cable/fiber line to street missing, rodding needed.

[womble2023]

Hi all. I've recently moved into a new home. I was excited to see that fibre internet was available and made arrangements for Virgin Media to come out and install/enable it (the previous owner had BT DSL). Unfortuantely, although the area is generally serviced by fibre/cable, there is no cable line from the street to the house.

The Virgin Media technician advised that I get a "rodder" to come clear the pipe from the house to the street, and someone to install and connect the cable line.

What is the correct trade/occupation to look up to help get the pipe from the utility room in the house to the street cleared. Will this same person install the cable line itself? I would have thought that Virgin Media would do this, but it seemed that they utilize existing wiring/infrastructure rather than laying new ones?

Any insight would be much appreciated.

You need someone to use a set of extending rods to feed some rope thru so that a cable can be pulled in afterwards using the rope. Have they said it's actually blocked?

I find it odd that they aren't doing it themselves!

When we moved house I arranged for my BT fibre contract to be transferred as it said fibre was available to the property. Turns out it was in the street but not in the actual house so BT arranged for openreach to come and install it. They sent a mini digger but in the end they only had to lift and replace a few brick paving blocks by the front door.

This all took a couple of months and in the meantime they gave us free unlimited copper broadband to use in the meantime and also paid for any bolt ons we used for data on our phone until they sent the router for the copper broadband! I was quite impressed.

Openreach normally do infrastructure on behalf of the bb providers. Having said that virgin are installing fibre in our area and doing the wiring themselves.

I'm fairly sure that VM should be doing this themselves and not asking you to do it.

Unless it's an Openreach duct, in which case, VM should be asking OR to clear it.

It was virgin media (well it was arranged through them anyway) that brought the cable from the pavement up to the house. They had to make a trench thing through grass and go under a small section of monoblock to get it to the house.

Is there a 'pipe' there already or will they need to do the whole job themselves?

Wow, thanks all for such fast responses! I wanted to provide additional information in case it's helpful.

• There appears to be a duct that runs from the utility closet in the house to just outside the house. Inside the house just before the duct there is a cable line, which the technician tried to connect into, but when tested it is dead. When he looked at the duct exit at the house, there was no cable line coming out. The VM technician thinks that something happened to the line inside the duct and hypothesized that the old line needs to be pulled out/new line needs to be pulled through.
• The manhole/utility hole on the street seems to be covered with dirt. There is a line going to our neighbor from it, and the technician believes that there should be a parrallel line going to our house as well (that would then go all the way through the duct into the utility room). He advised that someone would need to come and clear out the manhole so that the house could hten be physically connected to the street.

If I understood the above comments correctly, does Openreach set the line within the house/from the house to the street?

Thanks!

I'd ditch the virgin media. When I got fibre installed from Plusnet, they arranged for openreach to come and fit it. It was entirely painless.

AFAIK it works like this:

open reach own, maintain and operate the physical infrastructure that connects the telephone lines all across the country, from exchange to exchange to those boxes on the sidewalk to the connection to your house.

inside exchanges, telcos (sky, bt, etc) install their own equipment, and when you setup a connection with sky or BT, they go to the exchange and connect the wires from your house to their equipment inside the exchange. Think of it like the various train operating companies that run trains on network rail’s tracks and infrastructure.

Virgin (and more companies more frequently) run their own physical network. Virgin lay their own cables along the street and when you connect to virgin, they run their own line to your house. They often use the ducting that OR has installed to run their cables, but the cables that make up their network are theirs (for instance I’m with community fibre which have run their own fibre optic cable over parts of the country). Think of this as a whole seperate railway where virgin own the tracks, signals, assets and stock and run the services too.

If they believe the ducting is blocked and needs rodding, they should contact OR to carry that out- it’s ORs responsibility, and no contractor will touch it without ORs say so because if they damage cables in that ducting they’ll disconnect everyone on the street or even in the area (if the cable is significant enough). Once the ducting is clear, there should be something called a ‘mousing line’ which the Virgin technician can then use to draw their cable through the duct to your house. Last time I was with Virgin they said it was £250 to run a line from the street box to my house, but that was a while ago. Generally when they say there’s a £35 installation charge that means there’s already a Virgin box on your house and all they have to do is connect to that box and run a wire into your house.

