Landline change to Fibre

[jellyroll]

I have read several queries about this in the Forum, most of which have been helpful & relevant but have not fully answered my questions.

I have been given a changeover date of 3 November and I believe I will need a technician visit as my landline phone is nowhere near my hub.

Previous answers have talked about extra internal wiring round the skirting boards to connect the phone to the hub. I do not want any more internal wiring but have no objection to external wiring as I already have some as follows:

At the moment, the Virgin cable from the street comes into my downstairs lounge and connects to my TV & landline phone both of which are close to the entry point in the wall. There is also an external cable (which I paid Virgin to install) from there, half way round the house, to an upstairs bedroom to connect to my hub (which connects to my PC by a cable not wifi).

I do not want to move my landline phone to be near the hub and I do not want to move the hub.

Q1 Can the existing external wiring be used?

Q2 If not, can a second set of external wiring be installed that follows the same route as the original wiring?

Q3 Should I arrange to have a technician visit now or should I wait until I receive the new phone adapter?

[Adri_G]

Hey Jellyroll, thanks for posting on our help forum today.

We're sorry to hear of this confusion caused by this landline service change, happy to assist with any of these issues and queries you have.

Please, be advised once we switch to fibre optics your landline will need to connect via the hub, therefore we usually provide with an adaptor to use and plug your handset to the back of the router. This would mean a relocation of either the phone or the hub, or some cabling work to ensure the correct set up.
Based on  the info you passed us above, an engineer visit is required to ensure you have the correct set up on both broadband and landline.
We can provide this free of charge, our staff will assess and advise on any cabling work needed to keep your handset and hub at it's current location and discuss with you how it can be done in this case.
 
Can we please just establish what type of hub you have currently before we can help with booking this appointment?
Is it a hub 3, 4 or 5? Let us know and we're happy to assist further.

[jellyroll]

It's Hub 3

[Adri_G]

Thanks for the response and for confirming this, jellyroll.

Great! We will not need a new hub in this case as our hub 3 can support this change 🙂

To assist with you this further, I'm 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.

[jem101 · Accepted solution]

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@jellyroll wrote:

Snip…

I do not want to move my landline phone to be near the hub and I do not want to move the hub.

OK that’s fair enough so somehow we (you, VM) need to get a new twisted pair cable from where the hub currently is to where your phone socket is.

Q1 Can the existing external wiring be used?

Unfortunately no it can’t

Q2 If not, can a second set of external wiring be installed that follows the same route as the original wiring?

I can’t see any reason why not, now a new, fairly thin wire would need to be pushed through the existing hole in both the upstairs and downstairs wall, this might mean a bit or drilling or cutting the existing sealant and re-sealing it afterwards.

Q3 Should I arrange to have a technician visit now or should I wait until I receive the new phone adapter?

This is a bit of a tough one to be honest, personally, I’d arrange it now, but the issue would be that it can’t be tested until you are actually switched over, so no way of knowing if it is all OK.

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[goslow]

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@jellyroll wrote:

I have read several queries about this in the Forum, most of which have been helpful & relevant but have not fully answered my questions.

<snip>

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This may work, if I have understood your description correctly ...

VM fit a telephone socket next to your router upstairs and run a telephone cable externally to the omnibox outside (following the same path as you existing external coax cable for the router). This new phone cable is then joined (either in the omnibox or through the wall) to the existing telephone socket downstairs.

A past topic advised that VM use an adapter lead (image at message #9 below)

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/HUB3-to-Master-socket-adaptor/m-p/4507007#M143805

to 'back-feed' a telephone connection from the new telephone socket upstairs next to the hub which, in turn is linked to the existing phone socket downstairs. The original/old incoming telephone line from the street needs to be disconnected from the old telephone master socket to avoid feeding any new phone connection from the VM hub back into the street on the wiring of the old incoming line.

There are probably other methods which you could discuss with the VM tech on site. Just ensure you get the wiring arrangement that you want rather than what is easiest for the tech.