Leaving Virgin

[nickyp11]

I'm thinking of leaving virgin media, currently have phone, broadband and TV with them  and moving to VF for broadband only. My worry is how I would connect the new VF router as I'm sure the cable going in to the virgin router is for a virgin router only. Like the TV cable we have too. The cable comes from my loft in to the existing router, not through a phone line. Any ideas? The TV I can sort by getting a new outside ariel fitted if I want live TV  but not sure about the broadband.

[leeroy221]

Hi,

My advice would be to think again, i dont rate the broadband to be honest and have mutliple drop outs every day. 

Ours uses the same openreach socked as our sky broadband used before and the phone plugs into the same socket.

Hope that helps.

[Jayach]

Do you have a BT(Openreach) phone line coming into the house?

You are going to need one for anyone else other than Virgin, unless you are going FTTP and that will need a fibre installed.

[nickyp11]

I have an old bt phone box but it hasn't been used for about 16 years as we have had a virgin phone line for that amount of time. VF said there would be no cost to set me up and they would use the virgin phone box/line and that the cable going in to my virgin router currently could be used for my new router too so I'm not sure at all now what is right....

[Jayach]

---

@nickyp11 wrote:

VF said there would be no cost to set me up and they would use the virgin phone box/line and that the cable going in to my virgin router currently could be used for my new router too 

---

Utter cobblers from Vodafone as usual. If you are going for Superfast it will be delivered via the BT socket.

As it is an old installation you will need to use the supplied filter to plug into the BT socket and then plug the Vodafone router into it. Diagrams will be on the router box.

If you're lucky the Openreach engineer may come to the house and if he does he will probably upgrade the socket.

[clint_flick]

Hi

Only 16 years?  Mine was 20 ish years away from BT.

You mave need / want a faceplate changing on the BT/Openreach box.

I fitted / changed my own.

So we were shielding.  A router arrived, and i plugged it into the 'defunct' BT socket.

It powered on and the router was accessible as was the Wi-Fi, but no Openreach connection for a few more days as the router arrived early enough to be checked.

Openreach arrived and spoke thru the door, went off to the SYDNEY greenstreet cabinet.

Came back, I rebooted the router and VOILA.  The landline port caused some grief.

So for a few days I had an overlap of Virgin Media broadband and VodaFone broadband.

If in doubt please ask.

[danthomas25]

Hi,

I recently did exactly this, been with Virgin for 18 years but had enough of the monkeying around as regards pricing between old and new customers.

Anyway, on signing up with Voda, first time I requested they port my number, and that it seems wasn't possible so they cancelled my order - without telling me of course.

However, on signing up again, and not choosing to port my number, it went ahead no problems.

In reality, the number change reduced junk calls to my home line to zero (from 2 an hour), so that's a win from my PoV.

They arrange for an OpenReach engineer to come to your property who connects everything up.

The swapped the Virgin phone line connector in the Virgin box on the wall OUTSIDE with the new OpenReach line - so no new hole in your outside wall, just lose the virgin phone line (which you dont want going forward but is easily swap-back-able if you return to virgin).

I went for overlapping contracts in case the Voda BB was bad, but it's actually been just fine (c.70Mbps down, 20 up). Occasional dropouts in the first few weeks are expected because of how the line goes about finding your fastest stable connection. After a week they stopped.

Don't forget to go via Cable Genie for a cashback reward card (never available on Fridays btw).

Any further experience questions let me know.

Dan