Quotes are given over the phone, after I've heard what's wrong in your own words. There is no fixed price list on this site by design — every job is different, and no two London houses are wired the same.

The reason I work this way is honestly because it produces a better outcome for the customer. A fixed price list would either over-quote the simple jobs to cover the difficult ones, or under-quote the difficult ones and force me to come back with bad news on the doorstep. Neither is fair to either of us. Three minutes on the phone, describing the problem in plain language, almost always lets me give you a realistic quote before I'm in the van. Where the job is too vague to price firmly until I've seen it, I'll give you a range and confirm the final figure on site before any work starts.

How a typical visit works

  1. Ring 020 3633 1131 — describe the problem in your own words. "WiFi won't reach the back bedroom," "crackling on the line," "no dial tone since yesterday," "the broadband cuts out every evening at seven" — all real opening sentences from real customers. Most issues are diagnosed from the phone call well enough to give you a clear quote before we set off.
  2. We schedule a visit. Same-day or next-day for most central London locations. Weekday daytime is the norm, but evenings and weekends are available by arrangement and at no extra charge for booked-in jobs (true emergency callouts are a different matter — those get priced separately and only when there's no alternative).
  3. The visit covers travel time, on-site diagnosis and most small fixes. The bulk of telephone, broadband and WiFi callouts get fully resolved in the first visit. If the work runs longer or needs materials I don't already have on board, we agree those costs with you on site before continuing. No surprises on the invoice and nothing started without your nod.
  4. Parking is added at cost where it applies. Central London tariffs and ULEZ are what they are — never marked up, just passed through. Where you can sort parking from your end (resident permit, hospital pass, business visitor permit), we'll happily use that and it saves us both money.
  5. Payment on the day by bank transfer, card or cash, with a proper VAT-style invoice in writing afterwards. For commercial clients on agreed terms, invoiced in arrears.

Why phone, not a form?

Telecom faults rarely fit a tickbox. "Slow broadband" can mean five different things, ranging from a knackered ethernet patch lead to a profile cap stuck at the exchange. "No dial tone" can mean a power-cycled router, a tripped Digital Voice service, a snipped pair in a cupboard, or a fault all the way back at the cabinet. A web form makes you choose from a list of options that don't quite describe what you're actually experiencing, and then bounces an email back twenty minutes later asking for the very details a phone call would have established in thirty seconds.

Three minutes on the phone almost always saves an hour of email back-and-forth, and far more importantly it means the engineer arrives with the right kit for the problem you've got rather than a generic load-out and a hopeful expression. If your fault sounds like a master socket relocation, I'll have the spare NTE5C and the VDSL faceplate in the van. If it sounds like a wireless coverage issue, I'll have an access point and a spool of Cat6 with me. That difference is the difference between fixing it on the first visit and booking a second.

What I cover, geographically

All Greater London postcodes — every one of them. The map I work to is the M25 as a rough outer boundary; for nearby towns just outside (parts of Watford, Borehamwood, Loughton, Sevenoaks, Bromley fringe, Sutton fringe, Twickenham fringe, Brentwood-side Essex), ring and I'll advise. I split the working week roughly into halves between east and central London on some days and west and south on others, so where you are in the city affects the days I can offer rather than whether I'll come at all.

What I cover, technically

  • Phone wiring, master sockets (NTE5A and NTE5C), VDSL faceplates, extensions, jointing and re-terminations.
  • Broadband diagnostics across ADSL, VDSL, FTTC and FTTP, using calibrated test kit at the master.
  • WiFi surveys, professional access-point installations and seamless-roaming networks.
  • Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a data cabling, structured, terminated to patch panels, Fluke-certified.
  • Small-business phone systems, including IP phones, hunt groups and out-of-hours diversion.
  • Garden-office connectivity over buried armoured ethernet.
  • Alarm and lift autodialler line testing.
  • Loft, basement and extension wiring during refurbishments and after building work.
  • Faulty-line diagnosis where the provider has told you "the line tests fine" and you're stuck.
  • Sensible second opinions on quotes from other engineers, freely given on the phone.

What a typical visit actually looks like — three recent examples

Last Tuesday in Pimlico

I had a call mid-morning from a flat in SW1 — top floor of a stucco-fronted terrace near Tachbrook Street. The customer's complaint: "the landline crackles every time it rains." Classic symptom of a degraded joint somewhere outside the property, on the Openreach side of the demarcation, but I confirmed it properly with a butt-set at the test socket and watched the noise floor on the line meter climb as I sprayed water on the drop wire above. The fix wasn't mine — it was Openreach's. What I provided was a clean diagnosis, the line-attenuation and resistance numbers, and a scripted message for the customer to read to her provider so they didn't fob her off. Openreach were out within the week, repaired the joint at the pole, and the line has been silent since. The visit was an hour, the value was in the diagnosis being incontestable.

