Landline Switchover Concerns

[thrice]

Hello,

This morning I received an email from Virgin Media informing me of the upcoming home phone switchover to fibre in June. At first, I was concerned that this was a scam but there are enough posts on the help forum to convince me otherwise. This still leaves me with a couple of important concerns.

I am suffering from a serious illness (no expressions of sympathy, please) and need to be in touch with the hospital weekly and sometimes daily. It would be rather more than a slight inconvenience to be without my landline for any length of time.

Another concern is the layout of my flat which is large and open plan resembling a loft. My current landline socket is more than 10 metres from my Hub 3 in a straight line and is on a different floor. I have a call blocker attached to this phone. I have a second wireless phone on the same floor as my hub but this is a similar distance away. The current layout is ideal.

1. Am I correct in thinking that I will need a technician visit to hardwire a connection between my telephone socket and the hub?

Several years ago I had my network cables connecting my desktop computer (next to my phone socket) to my hub and a couple of techies spent most of a day running them inside the walls and under the floor to achieve this. It was not a simple thing and involved lots of threading, pulling, and long rods.

2. Will the Virgin Media technician be able to do the same, hopefully without the upheaval and inconvenience?

My illness means I must avoid stress and rest as much as possible.

Thank you.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

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@thrice wrote:

Hello,

This morning I received an email from Virgin Media informing me of the upcoming home phone switchover to fibre in June. At first, I was concerned that this was a scam but there are enough posts on the help forum to convince me otherwise. This still leaves me with a couple of important concerns.

I am suffering from a serious illness (no expressions of sympathy, please) and need to be in touch with the hospital weekly and sometimes daily. It would be rather more than a slight inconvenience to be without my landline for any length of time.

Another concern is the layout of my flat which is large and open plan resembling a loft. My current landline socket is more than 10 metres from my Hub 3 in a straight line and is on a different floor. I have a call blocker attached to this phone. I have a second wireless phone on the same floor as my hub but this is a similar distance away. The current layout is ideal.

1. Am I correct in thinking that I will need a technician visit to hardwire a connection between my telephone socket and the hub?

Several years ago I had my network cables connecting my desktop computer (next to my phone socket) to my hub and a couple of techies spent most of a day running them inside the walls and under the floor to achieve this. It was not a simple thing and involved lots of threading, pulling, and long rods.

2. Will the Virgin Media technician be able to do the same, hopefully without the upheaval and inconvenience?

My illness means I must avoid stress and rest as much as possible.

Thank you.

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1. VM should offer a technician visit free of charge to link your existing phone extension sockets to the phone socket on the VM hub

2. VM won't lift floorboards etc. to install wires. Surface mounting the cables is the norm.

If you have any unused ethernet link cables, this kit allows you to patch a phone connection using ethernet wiring

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PCSL-Brand-Telephone-Structured-Cabling/dp/B007UGF3EU

(if that would allow you to use a spare ethernet link wire to patch a phone connection from the back of the hub to another location in your flat).

If your phone cables and coax cable from the hub converge in an omnibox outside, it may be possible to modify your phone wiring to make a link in the omnibox outside by installing a new phone cable from the VM hub to the omnibox following the existing route of the coax to the hub.

Options will depend entirely on your existing setup and cable runs and would need to be worked out with a VM tech on site.

[Paul_DN]

Hi thrice,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, I will be more than happy to help you arrange for your Landline Switchover to be done with as little disruption as possible and will aim to have no loss of service for you, it will be a technician visit due to the location of your APhone and the Router.

So I can help I will send you an invite into a private chat, once received please click on the purple envelope to accept.

Regards

Paul.  

[Paul_DN]

Hi Thrice,

Thanks for coming back to me via private message to confirm your information. 
I have booked you in for the next available appointment. To view this please sign in to your Online Account, once you log in scroll down to Orders & appointments then click on View your orders. 
Just to confirm, there will be no charge for this visit unless:
The technician diagnoses the faults as not being caused by our network/equipment
The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to your equipment
The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to any system that we are not responsible for
The technician will confirm during their visit if any of these instances apply, and if so, a £25 charge will be applied to your account.
Please ensure that someone over the age of 18 is at the property for the time the engineer is there. If the appointment is unsuitable or if anyone living at your property has tested positive for Coronavirus, has been asked to self-isolate or has flu-like symptoms then please reschedule the appointment on the same link. If you do miss the appointment for any reason, a £25 missed appointment charge will be applied to your account on the day of the appointment, so it is important to reschedule if needed. 
Let us know how the appointment goes.
Regards
Paul.

[thrice]

Good morning.

