Virgin Media Community

[SpeedyLee]

Dear Virgin Media,

Please, just leave it alone.

Am I one of many who are frustrated with VM's edict and effective castration to make our landline phones change from the present copper to fibre optic?  For myself, my phone is in another part of the house and I don't want to have a cable and decor damaging holes drilled into the walls. Are they going to fill in the plaster and paint to make 'good', that's very doubtful. 

Why can't VM just simply have two methods running side by side, those who remain as it is with a copper cable feeding the landline and those who want to and can make the change to optical.  Not everyone either wants the bells and whistles offered by optical cable.

VM are shooting themselves in both feet with this enforcement and will only drive those of us who either cannot or are unwilling (for practical reasons) to swap over and will go with another supplier. I suspect with VM's ever increasing charges this might be a good time to jump ship regardless of any super broadband speeds on offer. Or the alternative would just keep the current broadband hub and cancel the phone contract.

[nodrogd]

And who will you move too:

The simple answer is that the entrie UK PSTN infrastructure is no longer economically viable. Its also nearly 50 years out of date & open to abuse by scammers as no modern security measures can be utilised.

It is not just Virgin moving to 21CV. The entire BT Openreach PSTN infrastructure is being retired by 2025 & BT are already installing digital lines for some new customers.

https://www.bt.com/help/landline/digital-voice-migration 

There is a "need to know" OFCOM guide to the changes below.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2021/upgrading-landlines-to-digital-technology 

If you have not got your phone near the hub there are two options:

1) Use DECT cordless handsets which use wireless technology.

2) Get the hub wired to the existing master socket. This can be done internally or externally if required.

[Alex_RM]

Hi SpeedyLee,

Thanks for posting and welcome to our community 🙂

I'm sorry to hear you're not happy about moving over to a VOIP line. 

As technology is progressing and the Industry changing, we will be moving all customers from our copper lines in line with the industry, this also means less faults and outages etc. 

If you don't want cables, as nodrogd has advised you can choose to have cordless handsets. 

Alex_Rm

[SpeedyLee]

Hello,

re If you don't want cables, as nodrogd has advised you can choose to have cordless handsets. 

We have a twin cordless handset with the base station in the hallway and that is where the socket box is located for the incoming phone cable. The BB Router is in the lounge (behind the sofa).  The problem still exists of how to route a 'new' cable from the replacement router to the handset base station.  

  As a side issue,I'm a bit miffed to hear we'll lose 'free' voice messages aka 1571 with the switch over.

[goslow]

Depending on the model of your cordless phone, you may be able to just add another satellite handset to your existing setup. Plug the existing cordless main base station into the router and use a new satellite handset in the hallway. Most cordless systems allow all of the features of the phone to be controlled from the satellite handsets so access to the main base station should not be necessary.

If you don't want to do that, then VM should be able to install a phone cable from the location of the router to the phone socket in the hall to link the hall phone socket to the phone socket on the hub. They should do this free of charge but it would involved running a cable in the home. (May not need to be a direct piece of cable from router to hall. Might be possible to link to a nearer existing extension phone socket if that existing socket is already joined to the one in the hall)

As far as free voicemail goes, from what I have read, the new 21CV phone service adds call waiting as standard but call waiting and voicemail can't be used at the same time. As far as I can tell from the info online if you turn off the call waiting feature you should be able to use voicemail. Others will confirm if that is correct or not.

[SpeedyLee]

Hi goslow,

A good idea about the base station being located where the router is placed. Despite being short of mains sockets, not too sure it continually gathering dust behind the sofa is such a good thing?  We weren't considering changing our elderly twin handset as I doubt we could obtain a third hand set without it being half the price of a new (3 pce) set or being able to access the main base station features from a satellite hand set.  

I still do not like the probable idea of a hole being drilled into the wall to gain access or having a cable being routed and tacked around the skirting board is a bit like having a confederate sticker on a Rolls Royce.

[SassyB2]

I too am totally frustrated, the only written communication I have received was a text to ring 150 to book an engineer. I asked for written confirmation which I haven't received. Is this mandatory? are there no options? what effect is it going to have on my calls or my bill? I have 3 extensions currently, can this continue? So many questions I can't find the answer to. Surely this move is a change to contract shouldn't we have received written notice and had to agree to it. 

[jem101]

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@SassyB2 wrote:

I too am totally frustrated, the only written communication I have received was a text to ring 150 to book an engineer. I asked for written confirmation which I haven't received. Is this mandatory? are there no options? what effect is it going to have on my calls or my bill? I have 3 extensions currently, can this continue? So many questions I can't find the answer to. Surely this move is a change to contract shouldn't we have received written notice and had to agree to it. 

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It doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not, there’s no choice. It isn’t just VM, the entire industry is planning on dumping all of the old copper-line (telephone) connections and the underlaying infrastructure by 2025, even if VM were to agree and keep things as they were, the telephone would no longer work as there would be nothing for it to connect to.

Is this mandatory? Yes, well if you want to still have a house landline phone.

There’s no choice? None whatsoever.

Call quality and your bills should be exactly the same.

Lastly extensions, are these phones all wired in to a wall socket or are some of them DECT phones where only one base unit is plugged into the wall and the rest can be free standing anywhere? If they are all wired then the VM engineer will need to run a new wire inside the house from where the hub is to where the ‘master socket’ is or possibly the closest socket with a bit of fiddling with the wiring. If they are all DECT phones then the base unit can be plugged directly inti the hub and the other extensions moved about wherever you want.

[Adri_G]

Hello SasyB2 and thanks for your post.

Welcome to our community, we are eager to help with any issue related to your account and services.

We are sorry to hear about the dissatisfaction caused by the landline migration, as this is gradually done throughout the UK, where all our landlines will operate via fibre optics in the future. As you may already know, we are removing the copper lines so a landline would not work through those any more after this migration process is complete.
Please, have a read here in regard to this process, as it contains all the information related to it.

Also, sorry to see our appointment update did not reach you.

In order to be able to support you further with this, I am going to send you a PM.
Please check the top-right corner of our forum and you should see a purple envelope. Click this and you'll see my message.

[SassyB2]

Thanks for the information, as you say this change over to fibre is mandatory, a lot of the frustration and stress caused could have been avoided by the simple process of Virgin writing, by letter or e-mail, and keeping their customers informed. I have heard that, unlike the land line, if there is a power outage at home you will be unable to ring the emergency services. Is this true?