A small business in Clerkenwell

Design studio in EC1, six staff plus a couple of freelancers in and out, complaining that the office WiFi had become unreliable since they took on the unit next door and knocked through. I went out on a Thursday morning, ran a quick site survey, identified that their single router-broadcast WiFi was being asked to cover roughly twice the area it was specified for, and quoted two managed access points wired back to the existing router by Cat6, with a separate guest network for client meetings. Quote agreed on the spot, install booked for the following Tuesday evening after the studio closed at six, done and tested and out the door by ten. Trading the next morning with no downtime at all.

A house move in Crouch End

Family moving into a Victorian terrace in N8, complete renovation done by the previous owner — but the telecoms had been left as an afterthought. There was a master socket in the cellar (the worst possible spot), one extension behind the TV in the lounge, and not a single ethernet point in a house that the new owners intended to use as a permanent work-from-home base. We agreed by phone before completion that I'd come in once they had the keys but before the furniture arrived. I moved the master to a proper position on the ground floor near where the router would sit, ran Cat6 to four rooms including the loft office, installed two access points for seamless WiFi, and left a printed cabling schedule and Fluke certs with the documentation pile. They moved in a fortnight later to a working house.

Rapid response and business clients

For commercial clients the priority is minimising downtime, and most of my business work happens outside normal trading hours by arrangement. Out-of-hours visits are billed at the standard daytime rate when they're pre-booked as part of a planned install — there's no premium for a Saturday morning if we agreed it last week. Genuine same-day emergency callouts (a shop with no till connectivity, a surgery whose phones are dead) are accommodated where possible and priced fairly when they are.

For new business clients I'm happy to attend a brief no-obligation site visit before any work is booked, to walk the routes, look at the existing kit and produce a written quotation. That's particularly useful for cabling jobs where the answer to "how much" depends entirely on what's behind the walls.

What "freely given advice" means

Honestly, exactly that. If you ring with a problem that turns out to be a router that needs a power cycle, a misconfigured WiFi password, or a fault that's clearly on the Openreach side and should be reported to your provider rather than fixed by me, I'll tell you so and I won't come out. There's no minimum-charge trap on this number. The whole point of the way I run the business is that the same person you speak to first is the one who turns up — and if the right answer is "you don't need an engineer for that," then that's the answer you'll get and we'll both have saved ourselves a wasted morning.

Equally, if the problem genuinely needs an engineer, you'll get a realistic quote, a sensible appointment, and the same engineer turning up with the right kit at the time we agreed. That's the whole offer. Fifteen years of running it this way and it still seems to be the part people most appreciate.

What information helps when you ring

When you call, the diagnosis goes faster if you've got a few details handy. None of these are essential, but they let me give a tighter quote and turn up with the right kit on board:

  • Who your provider is. BT, Sky, Plusnet, Virgin Media, Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, Octopus, NowTV — the kit and the demarcation point differ between them.
  • What service you're on. ADSL, FTTC (also sold as "Fibre" by most providers), FTTP (true fibre to the property, usually with a separate ONT box), or cable (Virgin Media's coaxial network).
  • What the router and master socket look like. A photo of each, on a phone, takes ten seconds and tells me a lot — the model of router, the type of master socket (NTE5A or NTE5C), whether there's a separate VDSL faceplate or splitter, and whether the cabling around it looks tidy or chaotic.
  • When the problem started and what changed. Sudden onset after a power cut, gradual decline over weeks, started after building work, started after a router swap by the provider — each points at a different likely cause.
  • The postcode and access details. Whether there's resident parking, a tradesperson permit option, a buzzer code, a concierge desk, a lift big enough for a ladder.

What I bring to a typical visit

The van carries enough kit and spares to fix the great majority of jobs on the first visit. That includes a calibrated broadband line tester, butt-set, tone generator and probe, a wireless analyser for site surveys, Fluke certifiers for any cabling work, and a working stock of NTE5C masters, VDSL faceplates, IDC modules, faceplates and modules in matching white or brushed steel, a range of patch leads, several spool sizes of Cat5e and Cat6, professional access points, gigabit switches, and the bits and pieces that go with all of it. The aim is to walk in, diagnose, fix and walk out, on the first visit, in the majority of cases. Where a job genuinely needs a second visit (more cable than I had on board, a specialist part on order, a wall that has to dry after a chase), we book that in before I leave.

How invoicing works

Domestic customers get a written invoice on the day or by email shortly afterwards, with itemised labour, materials and any parking, payable by bank transfer, card or cash. Commercial clients can be set up on standard thirty-day terms by arrangement. Larger cabling projects can be quoted with a deposit on order and the balance on certified handover — that protects both of us on a job where I'm ordering specific materials in advance. Receipts and certification reports come with the invoice on cabling jobs as a matter of course; ask if you'd also like an itemised breakdown for insurance or business-expense purposes.

Ring 020 3633 1131. Advice freely given.