Is it reasonable for Virgin Media to do this?

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Is it reasonable for a engineer connecting a house to broadband to connect the wiring through the small brown box on next doors property? Or should the house who are getting the broadband have their own box?

Will having 2 houses using the same brown box affect the speed or the broadband for both houses or is it common practice and both houses will still receive the best speeds for their broadband despite their being only one brown box?

Sorry for all the random questions but I literally have no idea if this is the correct way to connect a house or not and the internet is being pretty unhelpful. So I thought instead of wasting another hour trying to find out some clever mumsnetter must know the answers?

My husband used to have an installation company who subcontracted from Virgin. I asked him and he gave his usual concise clear reply but I gather its OK. His answer is below

The broad band question is not answerable without more info.
The extra bit of copper from the neighbours hour to thier bb hub won't have any effect on lowering the speed.

Most cable to the brown box for the last 20 years have 2 or 5 pairs of telephone wires.
Its possible that the cable to the brown box may be coaxial cable for tv signal and have a silver metal box that splits the tv and bb services.
What ever the situation of the cables supplying both houses they will be on different data supply so if non payment etc... etc.. occurs the services can be blocked at the fibre optic point where it then passes onto copper cabling.

As an example blocks of flats have one feed cable into the building and copper running from this point to each occupant.

The speed at the junction is only limited by the contract of supplier and the customer, and this is controlled at the head end of the fibte/ cable network..( usually a cabinet a small hub site building or if close enough to a telecommication exchange from there).
The physical cross connection points even if they are fusion splicing will cause both losses and in some reflaction fibre spliced a gain in the strenght of the signal.

In short Don't Panic you'll get the fastest speed available to be transmitted on the network to your Wi-Fi hub....but you'll have to pay more for the fastest speed available.
Your neighbours will get what they pay for and you can both independently get different speeds from different suppliers on the same connections up to the box outside of your home/homes.

Sounds a bit like having a telegraph pole and lots of phone lines running from it.
Do wish Virgin Media would cable Norfolk, apparently there's no chance.

So it wouldn't make a any difference if both neighbours had the same brown box, both would still have their maximum speed for broadband? The 2 houses both have Virgin Media packages and some issues with connectivity dropping out, but if that is not because they are sharing the same brown box what could be causing it?

ButDoYouAvacado your husband sounds like the sort who gives you a 50 minute answer to the question do we need milk.

We got virgin when we moved in, then when next door moved in virign fed wires from our box to next door. Absolutely no problem with supply, speeds etc. Only thing is they did this without us knowing, broke the cover on the box, and left exposed and trailing wires. Called them when we noticed and someone came out next day, fixed wires to the wall, put a new box on. All fine.

You are entirely correct

What he meant was 'its fine' hahaha

Seems to be normal round here to do it that way

Do they not need the neighbours consent to run wires from their property. What if they didn’t wish to have the brown box anymore?

We all have one each here.

Do they not need the neighbours consent to run wires from their property

This is the problem I'm having which is why I have asked the question. Our neighbour has complained his internet has been intermittent due to the engineer running cables through a splitter in his brown box.

He is naturally furious they have gone onto his property and used a splitter without his consent. I am trying to determine if this could have caused his internet to slow, and can quite honestly see why he is pissed.