Moving from Virgin Cable to ADSL - how do I retain aliases?

I've had cable continuously now for over 17 years - first from United Artists, which eventually became Telewest, and currently Virgin, since they took over.

In that time I've only ever had one landline number, and since going online in February 2000, one set of 5 mail boxes, each with 3 aliases. Out of these 15 aliases, about 70% of my email goes through one, perhaps 20% through another, and the remainder through a few of the other 13. Many of these 13 I never use, but it is important to me, having been a cable internet customer for over 10 years, to be allowed to retain these aliases for possible future use. I was lucky enough to "get in first" to reserve them, and have paid out thousands of pounds to United Artists/Telewest/Virgin for over 10 years, partly for the privilege.

I'm moving flat on Tuesday and since the new address can't get cable (which is utterly ridiculous, given that it's in the very centre of Edinburgh, & that the flats next door right through the wall have cable!) I've arranged to switch to Virgin ADSL (despite the near-universal condemnation Virgin ADSL receives on thinkbroadband.com for being, as we say in Scotland, "pish"). My original plan was to switch to one of the LLU suppliers available at the local exchange - whichever came most highly recommended by the experts on thinkbroadband.com, but time ran out & (for better or worse) I've agreed to go with Virgin ADSL.

Hopefully the quality/speed/reliability of the service may be reasonable, given that (according to a Virgin call-centre person):

1. I'll only be about 450 metres from the exchange (seems about right according to a map).

2. Two or 3 other flats in the stair have Virgin ADSL already (out of the 6 flats in total in the stair). Presumably that's a positive recommendation.

3. The service's speed will never be throttled back or capped - I'll always get the maximum the system can deliver.

4. The theoretical typical speed for someone connected to that exchange is 6-14 Mbps (I currently have the 10 Mbps cable service).

5. If the service is unsatisfactory I should phone and complain - if this happens several times over several weeks Virgin will be in breach of contract and duty bound to remedy the situation.

Perhaps I'm being hopelessly naive, but I'm cautiously optimistic!

Having said that, I went from dialup straight to cable broadband, so I've never experienced the promise/disapointment of a variable (ADSL) broadband connection. From scanning the thinkbroadband.com forums, it seems that ADSL is pretty woeful compared to cable, but then it should be. Piggy-backing a broadband signal onto the unused frequencies of a system of often decades-old copper wire that was designed to carry the human voice is never going to be able to compete with light travelling down fibre optic cables, is it?

Anyway, 2 different Virgin call-centre employees have told me that once my cable account is closed on Monday, I'll lose my landline number (which United Artists allowed me to partially choose back in 1993, and which ironically I'd have been able to keep if I'd switched to anyone other than Virgin!) as well as all 15 of my "@blueyonder.co.uk" email addresses. I've already been allocated a new (temporary) "@virginmedia.com" email address, and once the ADSL is up & running I'll be able to open up to 10 new mailboxes.

Now to complicate things, those of us with Virgin as our ISP will know that Virgin are in the process of "migrating" everyone's existing POP3 email accounts over to what they call Virgin Media Mail, which they say is a Google partnered "webmail" based system (even though it's not technically webmail at all - see here), with old style @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com and @virgin.net addresses no longer being able to be added or altered (see here).

My concern was that once my cable was disconnected, and I lost "[email protected]", when I then went to register "[email protected]" (once the ADSL was up & running) I would find that it had already been taken by someone else. Given that I have 15 aliases, I assumed that it was highly likely that at least some of them (in their "@virginmedia.com" guise) would have long ago been taken by other people.

However, according to this page, "[email protected]" can't be chosen by anyone if "[email protected]" already exists, which is good news, except that given I have a different account number for my ADSL service compared to my cable one, I fear that the Virgin systems (being computers not humans) will use 100% logic and 0% common sense, and prevent me from choosing "[email protected]" because another customer (me but with my cable account number) already has (or had until a few days prior) the address "[email protected]". Will this happen, or will it be the case that since my cable account will have been dead for 4 days come Friday, I'll have no problem choosing "[email protected]"?

