Landline extensions working from WIFI Adaptor hub

[NickoNorwich]

Hi I have just been sent a notification my land line is being turned off and I have to plug in an adaptor in to my WiFi hob to use a VoIP service. First question is how will the 3 landline slave sockets in my house work once this switch over is made. I am a electronics and instrument engineer and I don't see how this is possible. Second issue is my Broadband socket is in the lounge and my land line socket is in the hall the land line phone must be in the hall for all the other members of the house to use and the lounge is locked how with out a 15m extension tacked to the skirting board to I achieve this?

Cheers Nick

[Ryan_N]

Hi NickoNorwich, 

Thank you for your post and welcome to the forums. 

All information relating to the home phone switch over can be found over here on our forums page: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-Phone-Switchover/gh-p/Switchover - within that link is FAQ's and all relevant information. 

If you have to relocate your handset, we can get a technician arranged who will discreetly re-wire the phone socket so it is closer to your router if this is what's needed. 

Cheers, 

Ryan. 

[NickoNorwich]

Your answer does not tell me if I lose the 3 landline slave connections in the other parts of my house as far as I know its impossible to run additional phones sockets from a VoIP connector into the back of my Wi-Fi hub so please answer the question, will the 3 other phone sockets in the house work after this switch over is made.

As for discreetly wire an extension to my hall way from the WiFi hub so the other occupants of the house can use the 1 remaining phone in the house. I have concrete floors and when I put these down I spent ages routing all the cables under the floor screed so I did not have cables tacked to the top of the skirting.

I am not happy this is not the service I signed up for which was landline and broad band now you are cutting it down to broadband only with a VoIP service and I lose 3/4 of the land line phones in my house and have an ugly cable installed when I have gone to great lengths to hide all the wiring.

[Ryan_N]

I just want to assure you that I am not here to make things any more difficult - as you can appreciate I can only provide information that can be found through the pages above. 

The home phone switchover is something that is being rolled out across the UK, moving the use of landline over to a fibre network. This isn't just something that is happening over here - but across all providers. Changing to the phone service via cable is a government objective and this has to be completed by 2025, we are choosing to change over now to ensure all of our customers have been migrated prior to the current telephone exchange being closed down in 2025. More information also found here: https://www.futureofvoice.co.uk/

The sockets wouldn't work unfortunately - for phone extensions to continue to work, you’ll need to book a technician to make some changes to the Virgin Media wiring in your home.

Cheers, 

Ryan. 

[jem101]

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@NickoNorwich wrote:

Your answer does not tell me if I lose the 3 landline slave connections in the other parts of my house as far as I know its impossible to run additional phones sockets from a VoIP connector into the back of my Wi-Fi hub so please answer the question, will the 3 other phone sockets in the house work after this switch over is made.

As for discreetly wire an extension to my hall way from the WiFi hub so the other occupants of the house can use the 1 remaining phone in the house. I have concrete floors and when I put these down I spent ages routing all the cables under the floor screed so I did not have cables tacked to the top of the skirting.

I am not happy this is not the service I signed up for which was landline and broad band now you are cutting it down to broadband only with a VoIP service and I lose 3/4 of the land line phones in my house and have an ugly cable installed when I have gone to great lengths to hide all the wiring.

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I'm afraid, there is no alternative to this other than, as you say a 15m telephone extension cable run from where the hub currently is to where the equivalent of the master socket is (presumably the hall). The existing wires leading into the socket from outside are cut and the socket is back fed from the new extension.

Otherwise I suppose if you replaced all of your handsets with DECT cordless models, connect the master unit directly to the hub and have the three or four satellite units where the phones currently are - although each of them will need a mains power supply.

[NickoNorwich]

This is not what I want I am paying for 2 lines coming into my house 1 broadband line 1 phone line this as far as I am concerned is the contract I signed up for and virgin is paying BT line rental on my behalf now the phone line will be sneezed into the broadband line reducing the bandwidth available for other devices. Once this is done Virgin will not be refunding the line rental they pay on my behalf from my monthly bill it will be pocketed as extra profit, the last time this was shown as a separate line item on my bill it was circa £11 a month.  