I have just had my visit by the Virgin Media engineer to ready my home phone for the switchover in June. He read through the answer given above by goslow and informed me that the solutions offered would not work and that moving either the hub - which is currently next to my 360 box downstairs - or the telephone on the floor above is the only way to get the new setup to work. This is something I explained in my original post I cannot do. Due to the state of my health, it is important that I am in regular telephone contact with the hospital. To solve the problem it seems I must get someone in to run a new telephone cable under my flooring and inside my walls to connect my existing telephone socket and the hub. Apart from the expense, this is something I am reluctant to do as my illness means I must avoid stress and rest as much as possible.

I confess that I am not technically minded. Is there no other way I can achieve this?

[goslow]

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@thrice wrote:

Good morning.

I have just had my visit by the Virgin Media engineer to ready my home phone for the switchover in June. <snip>

I confess that I am not technically minded. Is there no other way I can achieve this?

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So what did the VM tech say the issue was preventing the work being done?

An issue with hiding cables under floors/walls (which VM legitimately would not do)?

Or did the tech say that existing phone sockets could not be linked to the phone socket on the back of the VM hub? Or something else?

VM normally send the tech out during, or after, the switchover so the revised arrangement of extensions can be made to work once the 21CV line is activated and the old incoming line can be disconnected. If you are not being switched until June the issue may be further complicated by this.

[thrice]

Hi Goslow,

The engineer said that either the phone had to be moved next to the hub or the hub needed to be moved next to the phone. Currently, the hub and the phone socket are on different floors and about 15 metres apart. He also said that the suggested adaptor would not work and also that the wiring in the brown box outside was nothing to do with the phone line. He came armed with a 2-metre cable to connect the hub and the phone.

Several years ago when I was in much better health I had the wiring rejigged and run under the flooring and in the walls so that the hub was right next to the 360 box (or V6 box - or whatever it was back then) and the TV. It is something of an irony that the current VM landline is the most reliable of all VMs system. The TV/broadband goes down regularly - yesterday being only the most recent. With the new set up I assume I would lose my phone as well.

I am now in a quandary as to what to do. The nuclear option seems to be getting someone in to run a new telephone wire from my existing phone socket all the way under the flooring and inside the walls to the hub.

[goslow]

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@thrice wrote:

Hi Goslow,

The engineer said that either the phone had to be moved next to the hub or the hub needed to be moved next to the phone. <snip>

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Unfortunately, none of the tech's comments explains why the VM tech could not do the work.

Sadly, we have read about this before in topics on here. The skills/abilities/interest/knowledge of VM tech's seems to vary wildly (as well as how much effort they are prepared to put into resolving an issue). Many seem to have no knowledge of telephony wiring. From your description, I doubt the VM tech would know what the patching kit linked above was, nor how to use it (if that was actually an option in your home).

On a similar past topic (which gives a description of the process of wiring extension sockets to the hub),

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Why-must-I-move-my-phones-and-plug-them-into-the-vir...

it mentions 5 technician visits were required before the 'right' kind of technician appeared and completed the task.

Unlikely a technician can install the cables exactly as per your aesthetic requirements of hiding cables in floors/walls but linking existing phone sockets to the hub is certainly something that is routinely arranged on here on a daily/weekly basis.

If you are not being switched until June though, making the modifications immediately may be problematic because the current incoming telephone cable from the street (which you are using right now) should be disconnected from the phone sockets before connecting the sockets to the hub's phone socket (which is not currently active for you).

What is stopping you flipping the position of the call blocker and cordless base station from one floor (and connecting those to the hub when you are switched) and putting the satellite cordless handset on the other floor? On most cordless systems now the functions of the system (answering machine, missed calls etc.) can be fully operated from a satellite handset without needing to be near the base station.

[thrice]

What is stopping you flipping the position of the call blocker and cordless base station from one floor (and connecting those to the hub when you are switched) and putting the satellite cordless handset on the other floor? On most cordless systems now the functions of the system (answering machine, missed calls etc.) can be fully operated from a satellite handset without needing to be near the base station.

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That was suggested but the second handset is currently in the bedroom - on the same floor and still about 15 metres away from the hub but without the option of hiding the cables under the flooring or in the walls. I confess that I am struggling with this. At present, I cannot see any other option than running a new phone cable from the phone socket all the way to the hub with all the problems that involves.

[goslow]

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@thrice wrote:

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That was suggested but the second handset is currently in the bedroom - on the same floor and still about 15 metres away from the hub but without the option of hiding the cables under the flooring or in the walls. I confess that I am struggling with this. At present, I cannot see any other option than running a new phone cable from the phone socket all the way to the hub with all the problems that involves.

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So you have cordless system in use (base station with two cordless handsets) and a corded phone plugged into a bedroom wall socket?