Virginmedia - land line telephone to broadband

[Deleted User]

Has anyone any more info on/experience of the following.

I have a contract with Virginmedia which covers both broadband and a traditional telephone landline. The landline telephone is provided via its own separate cable to a traditional BT style outlet.

VM have messaged me that:

"You'll be switched to our fibre phone phone service on 13 January. We'll send an adapter by post, that you need to conect you phone to your hub"

Now, I know what this means [it's an implementation of VoIP] and I have no problem with it [the possible loss of service during a power cut doesn't concern me].

However, in my simplistic brain I thought - ah, one less piece of infrastructure for VM to maintain and monitor. Therefore there should be a commensurate reduction in cost. So I phoned VM customner support to ask them about this. The answer I received was to the effect the line [no pun intended] senior management were pushing was that there will be no reduction in service charges. Knowing that the poor guy on the phone couldn't really say much else, I joked that even though VM was effectively discarding infrastructure I was currently paying for to give, arguably, a substandard service [power outages etc] I was still expected to pay for something I wasn't using.

He said, 'Yes. Anything else I can help you with?'.

Am I being picky here?

[btw, In terms of reliability and speed I generally have no problem with VM's broadband service. Apart from the cost, of course. Until BT Openreach get their act together, there is no other service  available in my area which can provide anything like the bandwidth VM provides. A bit of an over-the-barrel situation. Oh, also, I don't have a spare port on my hub, and if I did, it's in a location where a landline is awkward, but that's another issue.]

Oh, and please don't have a go at me for being a dinosaur for having a landline. That's not the issue!

Neil_Jones

Lack of network ports can be solved relatively easily with one of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09DK9LDBS

[Deleted User]

Thanks, Neil 

I already have one on the network and don't really want to add another. I have noticed that they can slow traffic down, especially if used in series, as I've had to do previously. I cabled the house before good wi-fi became commonly available.

Even so, it's more expense that I will have to bear because of action by VM.

southsidergs

Am I reading this right, you're still getting a phone service but expect to pay less for it? It doesn't work like that, it's the same cost however it's delivered as they still have maintenance costs for the network anyway

Neil_Jones

Deleted_User said:

Thanks, Neil 

I already have one on the network and don't really want to add another. I have noticed that they can slow traffic down, especially if used in series, as I've had to do previously. I cabled the house before good wi-fi became commonly available.

Then you're doing (or have done) something wrong.  Switches can in theory be daisy-chained until the cows come home, but the speed is limited to the lowest device, and if that ends up as the first link in the chain then all the traffic after it is capped at that speed.