What I'd like to know (in order to have the best chance of preserving as many of my aliases as possible) is do I either:

1. Deliberately delete all my existing @blueyonder.co.uk mailboxes before my cable is disconnected (apart from the primary one, which can't be deleted) and then try to set up equivalent @virginmedia.com mailboxes once the ADSL is working;

or

2. Leave all my existing @blueyonder.co.uk mailboxes alone, letting them die "organically" as part of my existing account being closed on Monday, and then try to set up equivalent @virginmedia.com mailboxes once the ADSL is working?

This page seems to be suggesting that I do the former.

A small piece of trivia: my "main" email address (the one about 70% of my email goes through) only has 3 characters before the "@blueyonder.co.uk". Back in the Telewest days you were allowed to choose an address like this, but with Virgin, all new addresses must have at least 6 characters before the "@virginmedia.com", so I won't be able to replace my main address with an exact equivalent "@virginmedia.com" one anyway!

My second main question regards forwarding. Is there any point in me setting Forwarding in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab of the Settings page of my email account (when accessing it via the Virgin website) to forward emails sent to any of my "@blueyonder.co.uk" accounts to either my new temporary "@virginmedia.com" email address, or to one of the new proper "@virginmedia.com" email addresses that I'll choose once the ADSL is working? Or is it the case that since my cable account will be closed, any emails sent to any of my old addresses won't get as far as a "@blueyonder.co.uk" inbox in the first place, and so won't be able to be forwarded?

Many thanks in advance for anyone's wisdom on these matters!

Two final points. Regarding the lack of cable at my new address, about a fortnight ago I found this page, where it states:

"Can your neighbours & other people in your street get Virgin Cable? If the answer is yes, just fill in our service check form with your details. One of our trained advisors will contact you within 5 days to arrange a survey for your property to see if we can give you what you want."

I clicked on the link and was taken to this page, where I filled out & submitted the form. It's been a great deal more than 5 days, and I've not heard a peep from anyone.

Finally, just to rub salt in the wound, a generic letter arrived at my existing (cabled) address on Friday from Virgin, addressed to "The Occupier", telling me that "now I've had a chance to unpack", did I realise that my new property had cable, and that I could purchase all the benefits that cable brings? I'd like to suggest to the insensitive sods that send these pieces of junk mail that they wait until after the existing customer has moved house before they hassle the new occupant to sign up in their place!

I don't know about the email addresses.

ADSL can be a viable alternative to cable in terms of performance, but only if the physical line which connects you to the exchange is extremely short.

It's not an exact science owing to the state of the physical lines themselves - it comes down to the grade of copper used, or whether indeed it is wholly or only partly copper.

In a best case scenario since you live so near the exchange if the line is equally short (e.g. it doesn't go round the houses for a mile first) and if the line is copper then you should get close to the maximum achievable speeds for ADSL.

Which in themselves are not comparable with cable, no, as you correctly state owing to the fact that they're just telephone lines which are OK for voice, but only a stop gap solution for data - a stop gap which has persisted for a long time now.

So cable starts at 10Mbps, ADSL ends at 7.2Mbps (incorrectly stated as up to 8Mbps) - ADSL2 can go faster as long as the line is very short.

FTTC (think of the Virgin media network - fibre to the street cabinet then coax to your house) can go quicker still, but it still struggles to compare with Virgin Media as it still has to go down a stretch of old copper wire. But then, you're not after 50Mbps. FTTC is in roll out stage now.

Your property might not be able to be cabled owing to the owner of the property not wanting the cable laid/allowing access, so the property has been "blacklisted" in effect. Or, maybe it just got "missed" before and VM are looking to extend their coverage, so maybe you will be able to get cable one day. Hopefully you'll get a response on that query you sent.

