Analogue to Fibre "upgrade"

[otronics]

Hello.

I live in a large house and have just had an email re/ the upgrade of the phone system from analogue to fibre (ie/ plugging phones into the Virgin Hub to enable a phone connection).

We have three phone lines (one private and two for home businesses).

Apparently I'm going to be sent an adaptor.

Can someone explain how three lines will work from one hub?

The private line has five phones spread out over three floors (some are cordless, others are corded) and one business line has various points for ease of use.

The other business line has one socket and is as far away from the router as can be possible!

It would need approx a 60 meter cable to reach from phone to router.

If someone can get me on the right path of what I need to do to keep all this working.

Thanks.

[Alex_RM]

Hi otronics,

Thanks for posting 🙂

If you've more than one line we'll need to arrange a technician to help with the cabling 🙂

I've popped you over a private message to get a few more details from you (purple envelope, top right hand corner)

Alex_Rm

[jem101]

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@otronics wrote:

Hello.

I live in a large house and have just had an email re/ the upgrade of the phone system from analogue to fibre (ie/ plugging phones into the Virgin Hub to enable a phone connection).

We have three phone lines (one private and two for home businesses).

Apparently I'm going to be sent an adaptor.

Can someone explain how three lines will work from one hub?

The private line has five phones spread out over three floors (some are cordless, others are corded) and one business line has various points for ease of use.

The other business line has one socket and is as far away from the router as can be possible!

It would need approx a 60 meter cable to reach from phone to router.

If someone can get me on the right path of what I need to do to keep all this working.

Thanks.

---

I do have to say that this does strike me as being one of those things that can quickly degenerate into a complete mess. Firstly, from a reading of this post, you have three completely separate physical landline connections, is that right? In addition you have a 'fibre' (it's not fibre but still) broadband connection to a single hub?

Firstly the hub can physically accommodate two phone lines only - and I'm not 100% sure that the facility for multiple lines has even been implemented in the firmware, but let's be optimistic and assume that it has been. So the existing hub 'could' handle two line although there is a question about how to physically connect it to the two different phone wiring in your house, but it shouldn't be impossible. 

But that leaves your third line, now I have to say that your situation might be so unique that if VM hadn't made any provision for it, it's probably understandable, you would need another hub on your account, and I'm not sure that VM's systems could or would possibly accommodate that. This really is nowhere near as simple as 'having a technician to reroute some cables'. The provided answer does indicate a degree of misunderstanding the complexity of the situation.

Personally, I think that if you don't act to make your own provision, you are very, very likely to lose two or not all three numbers, because I simply can't see VM being able to sort this out. And in that case, irrespective of whatever financial impact it may or will have on you, VM will simply shrug their shoulders - and no, there's no legal avenue to pursue as your's is a domestic/residential connection with no guarantees or SLAs.* In your place I'd probably be looking at migrating, at least, the two business lines to a SIP provider, 'Vonage' for example - in this way they work over your internet connection and are completely independent of whoever your internet provider happens to be.

*and that may sound a bit harsh if not supportive of VM's position, possibly; but I really am trying to appraise you of the reality of the situation. If this numbers are important to you, then you really do have to make your own provisions, because, I promise you VM are really unlikely to do it all for you.

[otronics]

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@jem101 wrote:

I do have to say that this does strike me as being one of those things that can quickly degenerate into a complete mess. Firstly, from a reading of this post, you have three completely separate physical landline connections, is that right? In addition you have a 'fibre' (it's not fibre but still) broadband connection to a single hub?

Firstly the hub can physically accommodate two phone lines only - and I'm not 100% sure that the facility for multiple lines has even been implemented in the firmware, but let's be optimistic and assume that it has been. So the existing hub 'could' handle two line although there is a question about how to physically connect it to the two different phone wiring in your house, but it shouldn't be impossible. 

But that leaves your third line, now I have to say that your situation might be so unique that if VM hadn't made any provision for it, it's probably understandable, you would need another hub on your account, and I'm not sure that VM's systems could or would possibly accommodate that. This really is nowhere near as simple as 'having a technician to reroute some cables'. The provided answer does indicate a degree of misunderstanding the complexity of the situation.

