Sliced through cable leading to Virgin Media satellite dish

Golactico

I was doing a good turn for a house-bound elderly neighbour by trimming her hedge, and I managed to slice through a cable coming out of the brown Virgin Media box attached to the outside wall. Following the path of the cable, it's one that goes from the brown box to a satellite dish. I was relieved that she can still access all of her TV channels and that her broadband and landline are still working, so I am assuming that the satellite dish is just old redundant kit and I 'got lucky' with the cable that I sliced. I presume that the other still intact cables going into the brown box are the ones that carry her broadband service? We are in an area that is well connected for Virgin Media, so my hopeful logic says that there would be no need for a sat dish?

I don't want to just assume everything is OK though, as I want to do the right thing by my neighbour. The obvious solution is to contact Virgin, but I want to avoid this if at all possible as my neighbour has no idea where any paperwork with account number etc are and like many old people, really hasn't got a clue about the details of her service.

As a secondary question, does anyone know of a connector that I (with my limited DIY skills) could use to re-join the two sliced bits of cable?

Any reassurance from anyone who knows about how Virgin Media services work would be gratefully received!

Many thanks.

la531983

Virgin don't do dishes. If its a wire attached to a dish it's likely the Sky input to her house she isn't currently using, and will be nothing at all to do with her cable services. 

Where is this "dish" you speak of? On her house? 

Neil_Jones

Golactico said:

I was doing a good turn for a house-bound elderly neighbour by trimming her hedge, and I managed to slice through a cable coming out of the brown Virgin Media box attached to the outside wall. Following the path of the cable, it's one that goes from the brown box to a satellite dish. I was relieved that she can still access all of her TV channels and that her broadband and landline are still working, so I am assuming that the satellite dish is just old redundant kit and I 'got lucky' with the cable that I sliced. I presume that the other still intact cables going into the brown box are the ones that carry her broadband service? We are in an area that is well connected for Virgin Media, so my hopeful logic says that there would be no need for a sat dish?

I don't want to just assume everything is OK though, as I want to do the right thing by my neighbour. The obvious solution is to contact Virgin, but I want to avoid this if at all possible as my neighbour has no idea where any paperwork with account number etc are and like many old people, really hasn't got a clue about the details of her service.

As a secondary question, does anyone know of a connector that I (with my limited DIY skills) could use to re-join the two sliced bits of cable?

Any reassurance from anyone who knows about how Virgin Media services work would be gratefully received!

Many thanks.

Virgin don't use satellite dishes, so there isn't any point contacting Virgin.

Depending on who installed the dish and the type of property this is will determine who you need to speak to.

If this is a communal block (of flats or low rise buildings) the cable may be part of a communal setup, in which case you'd need to find out who owns a) that block and b) thus who's responsible for it.  Ie if its social housing the council will probably own it and they'll probably have farmed maintenance of that out to some contractor somewhere.

It probably won't be possible to reconnect the cable as IIRC (and assuming its satellite cable) you can just patch those, the whole cable run has to be replaced if you want it to work.

Golactico

Hi la531983 and thanks for the very quick response.

Here's a picture of the sat dish. The cable you can see definitely leads to the brown external Virgin box. I can see no evidence that she has any Sky service - Just a Virgin Media box below her TV. Could this be an old Sky dish from the previous occupant that was never removed?

la531983

Post a picture of the box please. Virgin wouldnt have put a wire from a dish they dont own into one of their boxes AFAIK, so a strange setup clearly exists here.

Is there no "dead" wire inside the house on the other side of the wall? 

Golactico

la531983 said:

Post a picture of the box please. Virgin wouldnt have put a wire from a dish they dont own into one of their boxes AFAIK, so a strange setup clearly exists here.

Is there no "dead" wire inside the house on the other side of the wall? 

Apologies! despite saying before that the satellite cable 'definitely' leads to the Virgin box, on very close inspection, it actually leads directly into the brickwork just beneath the box (as shown in the photos below). I think that I have the answer that I was hoping for - that this is an old, redundant sat dish that has simply never been removed - phew!

la531983

Aye sounds about right. Unless the occupier is planning on having Sky put in, I wouldn't worry about it. Even then she can be treated as a brand new install.

Sky don't come out and remove dishes, they stay up on the off chance the property wants it again at some point. Nothing stopping the home owner taking it down though iirc. 

Golactico

Thanks so much to both respondents for leading me to what is a happy conclusion for me. I really appreciate you both taking the time to respond.

400ixl

Looks quite old as it is a single LNB on that dish which would be back in the old pre Sky+ days.

mr_stripey

I accidentally sliced through my sky cable whilst chopping wood a few years ago.

I called sky (conveniently leaving out the bit about me cutting the cable) and they sent someone out and fixed it free of charge. The guy commented that "it looks like it's been cut" but didn't enquire any further.

FreeBear

I had been wanting to move the point where my Virgin cable went through the wall. Gave the cable a bit of a tug to see if it would pass through the hole complete with the connector. It didn't. But in trying, I did some damage to the cable internals and it would make intermittent connection. Got through to Virgin (said nothing about what I was doing), and they sent out an engineer a few days later to replace the cable. Got him to move where the cable came through the wall (I drilled a new hole for him). No charge.