Switching from copper

[mikewot]

Just had a call saying from Virgin Media, woman sounded Indian, not the usual Philipino.  Anyhoo she said that we will need to be switched over from copper to fibre for the phone.   I read that it's a government requirement before 2025.  OK no problem with that except our phone doesn't come via yea olde BT copper wire (because that only runs to the outside of the house, I removed all the internal wires years ago), it comes with the broadband and that comes into the house via coax cable.  Our house was wired up by Telewest around 23 years ago on coax and Virgin took them over.

My question is, does this mean that Virgin are going to replace the coax with fibre?

[Alex_RM]

Hi mikewot,

21CV would be compatible with a hub 3 and above, if you already have this model your hub wouldn't be upgraded.

If you are experiencing issues with the WiFi, can you find some help here 

You can also download our connect app to check your home for WiFi blackspots.

Alex_Rm

[mikewot]

Thanks Alex, looks like the whole team is jumping in to answer me 😉

I'm still not clear about the fibre malarky but I'm guessing that just the script being used for the great unwashed who wouldn't understand the difference between a twisted pair and IP 😉

Would be interesting to have the coax replaced with fibre though 🙂 Doubt that's going to happen as my daughter is moving into a house around the corner that had no broadband. Virgin team came on Tuesday and ran cable from the street to the house. Yup it was coax 🙂

[llamedos1]

I've been asked to switch over to fibre, what does this invlove, do they excess the outside box or do they need to connect to the hub, as my phone is in my hall but the hub is in my lounge, dont fancy moving my tv etc out the way so they can drill through the wall to outside to route the cable along the house and then back in to my hall.

[jem101]

@mikewot yes you are quite right about the terminology. The term ‘fibre’ gets thrown around quite a lot (blame marketing and OFCOM for that one), VM is often referred to a ‘fibre’ broadband whereas mostly it’s FTTC, so little different to an Openreach connection, except the infamous ‘last mile’ is carried over copper coax which has vastly better performance and capability than the twisted pairs of standard phone connections.

Although VM do have medium to long term plans to replace their entire setup with fibre to the home, right now, unless you happen to be in one of a few areas, then the standard installation is via coax.

@llamedos1 what needs to happen is that the traditional phone socket is decommissioned (they won’t actually physically remove it), and your phone plugs directly in to the back of the VM hub via a small adapter. In some cases this is trivial as the phone is close to the hub anyway, but if not then VM will need to run new ‘phone  cable’ from where the hub is to where the phone is. This is all run internally and may involve drilling through walls and running cables round door frames etc. If you have cordless DECT phones, it might well be easier to simply move the basestation to where the hub is and maybe get more extensions.

[mikewot]

Definitely drawn attention from the whole team thanks Jem 🙂

Sorry another quick question (my last, honest) The current wall box that the phone plugs into will be redundant, will the engineer remove it and any other redundant wall boxes?  Currently have 3, the phone socket box, one that doesn't appear to be used but has a type of phone socket input on it and the original NTL Telewest one with two coax outputs, one to the Hub 3 and one to the TIVO box.

[J0]

@mikewot

So currently you have a physical phone line it is joined onto the side of your broadband cable.  This will  join on to you phone master socket.  When you switch over all you will get is an adapter to plug in the back of your router into one of those tel sockets.

Your phone will plug onto that.

Nothing else will  change and the old hardware will remain but be redundant.

Hope this helps

Jo

[mikewot]

Hey Jo,

OK thank you, in which case I'll just unscrew those boxes from the wall ready for next time I paint that room 🙂

[llamedos1]

Don't want it then, I'm not having a cable running all around my house as it will have to go across the floor or ceiling as the phone is on the other side of the hall to the lounge, I'd rather change supplier.

[Travis_M]

Hi @llamedos1

Thank you for your reply 

As advised, we would send an adapter out - if it would be more handy to have less cabling we'd advise you to purchase some hands free handsets instead. My apologies if it may cause any inconvenience but all of our customers will be migrated to the 21CV service.

Regards

[llamedos1]

So, just tried to cancel engeneer appointment, which two weeks away, it says to cancel an appointment sign in to your account find appointment and cick cancel, it wont let me do it, it says contact us, so you click on"contact us" and it takes you back to the first screen and asks you to sign in. Thats one reason I don't want anything touched because it never works properly afterwards, I have too many outtages and TV reboots as it is.