Sky Customers Unable to Call Virgin Media VOIP

[OverAndOut]

Fellow VM customers,

Since November friends and family with Sky mobiles (or landlines) have been unable to call my VM VOIP line. (The telephone is connected to our VM hub).

Making calls is no problem. It appears that numbers from other phone providers can get through, so it seems to affect only Sky numbers. When they call they hear an error message: "Sorry, that number does not exist." VM sent an engineer out and he confirmed all our internal equipment (hub, phone and line) is fine, so suggested it must be an external issue. Sure enough, he consulted his issue-checker, and noted that there was an outage in the area. 

I see from Sky forums that Sky customers are reporting problems between the two networks. I even spoke to a Sky technician who seemed knowledgeable and friendly, but Sky place the issue firmly in Virgin Media's corner. 

Virgin Media telephone support (stop laughing) acknowledge there's an outage in the area, but that's all they know and that's all they ever say. The field technicians have set 4 dates to fix it and failed 4 times. Each time they set themselves a new date and try again. They have a set a 5th resolution date of 3rd Jan. 

There may be an outage, but in over 2 months VM can't actually confirm if that outage is responsible for this specific issue. So, we may be waiting for VM to fix a problem, not the problem.

Faulty hardware and wiring can account for degradation of service across the board, but this isn't across the board, it's specific to Sky numbers, so it seems more of a config issue. 

So, if you're experiencing the issue, please comment. If you have insights that may help, please also feel free to comment.

(VM Mods, if all you can do is confirm there's an outage and repeat the next resolution date, please save your energy.)

Thanks all.

[nodrogd]

This is likely to be an issue either with VMs headend PSTN exchange or the interconnect with the local BT PSTN exchange.

It will be nothing to do with the hub based 21CV line. All this does is replace the old analogue copper pair between your house and the network segment fibre node cabinet, where the signal is converted to digital & sent to VMs headend, with a direct digital link from the hub to the fibre node. Everything else is the same.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @OverAndOut,

Welcome back to our Community Forums. Thank you for your post and I'm very sorry to hear that you're having some issues with your landline connection.

Can you confirm that you have a Virgin Media landline connection set up at your property? Have you taken a look at our Landline Faults page to see if this can help rectify your issue?

I can see that you're chatting to my colleague via Private Message at the moment. Our colleague will be able to look into this further for you and discuss this issue in further detail.

Thank you.

[OverAndOut]

Paulina,

The Landline faults page is no help for this issue. Your colleague was no help either and we're not chatting. 

O&O

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @OverAndOut,

Thanks for coming back to us. Sorry to hear that the landline help page is not helpful. In order to investigate further, we'll need security on the account to be cleared. 

Please go back to my colleague so that they can help investigate further for you.

Thank you. 🙂

[OverAndOut]

Your colleague expects my 70+yr old mother, who's not au fait with computers, to click her fingers like Mary Poppins and suddenly understand the IT revolution and become a VM forum user. I'm prepared to retry if you are. 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @OverAndOut,

Unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to share any information until details are confirmed.

As you're speaking to my colleague via Private Message, please go back to them for further assistance. 

Thank you.

[OverAndOut]

Every time we answer a tranche of security questions, she produces another set of security questions. We've already provided account number, name, area code. Then she wanted last bill amount, direct debit date and something else I've forgotten. Next she'll be asking for inside leg measurements and then fail us because we answered in imperial instead of metric.

[OverAndOut]

Thank you @nodrogd for this insight. Would this explain why it's only Sky numbers that are not getting through?

After 4 resolutions attempts and nothing, it's clear that VM need help resolving the issue. How does one suggest these possibilities to those managing those areas of VM's network? VM Tech support simply run through a series of remote (automated) tests and refer to the outage in the area (even though the outage may not be the cause). Then they point to yet another resolution date. That's where the sorry exchange ends.

[nodrogd]

It could be an issue at the BT exchange end, where the calls are routed to Virgin. Sky subcontract to Openreach on the maintenance side, so it may be their issue.