There is a general get-out: "where the request in respect of the Telephony Services is reasonable."

In reply to a post by candlerb:

There is a general get-out: "where the request in respect of the Telephony Services is reasonable."

It's not unreasonable, IMO, to want choice in which provider to use for Telephony Services. While it looks like Virgin Media will eventually allow other providers to use their network, that's not the case today.

OP: have you tried different providers? This might be a job for A&A -- they seem quite good at "encouraging" Openreach to do the right thing.

Go with Starlink - free hardware offers now and then. (mostly see the Starlink ads on Facebook)

Get Sky Online Stream TV package.

Sorted.

In reply to a post by behuk:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

There is a general get-out: "where the request in respect of the Telephony Services is reasonable."

It's not unreasonable, IMO, to want choice in which provider to use for Telephony Services. While it looks like Virgin Media will eventually allow other providers to use their network, that's not the case today.

OP: have you tried different providers? This might be a job for A&A -- they seem quite good at "encouraging" Openreach to do the right thing.

the op has suggested "but Openreach refused to install a phone line citing safety issues with our telephone poles in the street." that would indicate pole replacement, now if theres more than one that needs to be replaced then that will be done, question is when. A&A may not have any more leverage than the OP has.

They are a hit and miss ISP.

I have been with VM three times now.

First occasion absolutely horrific congestion issues.
Second occasion congested as well, but generally more usable, not on the same scale as first property.
Third occasion - current, its like VM is a different ISP, no visible congestion on throughput, aside from a period on the upstream before they got DOCSIS 3.1 upstream working in my area, graphs are same peak as off peak as well. DOCSIS 3.1 seems to be something thats transformed them.

In terms of reliability its been a breath of fresh air, previous DSL providers I had to get used to regular 0-6am outages as intrusive maintenance seemed to be done liberally. This was with Sky, and AAISP via TTB. AAISP only got bad enough to annoy me towards the end though when TTB had hit massive issues.
On Virgin Media I think I have had one outage I know for sure was network, the rest I think were all hub 5 related and even then was maybe half a dozen max in 18 months, a vast improvement.

The issue with VM of course is there approach to old customers, my price triples end of this month, and I tried to negotiate, the offer was circa £40 more than they have been offering other customers, no consistency at all from them what they offer to one customer to the next. I am someone who has been known to tolerate paying higher than average for broadband, which I accept if thats what everyone pays on the ISP, but that isnt the case with VM.

When I mentioned cityfibre to them, they made no attempt at all to price match.

My advice is if they are showing you have no value to them and you have no alternative, then go through with cancellation even if you have a short time of no service and then signup again as a new customer.

Also if only on a hub 3 which might be the case on 500mbps, try to find a way to get a hub 5, as the 3.1 channels might help your performance problems, although not sure if you need to be on gig1 to get access to them still.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 15-Apr-24 19:54:30)

Does the phone line USO apply now that WLR is stop-sell?

The linked version of the regs was published recently (17 March 2023), so I think so. It defines:

“Telephony Service” means either or both a connection at a fixed location
to the Public Communications Network and access to Publicly Available Telephone
Services, including the ability to make and receive calls;

I'm pretty sure that allows BT to provide such a service how they like, e.g. as digital voice over broadband, or over a mobile radio network.

Well I have some good news!

Thank you for your suggestions everyone, the USO you'd all talked about here was the key. I contacted EE again this week - we've finally managed to get Openreach to install a new line for us, which was made live as of Friday. The difference this time, I'd told them about the price of the lowest package available with Virgin which forms part of the USO rules - meant that this time Openreach successfully installed the line.

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Since around the time I created this thread until before now, I'd spoken to EE a few times on this topic. I didn't know at first that I could ask for USO. After reading the suggestions here, I asked for USO back in May from EE. Openreach contacted me back after inspecting the property and left. Openreach called the next day, asked some questions, quoting the same issues with the post due to costs, but on this time they mentioned that the existing service is reasonable so I wouldn't be eligible for the USO. I wasn't happy about it, but the guy breaking the news again on the phone did sound empathetic, knowledge and experienced.

Now this latest attempt started once I'd noticed that Openreach FTTP status updated from "Unavailable" to "Not yet available". I dug around for an explanation into why, all of a sudden there's a minor change to the wording. In June, our local exchange was added to build plans in the newest update.

So I waited until our Virgin contract ends in October to try again. We'd constantly been on a ball-and-chain with Virgin because what seems to be affordable for the duration of the contract is massively unaffordable, almost double when it expires and we don't (didn't) have the option to choose anyone else so we end up renewing.

I read all of the USO doc. The problem with @candlerb 's suggestion is the Virgin line did work in that whenever tested we'd normally see a high speed, but although experiencing those intermittent issues it was (In my eyes easy to prove) but not easy to keep working. Despite being actually genuinely blackmailed by Virgin media into losing a phone number we've had for 20+ years, it unfortunately still qualifies as "where the request in respect of the Telephony Services is reasonable.".

HOWEVER. There is a clause on the price of the lowest available package to a new customer, and - well that's a different story. As far as I can see what what appears to be the latest version of the "unofficial" USO rules, it mentions that the price of the package must be equal or less than £46.50. Well, that new information is all I needed to convince myself to try again.

Virgins' cheapest broadband-only service, in this area, is £54 without factoring the new customer offer.
That was all I needed to get the guy to put my order through as USO. Armed with this info, this new EE bloke - who was already very empathetic and understanding about our previous issues with installing the line - put the order through as they usually do.

Openreach came around and installed the line. Day 1, inspection on the existing line, explained the issues - the guy says yep, back post will be really hard to do - overgrown bushes, neighbours blocking access, completely overgrown vegetation, basically undoable. Might be able to do post in the street but the post is outdated, and not climbable (It does lean, I spotted that too) & requires a "hoist".
Day two, didn't hear anything.
Day three two Openreach vans and a cherry picker turned up. New line installed on the leaning post in the street and now we're up and running.

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Yeah, the speed will suck for a bit, but it's not that bad. It works, it's manageable. The ping is surprisingly good. Just need to hold out for the free upgrade to 150Mb when the fibre comes through in the next couple of years.