Virgin Media Community

[JOHN-G4SKU]

Hello all,

I have a dilema? And sorry in advance if it is a bit lengthy and drawn out.

From 2003 till late 2019 I had been a loyal NTL/Virgin Media customer.  In late 2019, I had to move home and wanted to keep my VM account.

I checked the postcode, (SG19 1BJ) of my new address and VM said that I could take my VM account to my new address.

Unfortunately, it transpires that although VM offers their full range of services to addresses in my new postcode area, my address is not supplied with VM's services.

I live in a sheltered housing scheme which, for some reason was left without cable services when NTL initially cabled my area. The person I spoke to suggested that permission to wire up my building may have been refused?  I checked with my Landlord, and permission has always been granted for cable companies throughout the UK, to install their cabling at all of my landlords properties. So why my building was left out remains a mystery.

This was two and a half years ago, and have had to get my TV and Broadband services from SKY.

As most, if not all of you, will know that SKY have to provide their Broadband services over BT telephone lines.  Well, unfortunately, for me, the nearest BT street cabinet is three streets away in St Neots Road, Sandy. Because BT's cables are run under the pavements, by the time their cables arrive at my building, the Broadband speed that I can actually receive is well below what I am paying for due to the distance from my home to the nearest BT street cabinet. 

I really struggle with the extremely slow speed of my internet connection that it sometimes takes several minutes for a page with graphics to fully load.  Most of the time, the page times out and I have to reload it.

Now, I have been delivered another blow!  My landlord has informed me that I, and all the other tenants in my scheme must have our satellite dishes removed as they do not fit in with the appearance of the scheme. This will mean that Iwill have to lose my Sly TV channels.  And as VM don't/won't provide me with their services, and my current Broadband speed is too slow for TV services that are provided over the Internet,I will only have Freeview channels available to me.

I have approached several other Broadband providers, but they all tell me that they cannot improve my broadband speed due to the distance from my home to the nearest BT street cabinet.

There are four houses at the entrance of my street, all of which can receive VM's full range of services.  My address is only 56 metres from VM's nearest street cabinet. but they, VM, still says that they cannot provide me with any of their services, but will not give a convincing reason why they can't?

When I asked why they could not provide me with Broadband, they told me that they would have to install wiring throughout my building, and would have to get 5 plus residents to sigh up to VM's services BEFORE they would even consider bringing their services to my building.  This is an unacceptable answer as at my two previous addresses, both owned by my current landlord, I was able to have VM's services which were provided DIRECTLY from the nearest street cabinet.  There was no internal VM wiring inside either of these two buildings, and the 2nd address was on the 1st floor.

My home is on the ground floor with grassed lawns directly outside.  The house directly next door has VM's full services so there would only be about 5.5/6 metres that needed to be placed under the pavement.

I have my details on VM's page for "Expressing my interest" in their services, but I have not heard anything from them in the last 2 1/2 years.  I have also tried phoning them but all I ever get is the usual far east call centre agents who only seem to read from a script on their screens, and cannot help me further, or transfer me to someone who can.

If there are any VM employees who can shred any light on the real reason why VM cannot provide me with their services, or can advise me when my building may get wired up for VM's services, I would be most grateful.

I have considered going via the Mobile Broadband route but my area is semi-rural and I could be waiting many years before 5G becomes available to me.

Can anyone help?.........Please.

[nodrogd]

Firstly I would point out that there is no universal service obligation on the part of VM to provide services to any building or address.

You mention your landlords reluctance to have any Sky dishes on the property, so I should imagine there would also be objections to any further visible external wiring & boxes as well going forward. A lot of local councils now no longer allow visible external wiring on communal properties.

Most of VMs network expansion is now Full Fibre & not HFC as is currently in the area, so they would have to be looking at new street cabinets & possibly power supplies in addition to internally wiring the property. This is all expenditure that has to be considered against the revenue that would be forthcoming once it is installed.

If a lot of you use Sky why not talk to your landlord about a communal distribution system that will work off a central dish serving all properties.

[JOHN-G4SKU]

Firstly, I am quite aware that VM, nor any other provider has any obligation to supply any kind of service.

VM are already offering gigabit broadband to my post code area.

My landlord has not made any objections to external wiring on the building and have indicated that they have no intention of doing so in the future.

According to one of VM's engineers who was working on my nearest street cabinet, there is excess capacity, and he sees no reason for VM not to supply me with a service.

Ideally, I would like to know who I could write to ( a named person) that may have some sort of clout in respect of approving the supply of VM's services to me, giving that there is such a short distance from the street cabinet to my home. Or at least, the reason why they can't/won's supply me?

[nodrogd]

Unlikely there is “excess” capacity in the build. The 1990 ex-Cable-Tel build of that area (and it’s true of most of the original HFC build across the country) was done on minimum budget. More likely it is “unused” capacity, meaning you would be taking capacity meant for properties already existing on that build section. It would be up to the field manager for the area to decide about that, as it could result in future prospective customers with service tee’s outside their properties being told they cannot have a service.