Virgin Fibre Installation

[DarkHorizons]

Hi,

 

I have a few quick questions about Virgin fibre, we are considering taking a fibre only package with them. The situation currently is we're in a rented house and the landlord is concerned about the mess and what the engineer visit 'entails', so we basically have to get some information and convince him it won't be anything to worry about.

 

Do they take a cable from the cabinet down the street to your home? Surely they can't utilise the existing copper phone line, I don't quite understand where the fibre cable goes/come froms.

 

Will they only need to make 1 hole in the outside wall and run a cable in?

 

Will they need to dig up the driveway or anything?

 

Any info greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Crisp]

There's a tiny drain on the footpath outside your home which should have "CATV", "NTL" or something else written on it, they just run a copper coax cable from that to where ever you want the socket in your home (living room / hall way).

 

VM are usually lazy and will just hide the cable in a hedge in some conduit. I've never seen them personally ever dig a trench and bury the cable.

[MikeChipshop Member]

Will they only need to make 1 hole in the outside wall and run a cable in?

Yup, this exactly what they did for us. Out of the ground, through the wall (very discreetly) and then into a little white box beside my phone socket.

[metallithrax]

Hi,

 

I have a few quick questions about Virgin fibre, we are considering taking a fibre only package with them. The situation currently is we're in a rented house and the landlord is concerned about the mess and what the engineer visit 'entails', so we basically have to get some information and convince him it won't be anything to worry about.

 

Do they take a cable from the cabinet down the street to your home? Surely they can't utilise the existing copper phone line, I don't quite understand where the fibre cable goes/come froms.

 

Will they only need to make 1 hole in the outside wall and run a cable in?

 

Will they need to dig up the driveway or anything?

 

Any info greatly appreciated, thanks!

From my experience:

 

The main fibre should already be there - to outside the house (the cover of this is usually a small triangular cover), they then connect your property from there.  It is only one hole through the wall, and it depends on the property type where the cable is laid.  If you have a garden, it can be buried or run under a privet of bushes to hide it.  If the wall of the property is straight onto the street, there wont be much cable to hide.

[Aergan]

If you have a paved or tarmac drive, they will offer to run a cable along the boundary wall - up to 2ft off the ground but against recommendation.

If you have a grass / soil area, they'll run the cable under it (dig a small trench, replace turf).

They will drill a hole for the coax to go through and another for the phone line (if you are taking a VM telephone line and do not want it to go though to the same place).

[DarkHorizons]

Thanks for the info guys. Where abouts is the CATV thing, I thought it was on the street? If so, where abouts does the cable come from I mean they can't run it across the pavement surely?

[psionicinversion]

they will have already dug up the street ages ago so its there, the little triangle is on the pavement somewhere outside your house. each house will have one some where and they usually put it in the place where its easy to run the cable to the house

[Riggers]

Walk to th front of the house then walk along the front wall/hedge. You should see as stated above a black mini grid outlet (about 50mm in diameter) which joins into the main run from when they originally laid the cabling.

They then just take a co-ax/telephone cable from that (capped up the wall usually) to the outside of the house whereby it terminates in a small box on the wall. Then it`s just drilled through to the lounge, study, wherever and the phone line is clipped to the outside to the point where the master socket is wanted.

[DarkHorizons]

Got it, thanks everyone!

[grabageek]

FYI - BT Infinity is a hell of a lot better (Former VM customer who got fedup of the data shaping they do)

[Crisp]

The distance between the small drain on the footpath and your front garden should be very short, for us they just dug up a very small amount behind the drain and replaced it with fresh tarmac, but we're talking like 5 inches which they can whip up and fill in, in like 15 minutes. The installation team have everything they need on their van.

 

If your front garden is raised from the footpath, such as a wall, they'll run the cable up the wall and cap it off with cable riser guard.

[xreyuk]

FYI - BT Infinity is a hell of a lot better (Former VM customer who got fedup of the data shaping they do)

 

BT Infinity will also use existing copper. 

 

However, your area may not be ready for BT Infinity yet.

[grabageek]

BT Infinity will also use existing copper. 

 

However, your area may not be ready for BT Infinity yet.

 

That's very true

[jakem1]

For your landlord's sake it's worth noting that VM will do as little as possible to hide the cable.  They're relatively discrete but they won't do things like run cabling under floorboards unless you lift the floorboards for them.  My installation is similar to what Crisp described above:

 - Cable from CATV box in the pavement through a hole drilled in the front wall. 

 - Cable hidden under front hedge in conduit to a junction box on the front of the house.

 - Cable then runs from junction box, along the front of the house to the front door.

 - Hole drilled in door frame to get cable into the house and then into another junction box

 - Cable then runs along skirting boards, around door frames, etc. to get to the point where I keep my modem/router.

 

It's not too bad but it could look a lot nicer.