Any Virgin Media Engineers Here?

McDaniel

McDaniel

McDaniel

Soldato
Joined
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Essex
Just wonder how much people know about Virgin Media and the installation process, I have just rented a property but it has a fully paved front garden/drive way so not sure how close to the house Virgin need to be to connect to their Fibre Network - obviously doubt the landlord will let them dig up the property for it!!

I have asked about Virgin and at the moment he said get their Surveyors round to give an idea of what they can do, so I will phone them and organise - but thought I would try my luck here too... unfortunately only the one picture until I can get round there for more...

What do people think, anyone with experience with some digging needed, and how professional they were at doing it?

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Thanks,
 
Oh really - is this experience talking?

I do have my fingers crossed they can route it down the left side and keep it hidden!
 
alexhull24 said:
If my experience is anything to go by, you'd be better off on ADSL tbh!
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in my experience ADSL using 40+ year old cables is horrendous and nice new fibre optics is excellent with consistently great speeds and constantly low latency. the customer service may be poor but i never have to use them.


OP they will probably run it along the bottom of your dividing fence but will still have to do some digging
 
I'm not an engineer, but have experienced the EXACT same problem as you.

VM's records show that my road is cobbled and as such can't receive their broadband. They kept telling me this for about 6 months and refusing to send out an engi.

It took quite a few calls to speak to someone who could understand the following point:

My road is cobbled, yes. But the road that my rear garden backs onto isn't.

This road behind my house, has fibre. They finally sent out an engineer, I walked him around the back of the house and he literally said "yeah, should be easy". They left us a cable draped across the garden that we had to bury, but that was it. Now I'm the only house on my street with fibre optic broadband and EVERYONE is jealous.

So their records may show that your road/drive is cobbled and therefore your can't receive fibre, but what about behind your house?
 
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McDaniel said:
Because of the service or installation though :P
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I apologise, I'll clarify:

The service has been rubbish for 2 years in my location as it's oversubscribed. Huge pings and loads of packet loss. Immensely frustrating as you can probably imagine.

The installation was fine, but it was already piped into the flat I'm in, so not so applicable.

Customer service is shocking. Well over a year I've been complaining and it's still not fixed. They gave me one months free BB after 6 months of horrendous service and nothing else, I'm still seething tbh.

"andy" said:
in my experience ADSL using 40+ year old cables is horrendous and nice new fibre optics is excellent with consistently great speeds and constantly low latency. the customer service may be poor but i never have to use them.
Click to expand...

It's a great connection when it's working, I agree, but currently, when I go to my parents house their 2mb line is a breath of fresh air as I can actually game/browse/stream on it better than my '10mbit' line here most of the time! Pray you don't have to use the CS. Really.
 
Where is the point on the pavement on the street?

Best route would be along the picket fence, but as has been suggested it will be laid on top of crazy paving in green plastic ducting (a little bigger than a hose).

My suggestion would be to purchase something nicer looking for that ducting to go into along the fence from somewhere like B&Q or Wickes.
 
I have seen Virgin Media lay the coax cable straight over a drive and they (hrmm) 'protect' it by wrapping it in a plastic tube.

As long as your road has the laid cables by VM you are likely to get it installed.
 
So by what you've said there is a good chance the engineer could route the wire around by the picket fence with a bit of "tube" like cover and not really need to dig anything... that would be most good!

Will have to wait until XMas Eve to find out!!
 
When VM did my house, they drilled a hole through my garden wall, ran the cable from the pavement through that then up the side of the garden right against the fence so it didn't interfere with anything.

With yours I'd imagine they'd do the same. Run it along the far fence then drill a hole in your front room wall and push it in there.

alexhull24 said:
If my experience is anything to go by, you'd be better off on ADSL tbh!
Click to expand...

Touch wood, I've only ever had one problem with VM in about 5 years of being with them. And even that problem was rectified within 12 hours. My speeds are consistantly 50MB and I never get ping issues in games.. :)
 
They'll probably have to dig up the first 2ft by the pavement, in order to joint the cable.

From there it'll run above ground in conduit. From that picture, I'd say it's most likely they'll run it tight down the left hand side of the fence and in through the front of the house.
 
My friend is a VM engineer and my understanding is that he strongly recommends it is dug down into the ground for obvious protection reasons. He is in the process of trying to persuade his gf's parents to get it installed but they are worried about ripping up the block paved drive. He has therefore said it would be fine to dig down less than a foot where the flower garden runs along the side of the drive and put it there. The only risk is if some clumsy ape comes along with a shovel and jams straight through it.
 
We have the whole of the front drive block paved. The engineer just simply ran the wires down the side of the fence, he spent a good few hours and did it very neatly.
 
Just pray that you get a good engineer, some of their guys are no better than trained monkeys who will happily throw a cable across the middle of the drive and call that an installation.
 
Used to work for VM back when it was Telewest, if it was me doing that install I would run the cable along the top of the bottom fence rail holding it in place with a few staples (with the customers approval of course).

The Siamese cable which runs from the pit to the omnibox (box in front of house) is external grade anyway.

Also Im assuming that bay window is your living room so the installer could go straight in from behind the omnibox so you wont have black cable running all over the front of your house.

Look here for advice.

Cheers.
 
There was a thread not too long ago about some engineer who ended up looking the cable up to the top of the house and back down just to go around the drain pipe, or something like that?

Anyway, no problems with Virgin here. As long as you keep an eye on the engineer to make sure he's putting it where you want it then you should be fine.
 
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