No fibre available - what do I do?!

dsingh26

Hi all,

I recently moved into my new home and always planned to have Virgin broadband installed. During black friday they had the 100mbps offer on for £25 which we snapped up. A few days before the installing date, I got a call from Virgin saying that they will not be able to offer their service as it requires 14m underground digging which they will not carry out. I was shocked!

I then checked the Openreach website and got the same message - fibre broadband is not available at the moment.. what a nightmare. The lady on the phone at Virgin said the fibre stops at number 36, we are a few doors further down and pretty much the last house in the estate.

Both me and the mrs work from home therefore require good internet as we are regularly on zoom/google meet meetings.

Having looked at alternatives, I can see ADSL is available but this is only 10mpbs and 1mbps up which i've been told will not work for 2 laptops, 2 mobile phones and a ps5...

Can anyone please help?

matelodave

You may have to investigate 4g/5g and do it wirelessly if you cant get the speeds you want via a landline connection.

What sort of speeds can you get using your mobile phone.

In the end, unless you are prepared to pay for Virgin to extend their network you may have to wait to see if Openreach have any plans to upgrade your area to optical fibre to the premises although you may have to wait for sometime. Try the BT wholesale broadband checker BT Broadband (btwholesale.com)

Neil_Jones

Solutions are simple:  Either investigate mobile data, see how much Virgin will charge you to extend the coverage to your address (at your own expense most probably), wait for Openreach to get round to extend the coverage in the area, tale what you can get speed wise already, or move house again to an area with better speeds.

You don't need 100Mbps internet just for Zoom/Teams/Meet/whatever.  Teams can (it says here) deliver HD video quality in under 1.5Mbps.  Would be surprised if Meet can't do it too.

dsingh26

This is what shows..

I've ordered a few sims (vodaphone and three) and will test the mobile coverage out. Currently i'm with o2 and the mrs has EE, when at the house we both get 4g but it's still slow (especially for her).

QrizB

dsingh26 said:

This is what shows..

OK, that seems to show that you can get FTTC (VDSL) at 35-50Mbps. Have you been told you can't? Your first message seems to suggest you've been asking for FTTP?

dsingh26

The lady at Virgin spoke to my mrs and told her about digging 14m, which definitely sounds like FTTP. Why wouldn't they offer me FTTC, maybe the cabinet is full? Is there a way of checking this?

dsingh26

Neil_Jones said:

Solutions are simple:  Either investigate mobile data, see how much Virgin will charge you to extend the coverage to your address (at your own expense most probably), wait for Openreach to get round to extend the coverage in the area, tale what you can get speed wise already, or move house again to an area with better speeds.

You don't need 100Mbps internet just for Zoom/Teams/Meet/whatever.  Teams can (it says here) deliver HD video quality in under 1.5Mbps.  Would be surprised if Meet can't do it too.

I will ask Virgin tomorrow how much it would cost, even though I know it will be something ridiculous!

I'm just waiting on the sims to arrive so I can check the mobile coverage in the house. If you had to chose between ADSL or mobile broadband, which is better?

I definitely won't be moving house!

neilmcl

dsingh26 said:

The lady at Virgin spoke to my mrs and told her about digging 14m, which definitely sounds like FTTP. Why wouldn't they offer me FTTC, maybe the cabinet is full? Is there a way of checking this?

Because VM don't offer FTTC, you need one of the providers that use the Openreach network. Try Now Broadband, Talk Talk, Vodafone etc.

Have a look on https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/

dsingh26

neilmcl said:

dsingh26 said:

The lady at Virgin spoke to my mrs and told her about digging 14m, which definitely sounds like FTTP. Why wouldn't they offer me FTTC, maybe the cabinet is full? Is there a way of checking this?

Because VM don't offer FTTC, you need one of the providers that use the Openreach network. Try Now Broadband, Talk Talk, Vodafone etc.

Have a look on https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/

Whenver i do this, it shows all providers and great deals however when I click on the deal and enter my address it then realises and says fibre is not available. Vodaphone are recommending the 4G/5G Gigacube but not looked into it yet.

I want to get this sorted today if possible. As most people know my current situation, what is the best solution for me?

iniltous

Why would VM tell you about what’s available from other providers ?, why would you ask VM about FTTC ?, the DSL checker shows 30-50Mb via VDSL/FTTC, available from just about everyone apart from VM ( unless it shows waiting list on the DSL checker site , but you only have posted a cropped image ) 
If VM didn't enable your property when they initially developed the area , and will ( for a charge ) extend their network to it, it will almost certainly be a ‘coaxial  cable’ not fibre to the property.
VM and OR are completely separate networks , VM don’t extend Openreach network, Openreach only deal with Openreach network, not VM’s.

You basically have two choices , ( dismissing mobile broadband for now ) , if VM are willing to extend their network to your address ( at your expense ) and you are willing to wait for it to be done, (and pay for it to be done ) go for that, if you want to use the VDSL that apparently is available already to the property, at a predicted speed of 30-50Mb, use someone other than VM to provide service.
I can’t understand why you accept that ADSL is available when on the same image it also shows VDSL as available too.
FTTP and FTTC are different, if you don’t want FTTC the wait for FTTP from OR or anyone else could be lengthy,  for what it’s worth , the vast majority of Virgin Media network isn’t fibre to the premises anyway, it’s a hybrid copper/fibre system much like OR’s fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) system .
If you had VM in the past it was probably ‘cable’ not FTTP….if you can get 50Mb from an OR based provider , chances are that will be OK for what you need, in the short term at least , it seems the obvious choice

dsingh26

I'm more than happy to go for 30-50mbps via VDSL/FTTC but when I go on these broadband checker websites, select deal, add my address it says fibre is not available..