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benjamin_jod's avatar
benjamin_jod
Tuning in
4 days ago

Landline phone Digital Switchover

Just over a month ago I received an email regarding the digital switchover. I phoned to arrange an engineer visit as I came under the category of being unable to place my home phone close to the WiFi hub. My landline phone is in the living room downstairs and the WiFi hub is upstairs in a small bedroom/office. The engineer came with a small adapter, plugged it into the WiFi hub, phoned Virginmedia and left it at that. The options were for me to run a cable from my existing phone to upstairs or buy a new phone to plug in to the WiFi hub with an additional handset downstairs in the living room. I didn't do either as I thought we still had time before deciding what to do. We don't use the landline too often but found out yesterday that we now don't have a landline connection as its still plugged in downstairs. Naivety on my part for not fully realising what the engineer was doing but why should I be out of pocket. Is it not Virginmedia's responsibility to do this work and not leave me without a working landline.

Ronnie

8 Replies

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    4 days ago

    Your landline should now work if you connect your phone into the TEL1 socket on the back of the VM hub using the adapter. Your phone should then work but in the wrong location!

    VM should modify your phone wiring so as to link the phone socket on the VM hub to your existing wall sockets and make them work once more via the new connection from the hub. This should be at no cost to you but may well involve running additional cable to make the connection.

    The most simple solution, without any wiring disruption but at a cost to you, is to buy yourself a set of cordless phones. Plug the cordless base station into the hub upstairs and then use as many satellite handsets around your home as needed which will work wirelessly with the base station.

    VM likes to offer to move the hub but this is often not suitable as it will change the wireless signal throughout your home and any devices plugged into the hub will need to be moved as well which is not practical for many people. If you have home office equipment plugged in upstairs moving the hub will be no use for you.

    A VM person should reply to your topic, usually within a few days.

    • Salesforce's avatar
      Salesforce
      Joining in
      2 days ago

      "VM likes to offer to move the hub but this is often not suitable as it will change the wireless signal throughout your home and any devices plugged into the hub will need to be moved as well which is not practical for many people"

      And bingo, no soon as you mention this; Sabrina chips in with an option to move the hub!

  • Sabrina_B's avatar
    Sabrina_B
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    4 days ago

    Hi benjamin_jod 👋.

    Thanks for reaching out to us, sorry to hear of the issues that you are facing with your landline. There are options where we can relocate the Hub with the phone if you wish. Please come back to us if you wish for a relocation of the Hub or the phone itself. 

    Sabrina

    • benjamin_jod's avatar
      benjamin_jod
      Tuning in
      4 days ago

      Hi Sabrina,

      thanks for your prompt reply. Ideally we would like the hub to remain in the upstairs office/bedroom and our existing phone with answering m/c and display to remain in the downstairs living room. The phone socket is in the hall and the phone cable goes around skirting/flooring into living room. I would like to arrange for an engineer visit to run cable from upstairs hub to either downstairs socket or telephone whichever is best.

      Regards

      Ronnie

      • David_Bn's avatar
        David_Bn
        Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
        4 days ago

        Thanks for coming back to us and clarifying the assistance that you need from us benjamin_jod.

        Please check out the envelope in the top right hand corner for a private message from me and I'll seek to have this arranged for you.

        Thanks,

        David_Bn

  • benjamin_jod's avatar
    benjamin_jod
    Tuning in
    4 days ago

    Thanks goslow for the prompt reply and for confirming a few points.

    1. Moving the hub downstairs not really practical for reasons you've mentioned. WiFi connection throughout the house has always been fine so reluctant to move, also have other equipment plugged in.
    2. Engineer mentioned buying new phones and having base unit plugged in next to hub upstairs with additional handset downstairs. Our existing phone has answering machine with digital display indicating number of messages. My wife is disabled and apart from sleeping upstairs spends her day downstairs in the living room. If she can't make it to the phone while I'm out she can see at a glance if anyone's left a message and play it back. Same if we're both out, we can easily check phone for important hospital/GP messages. Not really practical to go upstairs into office/bedroom to see this

    Ideal solution for us would be to leave hub and phone where they are and run a cable from existing downstairs socket to upstairs next to the hub. The existing cable for the hub already does this.

    Ronnie

     

    • goslow's avatar
      goslow
      Alessandro Volta
      4 days ago

      It should be possible on many modern cordless phones to control the functions of the answering machine from a satellite handset.

      Many models offer a 'message waiting' feature (a flashing light on icon on the display) which can show on the satellite handset or some will make a beeping sound on the satellite handset if there is a message waiting. It should also be possible to control answer phone features, message playback etc. from the satellite handset. This all depends on what model of phone you have as to what exactly it can do.

      Alternatively, if that is no use and if you don't mind running in extra phone cable, VM should be able to fit a phone socket next to the hub location upstairs. From there they should be able to run some phone cable following the same route as the coax cable for the hub along the same path all the way to the omnibox outside.

      In the omnibox they should be able to link the new phone wiring to the existing phone wiring.

      We have seen past topics where VM has then used an adapter lead to back-feed the phone socket connection from the hub into the new telephone wall socket so making all of the existing sockets live via the hub's phone connection.

      It's a bit of a kludge solution but it seems that's what VM offers. We have seen many topics where some of the tech's VM sends out have no idea how to do this so the customer has had to have several visits before the 'right' kind of tech turned up who knew what to do!

      Pic of the adapter lead posted below (which will appear when moderated).