Virgin Media: final connection to the house

Wassa123

Wonder if you live near me (RG14 area).

Virgin have just finished laying their cables in our area. It was a ~14 year old estate with unblemished pavements/roads. Now theres lots of ugly tarmac lines where they've dug and replaced it all. Theres some sort of keyshaped cover in front of each house on the pavement and grey boxes every 20 houses or so. Not sure how it'll get into the house though.

Annoyingly the site still says its not available in our area yet, just signed up with another ISP for 18 months.

mike004

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Virgin will only do the bare minimum building work to connect you individually.

Other posters have said they will have to pass the cable through, or under, the boundary wall. That could be challenging in some circumstances.

mike004

Wassa123 wrote: »

Wonder if you live near me (RG14 area).

Virgin have just finished laying their cables in our area. It was a ~14 year old estate with unblemished pavements/roads. Now theres lots of ugly tarmac lines where they've dug and replaced it all. Theres some sort of keyshaped cover in front of each house on the pavement and grey boxes every 20 houses or so. Not sure how it'll get into the house though.

No, I am up North. I agree though, the quality of the road repairs does not bode well for when they start work on going through people's boundary walls.

Nilrem

Wassa123 wrote: »

Wonder if you live near me (RG14 area).

Virgin have just finished laying their cables in our area. It was a ~14 year old estate with unblemished pavements/roads. Now theres lots of ugly tarmac lines where they've dug and replaced it all. Theres some sort of keyshaped cover in front of each house on the pavement and grey boxes every 20 houses or so. Not sure how it'll get into the house though.

Annoyingly the site still says its not available in our area yet, just signed up with another ISP for 18 months.

Typically there is a delay between the trunking etc being fitted and the actual turning on of any ISP's connections as they'll do the whole area then do the final connections and testing (digging the road and putting in the street cabs is done by different people than actually connecting the cabling).

IIRC around my area it was about 6 months after they did my street before it was turned on, as I think they did a large area then turned made it available, then did another (rinse and repeat).



mike004.
The entry into the house/through walls tends to be about the same level of workmanship as if Sky do it, the roads look bad because there is basically no way to ever get a road surface looking the same where you've dug it up as it was before (even if you use exactly the same materials as the original road surface it'll have joints and won't have aged*).
Much of the time the only different around here between the VM cabling into the house and the Sky ones (at least on/into the house) is exactly where it runs and a lunch box sized plastic box on the wall near the ground vs a sky dish higher up.

I think if you've already got a route for the cable laid out (trunking, holes pre drilled) VM installers will use it happily, as it saves them mucking around as much.
I know of people who when they had houses refurbished/decorated run things like conduits with string so all the VM installers had to do was tie the cable to the string and pull
I've even heard of people making an arrangement with VM for the proper cable to be supplied in advance of the final connection so the property owner could run it and the installer just needed to terminate/test it, but that tends to be something hard to arrange as it's not something the normal phone people can organise.


*A bit like replacing a fence panel, even if it's the same style, wood and stain, it'll stand out until it's aged.

firefox1956

Around here they just chuck the cable in the flowers beds & scuff some soil over it.
Then have to come back & repair it when it gets damaged.
HTH

Chris_Warr

I'm conducting an experiment and waiting to see what happens.
I've just signed up for Virgin media, they assure me they can get cable to my house.
As far as I am concerned this is highly unlikely. The nearest DP is 30 metres up the road, there is no footpath, and the only route is to dig up the street and lay a duct, or dig up the two houses between mine and the DP.
All the houses here are on dishes, Kelly Comms have been out to neighbours three times in the last three years, and never completed an install yet.
I worked as a fibre installer for 20 years for Kelly, BT, KComm and a few others, so I know what the score is.
I'm just waiting to see what they say.
Cheers
CW.