moved in around April 2015. 
The house has been built on a subdivided section. There was one house initially that was demolished for the subdivision to take place. There are now two houses on the sections - ours and one other (although this other house has not yet been completed).

Trying to get connected!
Soon after we moved in we signed up for Spark ADSL naked broadband (assuming all wires would be in place and ready to go). Spark sent their modem and stuff out to us, a technician came and did his magic with the cabinet and we received a confirmation text saying our broadband was ready for use.

As our broadband wasn't working despite Spark's confirmation, we let them know and they sent out a tech who figured out that we weren't connected to the Chorus network. Our house was wired for it all the way to the street but it wasn't connected to anything on the street. Apparently Spark/Chorus didn't realise we weren't connected as they assumed that because there had been a house on the sections previously, that we would already have a connection to the network.

Another tech was then scheduled to come out and give a quote for the work to build the network. Almost $3k. Not a cost that we had expected or wanted but internet is pretty essential so we paid for it right away. We were seriously debating waiting for UFB instead (cheaper, and it is scheduled for June/July in our area) but the CSR at Spark advised that we'd have to wait ages for UFB even after it had been installed, so recommended that we go with the copper install first since it would be much faster.

Spark/Chorus then eventually got back to me about commencing the work. They informed me that they had done the design and would be able to complete the work by August - in 2 months time! Not exactly much 'faster' than waiting for UFB.

I may be being unreasonable, but the whole process has lasted over a month already (just waiting on Spark/Chorus passing correspondence between one another, and them figuring out that I wasn't connected to a network), and now I have to wait an additional 2 months before I'm likely to have internet? And this is despite me promptly replying to everything right away in order to get it done.

Questions
Your views on the above would be great i.e. does this all sound normal/reasonable to you? Also, specifically:

1. If there was an existing house on the property before and assuming they had copper phone lines, shouldn't there be a network that they would've connected to that presumably we can use?

2. With this network that Chorus is building for us - will this also be used by the other new build house on the subdivision? If so then I'd expect that they should also contribute to the cost?

3. Why is it that a new network needs to be built? Can't we run cables and connect to networks that dwellings 2-3 houses down from us are connected to? (Or perhaps it doesn't work like that..?)

4. Would you have expected the house builders to have either a) ensured that we were connected to all telecommunications lines and/or b) at least informed us well in advance that we would need to have a new network built/installed? This would have saved us a lot of frustration if we could have sorted this all out before we moved in.  And if so, would we have any recourse to recover costs from the builders or vendors?

5. Would there be any recourse against Spark/Chorus? It was their fault they didn't realise we didnt have a network initially, and also it was kind of represented to us that the copper network install would be quite quick - I may not have been so willing to go with copper if I knew it was gonna take almost as long as UFB..

6. Maybe a bit ambitious, but is there any way at all to speed up the process e.g. with the council consents etc...?


Thanks all for any insight you can give.