Can Virgin Media coax cable be reused for Community Fibre?

[Otorongo]

Hello,

I currently have broadband with Virgin Media. A cable goes in through the front wall of the house, and on the inside wall there is a box. A short coaxial cable comes out of it and it goes to the back of the house, concealed under the floor boards.
At the back is my modem / router.

When my contract ends I'd like to switch to Community Fibre, which FWIU use fibre cables all the way to the modem / router.
I'd like to keep the router where it is (there is a strong reason for that, which I won't get into here), but I don't want to lay another cable from the front to the back of the house, because concealing it would be very disruptive and costly (I'd have to lift the laminate and floor boards) and not concealing it would break the style of the house where all other cables are concealed.
So I was wondering if I could reuse the coaxial cable?

Apparently there are fibre to coax converters / adapters, so perhaps I could use get one of those, and then convert coax back to fibre at the router? Maybe the latter wouldn't even be necessary if I use the Super Hub 3 from VM, which has a coax port? Or am I missing something?

Edit: To give you an idea of what kind of speeds I need it to support, I'd probably get 150 Mbps, but would be good to have a passive provision for up to 1 Gbps.

 

[Sparx]

It's possible using MOCA adapters. I tried a pair a few years ago at my brother-in-law's house on his BT 1Gb FTTP line, think they cost about £120 odd at the time? They worked quite well but dropped out several times that he gave up and opted for a long Cat6 cable around his skirting and upstairs instead...

If your coax is run under laminate and floorboards, there must be an entry point you can start with still? Is it possible to attach a pull-rope to the coax, and pull a Cat6 cable through? Assuming you didn't clip the coax to the joists under the floorboards or anything...

If you can do the above, I'd opt to have the CF FTTP modem installed at the entry point, then run Cat6 from the modem to the router position you're after.

Alternatively if the above isn't possible, is the property semi/detached? Any external walls you can just run Cat6 from the front to back?

 

[Caged]

As above, you might be able to do it with MoCA adaptors but you're going to have to import them as this country never really went for cable TV to the extent that houses would be pre-wired with high quality coaxial cable. You would need to have Community Fibre install their ONT by your front wall, and then connect the ONT to a MoCA adaptor which is plugged into your coaxial cable, and then convert back to ethernet at the other end. The ONT and the MoCA adaptor will both need powering.

If you have raised wooden floors I would strongly suggest trying to get the fibre to where it needs to go, do you know if the coax cable just runs loose once it's under your floor, or was it all clipped up?

 

[Otorongo]

Thanks guys. Great idea attaching a pull rope to the coax and pulling a Cat6 cable through (or maybe even a fibre cable, not sure what those look like).

The coax cable was installed 8 years ago and if I'm not mistaken, it's not clipped up and it's actually hidden behind scotia trims for most of its run, and only 2 metres or so is below floor boards, because it goes from one room to another with a corridor / hallway in between.

I'd have to get the rope connections right, because if they break I wouldn't be able to put the coax cable back in place and use MoCA adaptors.

 

[Orcvader]

The fibre cable is a lot thinner than the coaxial cable. Could maybe wait for the engineer to come down and then ask if it's possible. When they came around to install mine (CF as well) they asked me where I wanted the ONT and how to run the fibre to it.

 

[Rainmaker]

Thanks guys. Great idea attaching a pull rope to the coax and pulling a Cat6 cable through (or maybe even a fibre cable, not sure what those look like).

If you end up with a pull rope, consider running two and make them at least twice as long as the run, and hide the spare at both ends. Optionally and preferably, have something at the ends to stop it being pulled all the way into the conduit or space. That way you'll always have a pull rope even when you've pulled through a cable.