an entertaining story. Your friend ordered an ADSL service on a line that wasn't his, perhaps there should be a mechanism to prevent this. He didn't tell Nildram where the house was, he gave them a phone number and a matching postcode.

The owner inevitably had the line terminated on moving out which could have resulted in a re-numbering which would also have screwed up BT's systems as they associate ADSL provision with a number not a pair of wires.

This isn't the first example I've read today of Nildram abrogating responsibility and not taking a matter to resolution. If a consumer resorts to calling BT (Retail) they can never get it fixed as the contract is between the consumer, the ISP and BT Wholesale. Also if you call 150 and mention the word "broadband" it is very likely that a cubicle dweller in a call centre will put you through to BT Broadband the Retail ISP, who are the least relevant people.

This to me is a story of a customer jumping the gun with ISP collaborating and then failing to communicate effectively.

You get a voice service on a line from BT Retail. The same line can be used to carry broadband from an ISP. How much simpler could it be ?