VoIP phone

[goldieboldie]

Can someone please explain to me why Virgin Media thought is was a good idea to remove customers from the landline to a voip phone. I run my business from home and also my partner works from home. We have broadband downtime at least once a week and daily sometimes we then also lose the phone line. Over the Christmas period I spent a few months renovating my lounge this included spending time rerouting the virgin phone line under the floor, concealing the cable in the walls and flush mounting the virgin telephone box into the wall. Only to be informed a few weeks later the phone line was to be disconnected. The disconnection of this also took out my phone lines in three other rooms and because my router is not in my lounge I now have my phone plugged into a room where I do not reside. It is very shortsighted of Virgin Media to assume that all customers keep their phone outlet box where their router is. 

[goldieboldie]

I only mentioned this to make Virgin Media aware that not every Virgin customer has their telephone socket stuck next to their router making it easy to change from telephone line to VoIP. Like I said I can’t change things now and I certainly don’t want my cables clipped to the skirting boards or architrave.

[Roger_Gooner]

---

@goldieboldie wrote:

We have broadband downtime at least once a week and daily sometimes we then also lose the phone line.

---

Post your problem in the Speed forum and you should get some help.

As for your phone: switch to DECT.

[Lee_R · Accepted solution]

Thanks for coming back to us goldieboldie. 

I am sorry you're unhappy with the migration to VOIP and for any inconvenience it may be causing your household. The migration is happening across all UK based landline providers and something we were required to do.  As my colleague advised in another thread: We can arrange for your hub to relocated for you to a more suitable place, we can do that from here if you'd like and as this part of the changeover, we could do this free of charge, you should have been advised of this, when we contacted you about the migration over to the fibre network.
If you are a vulnerable customer, we can arrange for an emergency back up to make sure that you can still call the emergency services should your connection be lost.
Regards

Lee_R

[doughorrigan]

I can understand that VM charged for calls when you were using the old BT / Openreach analog twisted pair service as it covered line rental, maintenance of the line etc.
However, I fail to see how you can justify charging people for a voip call using your broadband fibre as we are already paying for the broadband supply and the bandwidth used by a simple voice call from a landline handset is very small when compared to general internet activity and minute when compared to online gaming.

Sounds like just another ripoff from the broadband suppliers doesn't it?

[Reece_MH]

Hi doughorrigan 👋

Thanks for posting, and welcome back to our Community Forums.

I apologise for any confusion about how 21CV/Fibre Phone operates. It's important to clarify that your Landline and Broadband services function separately, even within the context of a Fibre Phone service. They use unique connections and do not share the same network infrastructure. 

Specifically, the Fibre Phone has a separate connection line with a speed of around 10mbps, and it's exclusively accessible through a Landline handset.

It's worth mentioning that the data usage for voice calls made via the Landline does not impact or reflect on your Broadband usage or bandwidth levels during that period. Despite adjustments we've made to the Landline setup on your property, the underlying infrastructure and services that were previously necessary are still relevant and in use, which is why a line rental fee continues to apply.

Thanks,

[Roger_Gooner]

Even though copper wire is not used the calls are still done by PSTN which requires a lot of hardware including switches. After the end of PSTN by December 2025 VM's calls will be via cheaper IP.

[nodrogd]

---

@doughorrigan wrote:

I can understand that VM charged for calls when you were using the old BT / Openreach analog twisted pair service as it covered line rental, maintenance of the line etc.
However, I fail to see how you can justify charging people for a voip call using your broadband fibre as we are already paying for the broadband supply and the bandwidth used by a simple voice call from a landline handset is very small when compared to general internet activity and minute when compared to online gaming.

Sounds like just another ripoff from the broadband suppliers doesn't it?

---

Except strictly it's not true VoIP, it's a hybrid system. It has also been against OFCOM rules to quote line rental charges as a separate item on bills for a while now. However, they are still known as Landline phones, so you are actually paying Landline phone rental.

Let me explain. The existing system uses a copper pair between your house and the local street optical node.

Optical Node

This has a huge bank of terminations where the calls are then routed digitally through fibre cables to the local cable headend. These are then converted back to analogue & routed through a standard PSTN exchange.

All that has changed so far is that your hub is now doing the same job that was previously done at the street optical node. The calls use a separate IP tunnel to your Broadband traffic, so do not use the internet. The expensive part of the operation is the (ageing, power hungry, expensive to maintain) PSTN exchange, which will not be decommissioned until 2025 in a synchronised event that will also involve the local BT exchanges in that area.