Using Virgin Media Infrastructure

booveedoo

Hi. Recently Virgin Media have flooded our local area with fibre to the house (well to points just outside the house). We have never had Openreach lay fibres to the house, although a few house in other local roads have, and now have VM too (!). Question is, if I were to join VM and they install fibre in the last leg from pavement in to the house, could I then, after contract is up, use another provider eg. BT, SKY etc? Thanks.

Neil_Jones

Virgin network is on its own, nobody else can use that.

Openreach, unless you have FTTP installed from various other providers (including Openreach but not Virgin), at this time uses the existing telephone lines that either come from the telegraph poles (or underground) that have almost certainly been there years if your area is old enough.

booveedoo

Thanks for that. Seems crazy that, at some stage, Openreach are going to be digging up the pavements/roads again to install their "pipes". After all, why couldn`t they have shared the costs of laying these tubes, and then letting each other install their own fibres within them? Or is it a bit more technical than this? Local planning should not allow this without this agreement. So currently I only have the choice of 5G (using than for my BB connection), Virgin and crappy Openreach aluminum lines (not even copper). Better choice than some I guess, but not as many as roads next door to me!!

grimsalve

Count yourself lucky! My road has Virgin, Openreach, and Cityfibre cabling. The electricity and water companies have also had a few goes at it over the past few years too so it looks like a patchwork quilt!