@fulano wrote:
Hi Ayisha
Thanks but my point is, we're already on fibre cable, have been for years.
Also an apology, I accidentally marked your answer as helpful, my system sometimes too sensitive or seems to do things on its own.
Actually no, you aren’t on a ‘fibre cable system’, and arguably never have been!
Historically, it comes from the early ADSL connection days when you were connected by telephone-type wire back to the BT exchange, the speed you got was massively dependent on the distance you happened to be from the exchange.
So move forward when Openreach started to connect the street cabinets with fibre, suddenly this Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) connection allowed end users to get faster speeds as the limiting factor was now how close you are to the street cabinet rather than the exchange. Arguably unfortunately, both OFCOM and the ASA, allowed the ISPs to call this ‘fibre broadband’ and the term has stuck.
Now in Virgin Media’s case, they have never used the old ‘telephone wire’ type of connection, they have used a much better coax copper cable connection, but for, probably marketing reasons, they jumped onto the bandwagon as offering ‘fibre broadband’, although they do have fibre connections between some of the street cabinets.
In actual fact it’s fairly irrelevant, the coax cable that VM use can, in theory, support 10 Gb/s speeds easily, it’s all marketing. In most people’s eye’s ‘fibre’ is better than ‘copper’, so that’s what they have pushed - VM have ‘Fibre Broadband Connections’!
Regarding the telephony provision, well, actually, I don’t think that VM really have done themselves any favours (long term) in the way they have marketed and pushed this. All sorts of buzzword marketing phrases have been dropped ‘FibrePhone’, VoIP etc. have been used and mentioned on here, sometimes by the forum team. FibrePhone is a completely meaningless, made up marketing term, and what they are offering simply isn’t VoIP as most people would recognise it.
At the moment, you have two connections from your house out to the VM street cabinet. One of these is a coax cable connection (about as thick as your little finger) which carries internet and TV services, the other is four thin copper cables twisted into two pairs, which carry your existing telephone service.
What VM are doing is changing things so that the telephony service is carried over the coax cable rather than the twisted copper wires, other than that, it has zero impact on your existing arrangement.
Well, except, when the switch over happens, your phone needs to be connected directly to the hub so as to be able to access the coax cable, rather than the wall socket. Is this feasible in your case, if not then VM will send a tech to re wire your house to allow it all to work?