There should be a little triangular black box outside your property with “CATV” that will have a duct coming from the street and a duct going to your house- you can lift the cover with a screwdriver, it just pops off. If there’s no cable there then they need to run a new one. If it’s blocked with dirt, it needs unblocking and mousing, and then a new cable to be run.

Sorry just to specify- that’s if the ducting they’re using IS open reach‘s ducting. If it’s not, and Virgin have their own ducting, then everything is through Virgin.

I find this whole thing a bit confusing. Virgin Media service is usually provided by them through their own network, which they inherited as the successor to various cable TV companies (Nynex, Mercury Comms, Cable and Wireless) and is completely separate from the phone network. Their cables are installed in the street but individual homes are typically only connected up when the occupier actually signs up for their services (phone, TV, broadband but mainly broadband these days).

In my experience (n=3, in various areas of the country), Virgin will install the cables from the street into homes themselves, and will do this in the easiest, most slapdash way possible - 'underground' in the shallowest trench under a flowerbed, or clipped along a wall or fence. The actually entry into the house will be through a hole drilled in the wall. I've never known them to use any kind of cable duct or 'pipe'.

To complicate things Virgin Media will also provide "conventional" broadband over the public telephone network managed by Openreach (formerly the BT network). Depending on the area this may be in copper or 'full fibre' in some areas (i.e., fibre to the actual home). In this case Virgin, like any normal broadband provider, will work on the basis of the infrastructure being in place. It usually is, because most homes have a phone line (or used to have one). If there isn't a phone line, or you want full fibre service and the line for this isn't in place, then Openreach have to sort it. You cannot mess with the Openreach line as a householder, and no contractor will do the work for you, it has to be done by Openreach or their own subcontractor.

The OP doesn't quite fit with the first scenario because I'd expect Virgin to sort their own cable out in that situation. But the second seems unlikely too, as most homes already have a phone and broadband service through Openreach managed infrastructure, and the Virgin installer would not (or at least, should not) advise anyone to get their own person in to sort the issue out.

@womble2023 - it would probably help people to give sensible advice if you could clarify the situation as you understand it. Does your house currently have phone and/or broadband? And are you living in a Virgin Media cabled area, where you're probably trying to get their own cable broadband service, or a non-cabled area, where you're trying to get 'normal' broadband or 'full fibre' broadband from them over Openreach assets?

Thanks @CasperGutman and @Hiddenmnetter .

The area I am in is generally available for VM. I selected VM because they seemed to have the fastest speeds (1.13 Gbps download). They initially sent me a self-install kit, which had a co-axial input (e.g., cable line) so it seems their fibre runs their last mile on coaxial lines? There was a cable line in my utility closet that I tried to connect the self-install box to, but it wouldn't connect so I requested a technician come out. When the technician came out, he confirmed that the coaxial was where I should connect to, but that that specific coaxial line was dead (he attached to his signal reader and there was nothing coming through). He then walked outside and located a hole along the bottom of my outside front wall where he says the line should be coming in/out of. That's the point where he made the comment that the duct should be rodded and a new cable laid. The duct he was referring to was the duct within the house (from the utility closet to the front outside facade).

The previous owner used BT DSL (via the phone line) coming down through the roof? My understanding is that VM is using cable/coaxial lines.

I would have thought that VM would be equipped to lay their own coaxial cable from the inside of the hosue to the street, and it puzzled me that the technician seemed to indicate that that wasn't the case. I would have been ok with paying 250 GBP in installation to get this sorted out and installed. Is the coaxial cable that runs from the house's utility closet to street considered Openreach's asset?

Sorry if I haven't been the clearest in explaining the situation. Appreciate all of your input.

AFAIK no- the “fibre” cable that Virgin runs is their own asset. They just sometimes use OR ducting to run it (and presumably pay OR for the privilege)

OR runs the twin copper wires that run to (almost) everyone’s house.

This is what makes virgins internet so much faster than most other providers- because they’re not relying on generally old poor quality twin copper but a coaxial fibre link. It’s not true fibre, because that’s fibre optic, and that’s amazing (we have that and can get 3gbps symmetric- we don’t because the network infrastructure to take advantage of that speed is silly money, but I’m very happy with £35/month for 1 gbps).