Shall I be tied to the cable provider?

Latest to carve up the highways around here is Virgin Media. The workers told me that a green fibre duct runs to every house from a cabinet at the end of each street. If we sign up, would we be tied to Virgin Media and its infrastructure while we are connected to their system, or would we have to return to Openreach FTTC to connect via another provider?

Is this a new estate? On existing ones they have to dig up the pavements as well to run from the cabinet to a point in the pavement outside each house. If you order from them, one way or another an underground cable has to be run from that pavement point to the house. If you have a garden or driveway in between that has to be passed.

It is possible I suppose on a newish estate that VM paid to have the ducting and perhaps cabling laid from the cabinet to these "house points" before the pavements were created.

Once on VM Media cable, yes you are tied not just to their infrastructure but currently no other ISPs can use it. If Openreach is your only alternative, back to that you would have to go to change ISP.

Thank you Bob, this is as I and my neighbours had feared. Our estate was developed some 40 years ago and the roads/footways have been hacked to pieces for water main renewal, street lighting renewal, gas main installation and now Virgin cable. The only consolation is that the footways have not been maintained for at least 20 years and the long strips of the reinstatements have greatly improved the original surfaces.

Virgin must be spending a fortune but I can't see them achieving a return round here. Most of us seem content with existing services; I wouldn't tie myself to one supplier and its annual price rises.

You are in no way tied to the same supplier.
When you decide VirginMedia is not for you, place an order for a new provider e.g. TalkTalk, BT etc. 9 times out of 10 they will not charge you for the new line install. Where the website requires you to pay, simply call and they generally waiver the fee.

Yes thanks, I do realise I could go back to another ISP on Openreach network, but I was referring to Virgin ducting. We would consider it had there been a choice of providers but we don't fancy having our tarmac driveway tracked and then letting Virgin charge whatever they like in years to come.

I don't believe Virgin allow their ducting to be used by other suppliers. The duct used to go into your property would possibly not be capable of taking additional services as I doubt Virgin would deploy anything much bigger than required (assuming they use ducting at all.

Had a chat with the installers who reckon to complete about 100m per day. Experts on this forum will know all about this procedure but I found it interesting. The ducting is green plastic about 12mm diameter with internal diameter about 3mm. Even though the fibre seems hair-thick there would be little room for anyone else!

The trenching is only 300mm deep. The ducting is dispensed from a trailer carrying a dozen or more drums on a framework so one pass along the street can service each house as the trailer passes, terminating at the kerbside. A green warning tape is laid over the ducting at the bottom of its trench, then backfilled. When a householder orders the service, the individual fibre is blown through the duct from cabinet to house.

virgin run their own cable to your property from the road side. It can either be dug or racked alongside eg a fence.

They have no right to alter things in future without the owners permission.
They do not use any existing ducting eg BT or an electrical duct.

If you choose to be with them, you agree a monthly price. At the end of the contract you can either negotiate a new deal or leave. Either way the provider is not getting to charge whatever they like as if the customer finds the price too high they can just switch to an alternative provider. The provider charges a price to the consumer which the consumer contractually agrees too. In the event of a price rise the customer can leave freely without charge.

I don�t understand your complaint.

BT lines etc remain in the home they are not ripped out by virgin.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 16-Feb-18 15:16:57)

I am not sure but I am assuming that only Virgin cabling would be run into the house. If the contract then ends they would have to request BT to run cable into the property in order to select a BT based supplier. That may require BT digging up the drive again to lay their cable and would result in delay and disruption in changing providers.

Not complaining, merely asking if the Virgin ducting/fibre would exclude other suppliers. Now I know it does, so I'm not interested. As our (expensive) tarmac runs up to our boundaries we don't want a trench through it.

Had I known about all this 20 years ago I would have installed a 100mm service duct from the gateway ... isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?