However all that said, at your distance from the exchange - if the line is nearly as short as that distance - and ADSL2 is available - you might be able to get 10Mbps+ which will compare with your previous experience. However everything I read would suggest you're better off with an LLU package from o2/be (available to you) since it bypasses BT's equipment rather than Virgin National which is a resold BT product.

Just to clarify your point 5 - ADSL is a "get what you're given", so no this does not apply. There is no minimum QOS although ISPs will tend to treat < 256kbps as a fault and investigate.

And on your point 3 - some ISPs will throttle some protocols such as P2P (oddly enough, including Virgin cable on the "slow" 10Mbps/20Mbps packages) so it's worth reading the terms and conditions and the small print carefully.

To my knowledge, each account number is unique to a postcode location, hence why you have been provided a different one for your ADSL service. If someone were to more into your previous Cable address they would most likely have a similar account number to your old one, albeit incremented in number in some way.

From what I understand about the email process is that all new accounts are now virginmedia.com and all other extensions are now considered legacy. Since their migration process old mailboxes cannot be transferred between accounts and I know many people who were not informed of this or misinformed by the sales team. That being said I had a virgin.net email address i was able to access via pop3 even after account termination so whether your mailboxes would cease to function remains to be seen. Obviously you wouldnt want to risk losing any mail so don't take this as gospel the same would happen for you.

In reply to a post by ddb:

I've had cable continuously now for over 17 years - first from United Artists, which eventually became Telewest, and currently Virgin, since they took over.

In that time I've only ever had one landline number, and since going online in February 2000, one set of 5 mail boxes, each with 3 aliases. Out of these 15 aliases, about 70% of my email goes through one, perhaps 20% through another, and the remainder through a few of the other 13. Many of these 13 I never use, but it is important to me, having been a cable internet customer for over 10 years, to be allowed to retain these aliases for possible future use. I was lucky enough to "get in first" to reserve them, and have paid out thousands of pounds to United Artists/Telewest/Virgin for over 10 years, partly for the privilege.

I'm moving flat on Tuesday and since the new address can't get cable (which is utterly ridiculous, given that it's in the very centre of Edinburgh, & that the flats next door right through the wall have cable!) I've arranged to switch to Virgin ADSL (despite the near-universal condemnation Virgin ADSL receives on thinkbroadband.com for being, as we say in Scotland, "pish"). My original plan was to switch to one of the LLU suppliers available at the local exchange - whichever came most highly recommended by the experts on thinkbroadband.com, but time ran out & (for better or worse) I've agreed to go with Virgin ADSL.

Hopefully the quality/speed/reliability of the service may be reasonable, given that (according to a Virgin call-centre person):

1. I'll only be about 450 metres from the exchange (seems about right according to a map).

2. Two or 3 other flats in the stair have Virgin ADSL already (out of the 6 flats in total in the stair). Presumably that's a positive recommendation.

3. The service's speed will never be throttled back or capped - I'll always get the maximum the system can deliver.

4. The theoretical typical speed for someone connected to that exchange is 6-14 Mbps (I currently have the 10 Mbps cable service).

5. If the service is unsatisfactory I should phone and complain - if this happens several times over several weeks Virgin will be in breach of contract and duty bound to remedy the situation.

Perhaps I'm being hopelessly naive, but I'm cautiously optimistic!

Having said that, I went from dialup straight to cable broadband, so I've never experienced the promise/disapointment of a variable (ADSL) broadband connection. From scanning the thinkbroadband.com forums, it seems that ADSL is pretty woeful compared to cable, but then it should be. Piggy-backing a broadband signal onto the unused frequencies of a system of often decades-old copper wire that was designed to carry the human voice is never going to be able to compete with light travelling down fibre optic cables, is it?

