Virgin Media Community

[Summerbreeze]

I've been a Virgin/NTL/Cable & Wireless customer for 20+ years and have had Broadband and Landline throughout. I now want to connect our home phone to the Hub 3 since its location is now more convenient than the Virgin phone socket which is a room we seldom use.

I started by connecting our phone (a relatively new Panasonic) via a BT to RJ11 adapter to the Hub but got no dial tone and a 'Check the Line' message - or suchlike.

I then logged into the Hub settings and noticed that Telephony was disabled. Thinking that this could simply be switched remotely, I called Customer Services and was advised that I needed to 'buy a docsis' phone otherwise it wouldn't work. Although not a concept I was familiar with (and buying a new phone seemed a hell of an overkill), I thought I would go away and Google it.

That revealed nothing other than providing me with an understanding as to what docsis is. Telephony is still switched off on the Hub.

Has anyone else been through this process sufficient to be able to provide clues as to the way forward? If Telephony was/could be switched on is it reasonable to expect that it would work? For what it's worth we are in a Blue (rather than Purple) zone although I have been led to believe that that shouldn't make any difference to the desired objective.

[Gareth_L · Accepted solution]

Hello Summerbreeze

Thanks for your post 

The service for the Telephone is what we call 21CV 

21st Century Voice 

It will need an engineer to attend and switch this over which We can arrange on here 

I will need to send you a private message to pass security 
If you can check the purple envelope top right of your screen that would be great 
Regards     
Gareth_L

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

The DOCSIS based phone service is being provided under 2 scenarios at the moment.

1) New customer connections.

2) By invitation to customers when there is sufficient capacity to allow the switch with the installed equipment at the street nodes & the local headend.

All customers will eventually be migrated to the hub service by 2025.

Most standard landline phones will work with just a RJ11 to BT type adaptor.

[Summerbreeze]

Gareth, did you mean to send this as a PM rather than posting it on the forum? I've not received a PM and wouldn't disclose the information requested publicly.

Thanks for responding so promptly.

[Summerbreeze]

Thanks for the responses. Purchasing a 'docsis phone' - whatever that is - as advised by Customer Services evidently isn't necessary or a viable solution. I am happy, therefore, to wait until we get the technician visit booked for later in the month. At least I know now that connecting our home phone to our Hub 3 in our specific circumstances is a viable option which I wasn't sure about previously.

[nodrogd]

There is no such thing as a DOCSIS phone. DOCSIS is the radio system the Virgin equipment runs on. As far as the customer side of the hub is concerned it makes no difference.

CS are talking about VoIP phones that use the internet to make calls. These plug into the RJ45 Ethernet sockets the same as other internet kit. 

Virgin is NOT using VoIP. The calls are routed separately from your internet connection to the local street node & then to the headend analogue exchange in the same way as with a standard landline. Any modern landline phone handset (via an RJ11 adaptor) plugged into the top TEL socket on the hub should work without any issues. All you need is for Virgin to supply the adaptor, if you don’t have one already.

The only thing to bear in mind that also affects VoIP, is that you lose your phone service if your power (or the power to the local node) goes off.

[Summerbreeze]

I had also never heard of a 'DOCSIS' phone before and assumed that the CS advisor must have been referring to VoIP since I would have understood that. When I suggested as much, he said 'No'. No matter, it looks as though there is a path to the way forward now.

Also, thanks for the point about losing phone service in the event of a power outage. With a powered base unit and cordless phone, we already suffer the same in the rare event of a power cut so we wouldn't be any worse off. Presumably, a VM service outage or loss of hub connection would simply add to that.

[Gareth_L]

Hello Summerbreeze

I has set a reminder to get back to you and see how the visit went

However Covid has thrown a spanner in the works, 

Any non essential internal work has had to be placed on hold to protect our engineers 

The Team will get in touch to reschedule this by text message very soon 

Gareth_L