Can I remove all the Virgin/NTL cabling?

When we bought our house in 2002 the previous owners had cable for TV & internet. We had and still have absolutely no intention of having cable for anything and a few years ago I removed all the internal cabling and boxes prior to re-decorating.

There are still a number of cables going round the outside of the house from the brown cable box at the front of the house. Can I, and is it safe to, remove these?

Can I remove the brown cable box as well?

I recall that a few weeks after we moved in I tried plugging an ordinary telephone into a cable telephone box and it had a dial tone so was clearly still live; I seem to remember ringing Virgin to ask about it and they said to ignore it all, although they did try to get me to take cable.

Perfectly safe to remove it.

You shouldn't remove it as it belongs to Virgin Media but they are hardly likely to come knocking and complain to you about it.

Be aware it may complicate things though if you do come to order cable in the future.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Perfectly safe to remove it.

I assume you refer to the cable

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

You shouldn't remove it as it belongs to Virgin Media but they are hardly likely to come knocking and complain to you about it.

I assume you mean the box.

Perhaps I should charge them for 11 years rental of my wall space.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Be aware it may complicate things though if you do come to order cable in the future.

No chance whatsoever of that.

In that cast you can rip it all out if you want. I presume the brown box at the front is merely to cover the connection from the external to internal cable and serves no other purpose.
I ripped out all the cable tv stuff when we moved in here, including what was left of the external wall box. I kept the cable and used it again later .

You shouldn't actually touch anything on the outside of the property up to that box as it's the property of Virgin Media but it's not a big deal.

I'm not actually 100% certain where the demarcation point is in the case of external cabling, I would presume it's that first box but I'm not totally sure.

I've not actually looked inside the box, though will need to to disconnect the house-side cabling.

The underground cabling to the box is only 2-3" below the surface - as we found out 18 months ago when digging out a new flower bed. And it was the cable to next door!

Come the warmer weather I'll have a look inside the box and do what a man has to do

Just be careful not to cut off the neighbours!

Her cable goes nowhere near my wall box, but it does go, seemingly, under our garden.

(Have to make sure the wife is careful with the garden fork...)

My father managed to shred his with a rotary blade. Claimed innocence to Virgin though and someone came to fix it. I imagine it's a fairly common accident given as you noted how shallow the cable burial is.

A thought. If the Virgin cable goes across our garden underground (just) and there is a Virgin box on the wall of our house and we don't not use Virgin in any size shape or form, can I claim ground/wall rent?

I rather suspect a simple, 2-letter word, answer

The word is 'wayleave' and you can claim wayleave payments for plant on your land so long as it is not solely there to feed your property. It won't be much money though.

Alternatively, you can ask them to get their plant feeding your neighbour off of your land.

I wouldn't expect any rapid action from Virgin in either case. Virgin planning is in rapid decline and you are more likely to fall out with your neighbour first.

Edited by deleted (Sun 05-Jan-14 21:57:26)

There's enough plant on my land already, though we normally call them weeds...

We spent one and a half hours yesterday afternoon weeding...

Probably not worth the hassle to chase. I'd just stick to being a good neighbour, if you ever did accidentally cut a wire then Virgin would need to come repair this and would need to request access to your property. Should this arise you could ask them to route it so it doesn't come onto your property.

IIRC the brown box usually houses a junction in the coax cable so if you were to open it up you'd be able to undo the coax running from it around the house. Not sure now the phone side is terminated in there.

Just thought I'd update this.

A few weeks ago I opened the box and cut all the cables inside, including one that went thorough into the house. No complaints from neighbours.

Then over the Easter weekend I removed the box and all the cables. The two cables that came out of the ground in green plastic tube/conduit I cut back and then buried the whole lot in the ground. There was 20+metres of coax cable from around the house.

Filled all the various holes in the brickwork with mortar.

All clean and tidy now. SWMBO is happy now

Just to give you my experience virgin don't like people taking there cables out or cutting them down but they can't prove anything and having done it myself at many properties and they have had no problems switching to or back to cable so don't worry about it.

Also bet your home looks a lot better with all them damn cables gone!

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Just to give you my experience virgin don't like people taking there cables out or cutting them down but they can't prove anything

Seeing as I have no contract, present or past, with Virgin or their predecessors, I can see no way they can do anything.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Also bet your home looks a lot better with all them damn cables gone!

Too right!

My parents, sadly long deceased, would have been appalled at the mass of cables all too many modern houses are draped with. External wiring had to be hidden, internal wiring or plumbing had to be chased in or put in conduit or boxed in - usually in an internal corner, and then wall-papered over.

Edited by cheshire_man (Fri 02-May-14 12:47:20)