Only half of the road connected

[Jgreener22]

Hi - I recently moved to a new house and while one side of our street is cabled with Virgin media, across the road we are not cabled. I've been trying to speak to someone at virgin to understand whether they would connect the other side of the street or potentially share some of the cost but never have any response from Virgin.

Has anyone had much successful experience getting part of their street cabled? The ironic thing is there is a spare house connection across the street where a previous connection was laid and the old house has actually been demolished with 4 new houses built - it would be as simple as the road being dug up to run that connection across the road to our house instead!

[VM-Jon]

Hi there,

I am happy to take a look at this for you. I will send you a private message for your address and see if anything can be done.

To  answer  your question above though, for the benefit of anybody else reading this I would say that the cost of construction must be viable to connect new properties. To cross a  road is quite expensive and it’s not something we would normally do for one customer I’m afraid. But every case is unique so I will definitely take a look.

thank you

Jon

[nodrogd]

Crossing the road for one house would cost thousands. The budget to connect a single new property is circa £750 - 1000, so no hope of that.

Usually only one side of the road is cabled if there is no pavement on that side, as putting in ducting & service tees under a road is very often uneconomic, even if every house wanted a connection.

[Jgreener22]

Interesting - thanks both for your replies. That aligns with the situation since only 1 side is paved and I'm on the (unlucky in this case) unpaved side. Are virgin amenable to sharing costs for these types of installation in the same way as BT's community fibre program? We have been speaking with UK Power Networks to upgrade the supply cable to our house and the cost for that covers a road closure (which is absurdly expensive!) so can imagine that a bulk of the VM cost would be road closure/working with council. Obviously the digging itself and materials would cost money however i'm wondering if we can complete both works at the same time there would be a better commercial incentive for it... 

[nodrogd]

VM will only use BT infrastructure in an area that is full fibre build on VMs side & if what is existing is suitable. Unless the build on the other side of the street was put in in the last few years then the build will be HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coax). This is not suitable for duct sharing as the BT ducts are too small diameter to accept VMs coax cabling.

[Jgreener22]

Oh - maybe my question wasn't clear, as I wasn't suggesting using any of BT's infrastructure. My question is: are VM open to sharing installation costs with the end customer (i.e. where we would pay for a portion of the works to be completed)?

[Z92]

VM have been known to share costs with the end customer but it's not an easy process, and the initial cost could to you could be in the region of thousands of pounds.

[nodrogd]

VM won't extend for one customer. Even if there is interest from a number of other customers the likelyhood is that the orginal build was not planned capacity wise for the other side of the street to be connected.

So not only would the new ducting have to be financed, but additional infrastructure (more cabinets, additional hookup to the existing network).