Leaving Virgin Media via City Fibre/ Vodafone

I've finally bit the bullet and decided that me and Virgin Media need to part and a package from Vodafone works for me. However, Vodafone have informed me that City Fibre can not use the existing VM fibre cable.

My question, that they were not able to answer without an engineer's visit (which requires me to place an order) is: Will City Fibre just need to lay a new fibre cable to the junction box outside my house? or do they need to install all the way to the internal box(s). The reason I ask is that my current VM installation splits after the external box with one feed to the front downstairs (TV) and one to the back upstairs (PC and WiFi modem) - I'm really keen to keep this arrangement but suspect they would not duplicate it if they had to install it themselves.

Most of Virgin Media is likely a coax copper cable installation which is how Virgin deliver TV and internet, the fibre stops at a cabinet in the road. Very different copper to Openreach. However some Virgin areas have fibre to the outside of the home and then converted to copper that runs internally. Sounds as if you might have the latter.

CityFibre is actually a real fibre optic to your home, only does internet. They are a separate physical network to Virgin or Openreach, so will have to run their own fibre optic to your home, through a hole in the wall, to a box known as an ONT that needs power on the inside of your home. The ONT will then connect to an internet router.

Vodafone as the ISP using the CityFibre network will provide a router. This will have WiFi and Ethernet for your computers, tablets and phones. There is no TV connection here.

If you want a TV service you would need to use something else that works over any internet provider, such as Sky Stream, or an Amazon FireTV box, or a Roku, or Apple TV or similar.

I did this exact migration (well, not exact as I'm not using Vodafone for my CityFibre).

City Fibre can run a "proper" fibre cable either similar to the way Virgin do (Using a box in the ground outside of your property) or by using one of the local telegraph poles.

If running the same way as Virgin, they may need to dig up your garden/driveway to lay the fibre), before putting a new external box on the house.

You can request the box go where you want within reason.

Mine was using the Telegraph pole, and they ran the fibre along the soffits of the house (bungalow) and then to the external box, and then through the wall where my wifi router is.

I think it may depend on the engineers as to where your external box can go, as the external boxes I think need to be near ground level into the home - which also needs to be close to an internal Mains plug for the ONT to be powered on the inside of the house.

From there you can run Cat5e/6 network cable wherever you want the router to be in the house, eg if you still want it upstairs.

CityFibre don't provide TV, so the Virgin Media TV split won't even be a thing on CityFibre.

Thank you both. I'm much clearer as to how the new set up will work plus my options/ preferences for the installation.

CityFibre have a page explaining the install
https://cityfibre.com/homes/installation

As others have said it will be a new fibre into your house where it connects to the ONT which converts to the Ethernet connection for your router.

Apart from the very new XGS-PON areas VM are either copper coax to the house or fibre to a large box on the outside that converts to coax before it enters the house. So none of that would be used.

Depending on how they’ve built your area it could be overhead or underground. If underground it could be via Openreach ducts if you have one or run from a small box in the pavement (Toby) similar to VMs install.

Here is an update to aid anyone that finds this thread via search. In summary I'm VERY satisfied with Cityfibre.

I was offered an installation just 8 days after signing up for Zen broadband on the understanding I could cancel if I was not happy with the proposed installation. The team laid a new cable run along two sides of my driveway to my desired wall mount position - c. 5cm groove finished with tarmac. Two worries of mine had been that 1) they'd insist on the shortest route to my house - which would make it very messy to then get a line to my study and 2) that if they agreed to cross my drive to my preferred location they would do it diagonally - which would be really ugly.

From the wall box they laid a further c. 20m of cable, at first floor level, over my garage and to the very back of the house where my study is. A neat internal wall box in my study completed the installation which took c.2.5 hours - the guys told me this was one of the bigger installations but at no time did they try to negotiated me into something that was a compromise.

The linking up to Zen worked like a dream and now feeds into the rest of the house via TP Link powerline. I also still have a working Virgin Media system until teh contract runs out in two weeks.