Port phone service (only) away from Virgin Media

[jamesc77]

Hi good people of the VM Community,

I currently have a BB + Fixed Line Phone + TV package with VM, but considering porting the phone number being using on my Fixed Line Phone service across to A&A (who offer a simple VOIP service), without impacting my other VM services or changing my current VM contract end date.

Does anyone happen to know if this is possible/has been successful doing this, and what was involved?

Soggy and windy outside with Storm Bert doing its thing, so a perfect day to cross a few admin tech jobs off the to do list 😊

[Adduxi]

I strongly suspect any change to your existing contract will produce a new 18 month contract at a higher price. 

[asim18]

I have also been thinking about porting my VM landline over to A&A.

The quality on VM's VoIP service is absolutely diabolical, it's worse than an actual analogue POTS line!

A&A, or any other VoIP provider such as VOXCloud, offer absolutely brilliant sound quality and support latest HD voice codecs. VM on the other hand is going backwards, they seem to be trying to reduce quality as much as possible while the rest of the world is trying to improve quality. Bizarre.

I would have assumed that porting the number to another company wouldnt change your contract, it would just make your VM phone line go dead. Just my assumption.

[Tudor]

VMs land line system is NOT a VoIP system, it’s just using a different way of presenting the signal to the same old telephone equipment at the VM ‘exchange’.

[asim18]

Sorry Tudor from what I've seen it doesnt work like that.

It's not presenting the signal at the VM "exchange".

The Hub3 acts as a ATA device (Analogue Telephone Adapter), not the exchange. It's VoIP up to the HUB3 which is then converted to analogue.

The backend system is all standardised VoIP.

[asim18]

I can have an A&A VoIP SIP account, load it into any off the shelf ATA, then plug my analogue phone into it.

Precicely what VM's system is.

Doesn't suddenly stop it being a VoIP system.

[asim18]

Also, You call it a "land line system", that's what it certainly is NOT.

But whatever you want to call it is simply semantics, the fact remains, it's an absolutely terrible quality service.

Also there have been reports of people being able to place a SIP call to their VM IP address and their telephone rings. Confirming that it's VoIP.

Sorry cant seem to edit my posts!

[jamesc77]

That’s what I’m hoping too asim18… With a bit of luck, one of the VM team can confirm, and give an indication of what’s involved. Or maybe someone on here has already been through the (fingers crossed, straight forward) process?!

Having the flexibility to move ISP without having to have the faff of coordinating number porting feels like a good position to be in. Plus if I were to move, I can keep my local STD code number wherever I end up (although accept this is a lot easier than it used to be too).

My VM contract comes to an end early January, so if I can move the phone service elsewhere, gives me more options/ability to compare like for like (ish) services at renewal time. Plus we now have Openreach Nd CityFibre wholesale infra running past the house, so finally some competition for decent bandwidth broadband (woohoo) - will be interesting to see how VM respond to that competition 😊

[Tudor]

I’m not commenting on the quality of the service. It definitely is a landline system, it uses wires and not radio signals, what else is it? VM system at present is NOT VoIP they refer to it as 21CV I believe.

[jamesc77]

Interestingly, looking at the latest packages on the VM website, I don’t get any packages offered that include a ‘fixed’ (non-mobile) phone service. Purely speculation, but does suggest packages including phone line isn’t offered to new customers anymore, which might help explain the quality deteriorating?! That said, I’m only going on the information on the headline packages pages. It maybe that if you start an order, phone line can be added… The link to bb + tv + phone takes you to bb + tv packages only though 🤔

Regardless, I’m going off piste 😁 Just want to know if I can port my phone service elsewhere without having to extend my existing VM contract. If anyone on here has done that, or VM team could confirm, that’d be great 👍🏻