Personally, I think that if you don't act to make your own provision, you are very, very likely to lose two or not all three numbers, because I simply can't see VM being able to sort this out. And in that case, irrespective of whatever financial impact it may or will have on you, VM will simply shrug their shoulders - and no, there's no legal avenue to pursue as your's is a domestic/residential connection with no guarantees or SLAs.* In your place I'd probably be looking at migrating, at least, the two business lines to a SIP provider, 'Vonage' for example - in this way they work over your internet connection and are completely independent of whoever your internet provider happens to be.

*and that may sound a bit harsh if not supportive of VM's position, possibly; but I really am trying to appraise you of the reality of the situation. If this numbers are important to you, then you really do have to make your own provisions, because, I promise you VM are really unlikely to do it all for you.

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I agree with everything you have said and thought that this all would be a huge faff.

To clarify, yes I have three completely separate physical landline connections plus a Virgin Hub for internet.

I however am not being optimistic about the hub being able to carry two phone lines, let alone three! 

Question - taking the private line into account for example:

when the old analogue connection gets switched off, can I plug a cable from router into a phone socket? Will this make all existing phones on that line work again?

[Matthew_ML]

Hey otronics, thank you for reaching out and I can see you are in PM with my colleague about this.

Please do feel free to go back to her and she would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thanks 

[Client62]

In migrating from BT/Plusnet to Virgin Media, we took the VM internet service but ported 2 BT numbers to Sipgate a VOIP provider.

It was initially more complex to get involved with VOIP but we now have full control of the kit, the service and the numbers too.

Relocating the numbers to a different home or office is now just a matter of taking the VOIP phones and the Cisco ATA and connecting to the available internet service.

Unbundled phones and internet give us flexibility of ISP & VOIP providers and of location too.

A future change of ISP is now greatly simplified.

[Andrew-G]

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@Client62 wrote:

In migrating from BT/Plusnet to Virgin Media, we took the VM internet service but ported 2 BT numbers to Sipgate a VOIP provider.

It was initially more complex to get involved with VOIP but we now have full control of the kit, the service and the numbers too.

Relocating the numbers to a different home or office is now just a matter of taking the VOIP phones and the Cisco ATA and connecting to the available internet service.

Unbundled phones and internet give us flexibility of ISP & VOIP providers and of location too.

A future change of ISP is now greatly simplified.

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And depending on the OP's requirements, there may be other benefits like mapping multiple VOIP numbers to a single handset but with different ringtones.  If you actually do want separate handsets for each number that's easily possible.  The main issue I found with a "bare VOIP" setup from Andrews & Arnold is that it's a short but steep learning curve, and you have to configure your own settings if you didn't buy the ATA from your VOIP provider.

If you've got three lines then potentially there's somebody else paying the bills and value might not matter, but if you're paying then three VOIP lines should save you a packet compared to three lines through a telco. A&A will charge £1.44 a month per VOIP number plus pretty reasonable outgoing call costs, after fifteen quid per number to port it to their systems.   

[otronics]

Update:

One business line now connects via the internet.

They had to run a new cable along the house and the only option was for that phone to have its own router.

Virgin installed a new router which didn't work so they had to resort to an older model! Typical.

This was only one line with one phone so pretty basic.

The other two lines have lots of phones on them.

I will keep you posted.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @otronics,

Thank you for coming back to us about this ongoing query. Glad to hear that you've been able to resolve your Business Line connection issue.

If you need to discuss your Business Line going forward, please give our Business team a call on 0800 052 0800.

If you need help with your residential account, please let us know. We're here to help.

Thanks! 🙂

[otronics]

Virgin have been and gone (last week) and didn't do anything, saying it was too much work and slave phones were the answer.

They'd even put £15 towards them!

Currently, there is a phone plugged into a extension socket in the room where the router is.

The Master Socket is far away from the router (many rooms away).

If I swap the extension socket and Master Socket, then connect the Master Socket to the router - will all phones work?

I've seen similar success stories.

The old incoming copper connection has been disconnected outside by the way to prevent any backflow.