I am losing the diversity of connection as if the broadband goes down I will now also lose phone service or if the power goes off I will not be able to make calls as I can now. I have to rewire my internal phone network and or invest in new hand sets for a switch over being done 3 years early for Virgin's profit.

Your message is also highly misleading the phone network will not switched off as you say just all calls will be routed through a VoIP system not a STD system as most houses don't have a separate broadband connection such as the virgin network for broadband, those users on a single line service will see no change, Virgin is only doing this so they don't have the expense of providing 2 connections into the house and can reap the extra profit form not paying BT for the phone service whilst providing a reduced service to there customers for the same cost

I am writing all this in a public form as presently none of your other customer contact routes are functioning you can't get through to live chat the web page for the phone numbers is inactive as is any other contact details is the is deliberated ploy or are you presently overwelled with complaints.

My contract as far as I can see from 11th January will not be what I signed up for so I would like to be contacted to see what options I have for release.

I would prefer from now on not to play out this dispute in the public eye and have a Email address for someone who can help me can you provide this

Best Regards Nick Oliver 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @NickoNorwich,

Thank you for coming back to us about this issue and for sharing your perspective on the matter. 

We understand your frustration with this, however, as my colleague advised, this is not a decision that is solely being made by Virgin Media. Other providers are looking to move their landline services over to the fibre network as well as the older copper line system is becoming unpredictable and more unstable. Moving landline connections will ensure that landline connections are more stable and work through the broadband Hubs.

If your broadband services are impacted by an outage, you are correct in saying that this will impact your new landline connection. If you need a life line connection, we do provide EBULs (Emergency Back Up Lines) which will serve as a lifeline connection which will be able to make calls to the emergency services in care of an emergency if the landline is disconnected.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to stop this change from happening. As @jem101 advised, you could invest in cordless phones if you do not wish to have cabling around your home.

Let us know if there's anything else we can do to help going forward.

Thank you.

[goslow]

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@NickoNorwich wrote:

This is not what I want I am paying for 2 lines coming into my house 1 broadband line 1 phone line this as far as I am concerned is the contract I signed up for and virgin is paying BT line rental on my behalf now the phone line will be sneezed into the broadband line reducing the bandwidth available for other devices. Once this is done Virgin will not be refunding the line rental they pay on my behalf from my monthly bill it will be pocketed as extra profit, the last time this was shown as a separate line item on my bill it was circa £11 a month.  

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The points you raise about the 'upgrade' to phone-via-router connections have been made before on here. Unfortunately the decision to press ahead with this has been made over a few years of consultations, with approval from OFCOM, for the present arrangements as-offered.

As has been mentioned above, all suppliers are making this move so, even if you leave VM, you will be offered a similar landline-via-router connection for the phone. I have read on other forums that Openreach now has stop orders on supplying any new copper phone connections from certain exchanges.

Suppliers were banned from advertising line rental and broadband prices separately in 2016. You now pay a supplier for a bundle of services, which may include a landline phone, and the costs of making the connection to your home. The price also includes the cost of the phone service itself.

Regarding the practicalities of your phone extension wiring, there isn't a 'no-extra-wiring' option for what you want to do. There may be a 'least-extra-wiring' option depending on how your VM cables are run at present.

Your VM phone cables and coax presumably converge at the VM omnibox outside your home as the origin of the VM services. If your coax cable from the hub is not under concrete, it should be possible to fit a phone socket next to the VM hub and run a phone cable following the existing route of the coax cable. The new phone cable could be joined to the existing phone extension cables in the omnibox outside, whilst removing the old incoming line connection (to prevent back feeding your new line into the cabling in the street). That might be a method with least wiring and following an existing cable route.

Past topics on here mention VM using an adapter from the VM hub to back-feed the connection into the extension sockets. An example is shown at message #9 here

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