Well, almost. The business line also had broadband on it and the private one didn't. Well, I say broadband but actually it's an ADSL line that rates about 2 mbps; that's a rant for another day, though. So, the plan was to get broadband put on the private line then close the business line. Also easy!
It went well until I got the new router. This has to be plugged into the landline's main entry socket. Our private line doesn't have a main entry socket. It has this, in the attic:
If you look carefully, you can see the letters GPO on it, standing for General Post Office. This is a junction box dating from before British Telecom was privatised in the 1980s...
Today, an engineer came round to fix it. Well, what he'd actually been told to do was to correct a fault on the business line, which is odd because there wasn't a fault on the business line. Rather than have him replace the junction box with a phone socket, I asked if he could swap round the business and private lines, so that instead of the private line being in the attic and the business line being in my home office, it would be the other way round. After a conversation with his boss, he was able to replace his fault-correction mission with a line-movement mission, which he could achieve by going to a green box at the end of the road and moving some wires around.
Remarkably, this worked. I have my new broadband up and running swimmingly well on my private number. Cancelling the business number proved a little harder as it was linked via the broadband account to my private number, but I'm assured that when it disappears a week from now my broadband won't disappear with it.
All sorted, then.
One of these days, we'll get fibre here and I'll have an upload speed 5 times higher than my current download speed. I can dream...