Home install with Project Lightning

We recently had Project Lightning bring Virgin Media to our road. Here are some recommendations based on my experiences:

1. Get in touch with your local VM Salesman. The price is the same as on-line but you deal with someone face-to-face.

2. As I wandered around the nearest town and local villages there were very few tidy installs, with cables hanging everywhere.

3. It is a two stage process, two guys came to blow the fibre, then another guy turns up later to fit the coax from the fibre connection outside to the VM SH3.

4. One neighbour had the Fibre blow team turn up at a different time than agreed when they ordered on-line. Which resulted in the box on the wall outside being in a different place to where they wanted it.

5. By dealing with the local VM Salesman I agreed that the fibre blow would only happen while I was present and he passed that on directly to their local Contractor�s (Kelly) Foreman.

6. My VM SH3 would be the opposite corner of the house to where the Fibre terminates in the box on the outside wall. So the VM Salesman arranged for another Kelly guy to visit and leave some VM Coax with me. I then ran the Coax behind a gutter drainpipe (secured with tie-wraps), through the loft and then back down the outside wall on the other side. The Kelly install guy later told me they have to do 7 installs in a day. No way with that amount of work to do will they be running cable through my loft (which isn't very well boarded anyway). So this way I had minimal cable showing outside.

7. When the Coax install guy visits stick with him, as I did during the entire hour he was with me. I had previously noted on other installs they only seem to have pink blaster plates, which look terrible (especially when all the other blaster plates, guttering and down-pipes I have are black). So make sure that if this is important to you then you get some black blaster plates beforehand (they are real cheap on e-Bay) and he then fitted that.

8. So, in summary, by dealing with a local VM Salesman face-to-face, being very clear about what needs to be done, being realistic that they are not going to spend a day running Coax through a badly boarded loft and doing it myself, anticipating what might happen and shadowing the workmen 100% of the time they are present you get a nice clean VM install. In fact mine is the cleanest I have ever seen!

On a different, but related, subject. VM didn�t offer me a landline. But we still wanted a landline option and wanted to keep our existing landline number, even though we normally use the inclusive minutes on our mobile contracts. We chose Sipgate as a VoIP provider. No monthly rental and low cost calls. Sound quality has been fine. But please be aware you have to use the line every so often or it is terminated. I think (but not sure) it is every 3 months.

Edited by deleted (Mon 05-Mar-18 14:57:00)

Sounds a bit of a pallaver and says more about the Kelly comms people in your area than anything else.

I just got VM installed as well, also in a lightning area, although this was an infill so still coax.

I told the guy where I needed the SH3 (front room, where BT master socket and VM coax came to) and the TV Box (back room, involved running cable around the front and side of the house) and he went and did it - ensuring everything was terminated cleanly and the cable attached securely to the wall in a straight line, at the point where the bricks change colour.

He was here about 3 hours in total, and did a cracking job with minimal supervision.

We can't get a phone line either and I've also gone with Sipgate, and am in the process of porting my BT number to it.

Thanks for the info, I'm waiting for our area to go live, it's a brand new area so full fibre.

Many years ago I ran a small duct from our external wall into the room that houses my network equipment, so hopefully they'll use that. I also managed to get the T installed in the most suitable place outside the house.

I've also had VM installed in a Project Lightning fibre area. Like you, I spoke to the salesman and aslo pre-wired a lot of the house (I wanted the hub in the garage where my wired network wiring centre is and three V6 boxes installed without wire all over the outside of the house). The installer connected all the wiring to faceplates in all four lacations and ran a coax back to the fibre node on the side of the house. Unlike your installation he did run this through the loft as I'd left the tails of the other coax leads in the loft. A heights team came to tie the cable in behind a drainpipe as the installer wasn't allowed above the first floor! The other difference is that we have a VM landline which runs from the top most phone port on the rear of the hub - the installer connected that up so that all my phone sockets round the house work (I had to disconnect them from the BT faceplate myself though as they can't touch that).

All in all a very neat installation!