Stupid question about cable phone/internet

belisha-beacon

We've just bought a new house and I rang up BT to get the phone installed. It turns out that BT have never supplied it or, if they did, have no records of it. This is feasible - we've done some investigating and all the phone sockets in the house have ntl or Virgin Media branding. It was rented out by the previous owner for 17 years so I think that there is probably no BT cabling in there.

We're happy to have cable telephone as it sounds much more straightforward than getting BT installed and seems cheaper, too. BUT we've heard bad things about the customer service of the cable broadband suppliers. So my question is: can you have cable telephone and then have 'nornal' broadband though an entirely different supplier, using the cable phoneline? We've been using xilo for internet and they are brilliant but I don't know if they could only provide internet on a BT-style line.

spike7451

No.You can only have VM broadband on a cable service,let me explain...

Unlike BT/O2/BE/Sky or your Xilo broadband,which is DSL,VM supply their broadband over the same cabling as their TV.It does not come over the phoneline.Because of the way a Cable phoneline operates,you cannot have any DSL broadband.With BT,the DSL broadband is connected to the nearest telephone exchange,which can be up to about 5 miles away.With cable,it can be up to & over 30 miles before it reaches the main hubsite.
VM have local exchanges,what we call Mux's which is where the fibre optic is changed to copper before being sent on the the individual street cabinets.These Muxes do not have the capability for DSL broadband.

Spike (Ex NTL/VM Service Tech)

iniltous

VM are not required by law, unlike BT, to offer access to competitors, so VM have exclusive rights, if you want broadband
and you only want it over the 'cable' network then VM are your onlychoice.....
the cable industry were given a period of time with no competition, and OFCOM dont seem in a hurry to demand VM offer
either wholesale access to their products or 'unbundle' them.

spike7451

AOL did,at one time,offer a cable broadband service in co-operation with NTL. One drawback was if anything went wrong with it,you had to go thru AOL to get it fixed,we were not allowed to do anything past installing the initial cabling.The rest was down to the customer.
However,I gather since NTL & Teleworst joined up & then were bought out by VM,the AOL service was no longer supplied or supported.