Anyone work at or have contacts at Virgin Media or Liberty Global?

pmc25

pmc25

pmc25

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My area and the area around it have had full fibre optic cable, plus ducting for the coaxial (to every single door) for more than 10 years ... according to local VM engineers, it's never been used once, since in Telewest days local engineers didn't want to work on the period properties in the area (more fiddly) and flagged the area as not being covered, internally. This persisted after VM bought them, and still remains now that Liberty Global have taken over the group.

I only just realised the situation. However trying to get VM to send out an engineer and rectify the situation is practically impossible. I've spent hours on the phone, and they've promised numerous times that an engineer will call and arrange a time, but of course it hasn't happened. Even though the only other option in the area is ~10-12Mbps ADSL, the famously bad VM customer service is pretty off-putting ... especially as they refuse to rectify a situation that is costing them potentially 100s of customers.

Even if the CS guys are actually logging the engineer time. I suspect some local engineers are still conspiring to avoid ever going to the locations where these 'phantom' VM service areas exist.

Anyone know anyone senior at VM, or someone in management?

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Had posted this in the main VM thread, but this ought to get more visibility.
 
It's fully fibred up, and the PoPs are underneath the man-holes (listed areas don't allow cabinets) - though presumably the latter are now archaic. There's no co-axial because not a single customer has ever been connected, as crooked engineers de-listed the area, and have kept it like that. My quadrant has about 150 dwellings. Apparently there are other areas like it in my city ... comprising many hundreds of dwellings ..

... and yes, this has been confirmed by a couple of friendly engineers I accosted when they were working elsewhere in the city. Both said exactly the same thing (they weren't together).

They're supposed to have this "Project Lightning" under Libery Global to expand and reach more people and invest in infrastracture ... yet they have their own 'phantom' networks which continue to lie unused and don't show up on any of their systems. One of the engineers said that there were similar examples all around the country, some of which had never had anyone connected ... the loss on investment is potentially colossal.
 
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If you're in a city then you're probably covered by a BDUK scheme, so contact the relevant official to bring this issue up with them. It's going to be a lot more effective than trying to get Virgin Media to listen to you.
 
Caged said:
If you're in a city then you're probably covered by a BDUK scheme, so contact the relevant official to bring this issue up with them. It's going to be a lot more effective than trying to get Virgin Media to listen to you.
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This is how I found out originally. A BDUK bod spoke to me off the record (they're not allowed to discuss details officially) and told me that the reason my area wasn't covered was because of a VM 'phantom' network. He wouldn't reveal much, but told me to look for the covers on my street ...... I'd always ignored them assuming that they were for something else and CATV was just what the water / electricity / gas / BT people had at the time. But no ... it's VM and all there.

TLDR this network WAS (dunno about now) a matter of public record, but has been off the radar for TeleWest / VM for the entirety of the 10 years I've lived here.

It's a total farce.
 
I worked for them around 2000 - 2002. Around the end of that time, ntl filed for bankruptcy and a lot of capital expenditure projects were canned. One of which was a project I worked on where all the network infrastructure assets were being recorded in a new database to catalogue each circuit. Due to the scale of the network this was done through remote interrogation of assets on the network. Just because there's cable doesn't mean it's connected at the headend though because the work maybe got canned before being completed. If it isn't connected to any equipment then it's quite possible it could have gone unnoticed from being remotely interrogated. It was a time the company had to focus on selling against spare capacity in the network that was up and running. It's so long ago that I'm no longer in touch with them. Have you tried contacting customer service and asking for some contact details for their head of network infrastructure?
 
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If you want to trust me your address I'll have a look see what I can see.

*disclaimer* I may work for Virgin Media but my views, opinions and postings are my own and in no way reflect the views of Virgin Media *disclaimer*

Rich
 
Dog said:
If you want to trust me your address I'll have a look see what I can see.

*disclaimer* I may work for Virgin Media but my views, opinions and postings are my own and in no way reflect the views of Virgin Media *disclaimer*

Rich
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Do you have an e-mail address I can mail? In London atm but home tomorrow, will send an annotated google map showing what kit lies where, plus postcode.

Thanks!
 
It's not just a case of plugging you into a "phantom" network, the UK's CATV network is ancient and chances are that area was abandoned a very long time ago. They will need backhaul connectivity too, and that takes years to plan with Virgin Media. Heck they take between 6-24 months to fix oversubscription issues for currently active areas.
 
It's possible that it was built by one of the franchises that become ntl or telwest which then became VM. There are a lot of ducts out there with no network, mostly because the money ran out and then mergers and stuff. Some of the ducts won't have records etc. it's quite complex and it's probably not really known about.
Cable my street would have been the people to email as it gets directed to a different team and ey usually have an answer, but if they don't know the ducts are there then it can go stale.
Project lightening is the way forward really, big injection of cash from LG and ey want to know about all the old ducts as its a generally cost effective way of expanding the network now, even it major upgrades are needed, at least the dig has been done.
 
Fibre is all blown and there and connected up to the main node in the city. It heads through the area to both other mapped and available areas and other 'phantom' areas. One of the engineers I accosted confirmed as much and said he'd inspected it a few times when trying to trace faults or issues with areas where the service was being offered.

Even if the above were not the case (which it 100% is re: fibre being all connected up), the cost of terminating the fibre and adding new PoPs under the manholes, then running coax into the ducting which already exists would be a fraction of running new fibre ducting and fibre, and doing new co-ax ducting in areas with nothing existing, and they don't need permission to carry out ANY work.

I'm pretty sure it was Telewest .. as the engineers tell it, it got delisted because crooked engineers didn't want to do fiddly period property installs.

I have heard of some people being able to finally order the product after months of battles with VM, and them finally confirming that the fibre / co-ax ducting exists.

VM (and now LG) have potentially 100s of millions worth of infrastructure which they as an organisation don't even realise exist.
 
Where I grew up was like this. It was installed by Cabletel before being bought by NTL. The ducts are all there, but none of the houses connected.
 
I live in an area where theres ducting to almost 9000 properties not a single bit of fibre / coax to connect any of them! (I also happen to know where the main fibre runs to and the building it terminates in!) Luckily the infill program kicks off in August to cover off those properties!
 
Dog said:
I've updated my trust - should be able to get me through there.

Rich
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Sorry for not getting back to you ... I ended up staying in London longer than expected. I was given some phone numbers for specific individuals at Liberty Global to file complaints. They seemed helpful .. but so did a small minority of VM staff, and of course engineers never called to arrange an inspection, as was promised.

I'll give it a couple of days to see if this actually results in anything, or if they decide to bury it again.

Will get back to you then.

P.S. Saw another VM engineer working in the city today .. they confirmed the whole story again, though they were much more guarded than the other two about whether they thought people at the local level might still be running interference.
 
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