Anyway, 2 different Virgin call-centre employees have told me that once my cable account is closed on Monday, I'll lose my landline number (which United Artists allowed me to partially choose back in 1993, and which ironically I'd have been able to keep if I'd switched to anyone other than Virgin!) as well as all 15 of my "@blueyonder.co.uk" email addresses. I've already been allocated a new (temporary) "@virginmedia.com" email address, and once the ADSL is up & running I'll be able to open up to 10 new mailboxes.

Now to complicate things, those of us with Virgin as our ISP will know that Virgin are in the process of "migrating" everyone's existing POP3 email accounts over to what they call Virgin Media Mail, which they say is a Google partnered "webmail" based system (even though it's not technically webmail at all - see here), with old style @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com and @virgin.net addresses no longer being able to be added or altered (see here).

My concern was that once my cable was disconnected, and I lost "[email protected]", when I then went to register "[email protected]" (once the ADSL was up & running) I would find that it had already been taken by someone else. Given that I have 15 aliases, I assumed that it was highly likely that at least some of them (in their "@virginmedia.com" guise) would have long ago been taken by other people.

However, according to this page, "[email protected]" can't be chosen by anyone if "[email protected]" already exists, which is good news, except that given I have a different account number for my ADSL service compared to my cable one, I fear that the Virgin systems (being computers not humans) will use 100% logic and 0% common sense, and prevent me from choosing "[email protected]" because another customer (me but with my cable account number) already has (or had until a few days prior) the address "[email protected]". Will this happen, or will it be the case that since my cable account will have been dead for 4 days come Friday, I'll have no problem choosing "[email protected]"?

What I'd like to know (in order to have the best chance of preserving as many of my aliases as possible) is do I either:

1. Deliberately delete all my existing @blueyonder.co.uk mailboxes before my cable is disconnected (apart from the primary one, which can't be deleted) and then try to set up equivalent @virginmedia.com mailboxes once the ADSL is working;

or

2. Leave all my existing @blueyonder.co.uk mailboxes alone, letting them die "organically" as part of my existing account being closed on Monday, and then try to set up equivalent @virginmedia.com mailboxes once the ADSL is working?

This page seems to be suggesting that I do the former.

A small piece of trivia: my "main" email address (the one about 70% of my email goes through) only has 3 characters before the "@blueyonder.co.uk". Back in the Telewest days you were allowed to choose an address like this, but with Virgin, all new addresses must have at least 6 characters before the "@virginmedia.com", so I won't be able to replace my main address with an exact equivalent "@virginmedia.com" one anyway!

My second main question regards forwarding. Is there any point in me setting Forwarding in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab of the Settings page of my email account (when accessing it via the Virgin website) to forward emails sent to any of my "@blueyonder.co.uk" accounts to either my new temporary "@virginmedia.com" email address, or to one of the new proper "@virginmedia.com" email addresses that I'll choose once the ADSL is working? Or is it the case that since my cable account will be closed, any emails sent to any of my old addresses won't get as far as a "@blueyonder.co.uk" inbox in the first place, and so won't be able to be forwarded?

Many thanks in advance for anyone's wisdom on these matters!

Two final points. Regarding the lack of cable at my new address, about a fortnight ago I found this page, where it states:

"Can your neighbours & other people in your street get Virgin Cable? If the answer is yes, just fill in our service check form with your details. One of our trained advisors will contact you within 5 days to arrange a survey for your property to see if we can give you what you want."

I clicked on the link and was taken to this page, where I filled out & submitted the form. It's been a great deal more than 5 days, and I've not heard a peep from anyone.

Finally, just to rub salt in the wound, a generic letter arrived at my existing (cabled) address on Friday from Virgin, addressed to "The Occupier", telling me that "now I've had a chance to unpack", did I realise that my new property had cable, and that I could purchase all the benefits that cable brings? I'd like to suggest to the insensitive sods that send these pieces of junk mail that they wait until after the existing customer has moved house before they hassle the new occupant to sign up in their place!