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?

In reply to a post by ian72:

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.

OP already has a BT connection. Virgin aren't going to do anything to that BT cabling, it will remain.

You're all good. VM would be unlikely to go through tarmac to reach a home anyway.

In reply to a post by ian72:

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.

They mention the estate is 40 years old. It really boils down to the fact, they do not want a cable installing which can only be used by 1 ISP. They are effectively saying it is unfair that the drive needs to be dug up for 1 ISP to install its services, where they are then tied into a contact with virgin, and if they go elsewhere the cable wont be used anyway. So arguing it is pointless and unfair of virgin to work in this way.

Realistically, cable is very different to BTs services, hence this is necessary.
The comments stating having virgin stops you going to another ISP are unfounded, they simply mean no other provider can use the same cable.

Thanks to you and IgnitionNet - I was struggling to work out the exact position and clearly my comprehension was lacking

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

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.

It's incidental to your original question, but if fibre is going to the house that would be their recently introduced FTTH product, if that's what they will be supplying there.

All VM cable up until then is fibre to a master cabinet, then some form of copper cabling to the smaller ones, and coax from those to the individual premises via the pavement access point that is added at the same time as the main pavement trenching.

I don't quite see even in FTTH how they are going to blow fibre from the cabinet to each individual premises, given no pre-existing ducting.

Probably I picked it up wrongly re connection to each house, but 12mm fibre ducts are being laid from the street cabinet to the kerbside entrance of each house. Installer said each house will be connected only when Virgin has been ordered, he has contract only for the highway operation. Another team will make the individual connections, if anyone wants one.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

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?

I�m a bit lost. Virgin Media would put in their own duct to the boundary of your house and then find a way of getting a cable from the boundary to where you want it. The Openreach ducting or overhead cabling remains.

You just sign up for a contract with Virgin Media as you would anyone else. Then if you�re fed up of them at the end of your contract then you go back to whoever you fancy.

That is correct, they only do the final tube with a bit of fibre in when you actually order the service, standard practice around the world.

NOTE: Virgin Media will not touch the Openreach cable or duct and thus you have freedom to keep existing services and run both at once or not.

Not at all sure where all the confusion is coming from.

I'm not sure where the confusion comes from either. I don't think the OP has been confused about anything, since my original answer, except for the bit about the need for the final duct from the pavement to the house only being installed once the service is ordered.

There is perhaps one thing that hasn't been mentioned, that may or may not still happen. (Though not in the OP's case as they are staying with OR-based supply). That is it isn't unknown for VM installers to gut the NTE5 and use it for their own phone connection. I believe that's not supposed to happen, but has done sometimes in the past.

I'm not sure it is VM FTTH on the OP's estate, but that doesn't affect the last leg digging in either case.

Indeed, Bob answered my question with his first post. I had asked:

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?

He and others replied that only Virgin could use its own ducts/cabling. That's all I wanted to know and I'll stick with our existing overhead Openreach connnection. Thanks!

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

You're all good. VM would be unlikely to go through tarmac to reach a home anyway.

All depends.

I had virgin installed. This required a small part of the footpath to be dug up for cable (about 12" by 6") they then laid the cable through the garden. Which required a 1" wide part of the lawn to be dug up. Can't see it now after 6 months and then through our tarmac path (1" wide channel) to the house.
So it will depend on OP's situation on what they need to dig up.

I look on it as just another isp. We still have all the old BT kit to & in the house. So when the 12 month deal is up. I will see if they will reduce it a bit. But given the TV requirements it unlikely..

Would it cause a lot of disruption to run a cable from the boundary edge to your house? Is that why you�re worried?

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/t/4583524-s...

As Bob says from p1 of this post:

As our (expensive) tarmac runs up to our boundaries we don't want a trench through it.

In fairness most reinstatements are well done, but once tarmac is cut it's never the same. It's like folding a sheet of cardboard, the tarmac or asphalt will always fail along the defect. Just look at any highway ...

I should clarify. They can and do go through paths and the like to reach a property but where it's tarmac all the way they're going to be more reluctant.

Not impossible of course but gets expensive quickly.