What cables do VM run to where?

I�ve got VM coming next week and I want to be well prepared for what they�re going to want to put where, so I can make my install as neat as possible. I�m having broadband plus phone (don�t want the phone tbh, but it was cheaper to have it).

So can someone correct the following routing presumptions for me please?

Cable from street cabinet terminates at junction box on the outside of my house.
Cable from junction box routes on outside wall to entry point on my house, comes inside, terminates in another junction box.
Coax and copper separately come out of the interior junction box, one goes straight into my router, the other terminates in a phone socket.

Have I got the above right? And what are the cables at each stage? Am I right that there is only one cable up to the point of the interior junction box, and that is where it splits two ways?

Thank you all very much for your help

I have a twin cable VM coming into my house. It looks like 2 pieces of brown coax joined together. This goes into what looks like a BT phone wall box socket on the wall. One of these 2 cables is coax and is connected to a splitter which is inside the "BT Phone socket look alike". The splitter has 2 outputs, one with a terminator on and one that connects to the super hub. The other half of the twin cable has something like 6 or 8 copper wires that are for the phone part of the socket only. Hope that helps.

P.S. The Twin cables joined together from my house go directly from my house to the virgin media cabinet only less than 100m away. In my particular case their are no junction boxes and it is a a single length of twin cable. As far as I know this was originally installed by NYNEX, which later became NTL, which then later became Virgin.

Edited by mrmarktigger (Mon 11-Mar-19 21:56:55)

The Siamese cable is run from the local cabinet directly to the outer wall of your house. If your house has never had VM before a team will come out before your install date and will run the cable and either leave it coiled up either in your garden or in the street cabinet.

On installation day the 2 man crew will pull the cable out of the ground at the tee in the street (if it was left coiled in the cabinet). They will drill through from the tee in to your garden.

Worth checking where your tee is (the little chamber in the street outside your property) and planning where you want them to run your cable.

If it's just grass then one person will use a spade and raise your grass. If they do the job properly they will run some green conduit first and push the siamese cable through. The other person will check with you where you want the internal termination box and the phone line (they will prefer them to be next to each other but you can chose else where ). The new VM internal termination boxes are much nicer than the old ones having euro modules so in theory you could actually use your own sockets if they supported euro modules. Once you decide where the internal termination box goes they will drill through the wall. On the other side they will mount the brown external box where the coax cable will be terminated. Cable is run from the outside termination box, to the internal termination box via the hole they have just drilled.

Once they have buried the cable they will jump up and down / stamp if back down - oh yes it's a first class job (not lol).

If you have no grass / soft area, and instead have a drive in front of the tee then things become a little more difficult.

Thank you both very very much. I have a particular route in mind for the internal cable so it�s invisible, so in advance of them coming I will put a draw in - hopefully they�ll be agreeable to using it.

Last one then - I don�t want the phone line nor the box it entails. I ordered it because it was cheaper this way. Do you think they�ll just leave it out if I ask? Thank you!

You may not have a separate telephone cable, VM are now installing a VOIP system on new installs.Just one internal coax cable wired direct to router, which has two telephone ports.

That�s mega, thanks Brunel. If I�ve already got the old shotgun cable as far as an old grey junction box on the side of the house, will they still try to draw both inside, or still go the single cable voip route?

On sign up I did have to tick boxes amounting to a disclaimer confirming that I had a mobile phone available to me that I could call 999 on if necessary, back covering I guess.

With VM it can be a lot of a lottery, on how they actually install. They are known to be less than neat and careful.

The installation involved three groups of people
first was a surveyor who suggested how the cable would be routed, sadly there does not appear to be any communication of substance to the cable routing team who drag the cable through the ducting from the box to hole in the path and then route the cable through the green tubing to the house.
Sadly the best route for the cable had scratchy plants in the way so instead of routing the cable along the fence they cut directly across the bed, (this side of instead the other side) of some shrubs along the fence.

The third person to arrive then drilled the wall and routed the cable around the inside of the attached garage and into the study where the VM modem and the router was located.

Make sure that you are on site and supervising when the cable is routed to your house and when it is routed to your modem location.

I was disapointed that there was no request for feedback of the installation, if there were I am sure that the installation process would be dramatically improved.

I think the VOIP is only for FTTP VM installs.

My install last month had the standard POTS line along with Coax.