Being forced to change to VOIP?

[Andaho]

I'm being told by virgin staff on the phone that we have to change to the VOIP service, or we will no longer have a phone line.

This is massively inconvenient as I have my virgin hub (which I only use as a modem) at one end of the house, and the phone line, where the phone belongs, at the other side of the house.

I also want to continue using my own router.

I also have concerns about audio quality when the internet connection is bad, and not having a working phone in the event of a power cut or when the internet goes down.

Is it correct that VOIP is being forced upon customers that don't want to change?

[Graham1967]

Thanks @goslow I did take a quick look before your reply & did notice rj11 connectors for voip so not as simple as plugging the rj45 in

think these adaptors should do the trick with my setup going to a  rj45 female outlet (virgin already provide the top one bt to rj11)

Another issue I have is have tested out my bt phone which works fine on outgoing calls but no ringing sound on incoming...understand I will also need a 'ringing capacitor" for the phone too ring. Shame not included in the superhub 3 box

[goslow]

There are all sorts of ways in which you can wire up the arrangement. The important part (which is hardest to achieve) is making certain that the internal wiring of all the leads and adapters carries the signal from one end of the cable chain to the other by matching the internal pins of each lead/adapter correctly to connect with each other. The supplier and manufacturer info on pinouts is usually missing or very confusing to interpret.

Looking at your picture you have uploaded, you should be able to use the adapter BK4509 (bottom left) and an ordinary RJ45-RJ45 computer network patch lead (which you probably have already) which would allow you to connect TEL1 from the back of the hub into the upstairs ethernet socket.

At the other end down stairs, you need RJ45 plug to BT socket adapter like this kind of thing

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BT-MASTER-SOCKET-FEMALE-CABLE-RJ45-MALE-PLUG-PABX-ADAPTER-CAT5-MODULE-CON...

If your phone needs a ringing capacitor, then you would need the one marked as PABXMASTER which contains a ringing capacitor. You plug that into the ethernet port downstairs and your phone into the adapter. This ringing capacitor serves the one phone plugged into the adapter.

If you get an alternative adapter arrangement where you place the ringing capacitor at the hub end and use 4-wire cables throughout then the ringing capacitor covers everything you connect after it.

The devil is in the detail of how these things are internally wired so can't give you a 100% guarantee that will work but that's my best suggestion based on your pictures.

Your picture looks like it is from the eBay shop

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/comms4udotnet

They look like they are a specialist telecoms provider so you could drop them a message to confirm what you want to buy and how you plan to connect it together. They should be able to confirm that the 'daisy chain' of connections should work.

The alternative option would be to go for a twin pack of cordless phones, place the base station upstairs plugged into the hub and a satellite phone downstairs wherever you want it. Once a VM customer has been moved over to the 21CV connection, that seems the most sensible way to go to me and bypass all of the wiring conundrum!

Hope you can get it linked up and working.

[dcweather]

My landline had been buzzing and crackling for some time. I left it as i don't use it much. Then the dialing tone wouldn't work and people started saying phone was giving engaged tone all of the time. VM said there was a fault on the line and sent an engineer round. He said they'd identified all sorts of issues and I can believe that because our road flooded and their data "pit" with it. He said it would be a big network fix that could well take a couple of weeks. He asked if I wanted to change to VOIP which would take ten minutes. It made sense to me to take advantage of our excellent optic fibre network round here so went for it. Existing cable just goes from phone base to modem phone connection. Seems to work great although there doesn't seem to be a dialing tone as such when you pick up the phone to make a call. Also will have to re-route able a bit. Personally I think it is a good idea given that we are going to be forced to have it eventually and the technology is better. 

Mind VOIP is cheaper to install and maintain so will I get a reduction in my landline rental charge?? 🙂

[Roger_Gooner]

Regretfully any savings from moving to VoIP do not seem to be passed onto customers.

[dcweather]

Quel surprise !

[nodrogd]

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@dcweather wrote:

Mind VOIP is cheaper to install and maintain so will I get a reduction in my landline rental charge?? 

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Nope, at least not yet. All 21CV currently does on VM is replace the twisted pair between the master socket & the local street fibre node. When the line gets back to the headend it converts back to analogue & goes through an old fashioned PSTN exchange. VMs service will not go full VoIP until 2025 to synchronise with the BT analogue switch off.

[DM13]

This is very unpleasant news for people in the same position. - suspect Virgin will lose more customers especially because of the VERY VERY POOR customer service surrounding this forced switchover. Only one of the 7 contacts i have had with virgin has been with a person whose English was sufficiently good to understand properly - I assumed most of the calls were Phishing attempts.

[Paul_DN]

Hi DM13,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, sorry to hear you aren't happy with the change to our 21ST Century Voice, we appreciate your concern, this is a step in the right direction and will provide a much better service, for those who who rely on their phone lines such as lifeline and special needs customers we will provide a back up phone so they will always have contact.

You can find out more around the switch over here.

Regards

Paul.

[goslow]

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@DM13 wrote:
This is very unpleasant news for people in the same position. - suspect Virgin will lose more customers especially because of the VERY VERY POOR customer service surrounding this forced switchover. Only one of the 7 contacts i have had with virgin has been with a person whose English was sufficiently good to understand properly - I assumed most of the calls were Phishing attempts.

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Even moving supplier won't bypass the phone switchover process as all suppliers are doing their own switchovers.

If you have queries on the VM switchover you could post them on here and someone may be able to help but, if you need to do that, you'd be best off starting your own topic.

As for VM's customer service ... there's certainly no shortage of 'discussion' about that on the forums!

[dcweather]

People need to understand that this is a Nationwide, Government driven initiative to update all old analogue copper wired systems that are often breaking down. BT are currently doing it via Open Reach. It is not a Virgin issue really. It seems a potential disaster for some, especially the old but it just requires a bit of sensible thinking or lateral thinking. It will be transparent to everybody after the new "box" is installed unless there is a power cut. Most people would then have a mobile phone to resort to. I accept this is the worst area of concern but the old people it affects were used to managing without any phone when they were younger. As long as they know what to do in this rare situation I think it is not unreasonable to upgrade. They just need to know that in an emergency they will have to knock next door or have somebody nearby with a mobile phone I guess. Plenty of other things are affected by power cuts. The existing  analogue land lines are more likely to fail anyway. What do they do now when that happens?

The advantage is much clearer fidelity. I no longer get any crackles and problems I had before with my landline.