They are not 'on the same connection' - they are completely separate, even if the two cables are bonded together.
The TV/Broadband is FTTC, then broadband RF distribution wheras the telephony is also FTTC (but a different one, usually (but not essential) adjacent to the CATV cabinet, then twisted pair to the customer
However, as the broadband and telephony are both routed around the local area to the same cabinets for the final connection to the customer, it might appear vto the uninitiated that they are 'the same connection'.
There should be some slack so a pair of RG6 or CT100 'F' connectors and a back-to-bach coupler will fix the coax and a strip connector the fix the all important phone line.
Interesting here that their near weekly glossy letters trying to sell me their service seem to have stopped. I'd love to know how much money they wasted on that sort of thing.
This street was cabled for Virgin early on. Quite noticeable is all or most of their scruffy street cabinets with doors swinging open. And wires hanging off. Wish the council would remove them. Same as anything untidy left on a pavement. ;-)
Many of the South Leicestershire towns/villages that were left off their (well Diamond Cable's/NTL's) original city-centre coax network 20+ years ago. See "Virgin project lightning".
Up to 330Mbps (and a zillion TV channels) from what the endless bumph they send out says, it uses RFoG and AFAIK everything in the cabinets is completely passive, a big incoming duct, [maybe an optical splitter?], some fibre patch panels and an array of outgoing tubes to the "stopcocks".
When someone subscribes they blow in a fibre from cabinet to house, put a plastic foot over the stopcock, bash a tunnel under the garden wall with a GBFO SDS, then nick a slit through the lawn with a spade to hide the fibre to the house.
Yeah. Except they're all shit. I particularly object to not getting the HD versions of supplied channels, but being expected to pay extra for them. Oh, and the films "available" - at the price of a cinema ticket.
Despite being a "deprived area" in 2002, our street was fully cabled for Telewest FTTC. Much as I despise Virgins marketing, one thing I can't fault them for is their Broadband. We're on the cheapest "bundle" and yet I've just tested to 86 Mb/s. In that time, we've had a couple of outages, which were correctly flagged up on their "known faults" service, and one visit needing an engineer who surmised that the cable supplying us was starting to degrade. As luck would have it, I had been using a VM business line with a separate cable, so it was a case of switching cables.
SWMBO thinks we had a TV fault that needed an engineer ... if so it was over 5 years ago. I do have a memory of some connections needing tightening.
I pity people who have to split telephone and broadband. Seems to be a ready made excuse for both sides to blame the other while doing f*ck all.
Indeed; which accords with what I posted earlier in this very thread
"Branson may only have a peripheral connection with them nowadays....... but old habits built up over 50 years of serial deception, bullshit, outright lies and tax avoidance are still par for the course with Virgin.
It's all part of the Branson "brand legacy". Some people see the positives the smiling informality with the sweaters and the jeans; while others see the negatives - a chronic late-paying tax-dodging bullshit artist.
Copper is normally very good no matter it's age. Aluminium on the other hand is fragile, sneeze at it loudly and it'll fracture in the IDC jelly bean breaking the DC loop but having enough RF coupling for ADSL to still (just) work. The uncut insulation being enough to stop the wire falling out so the engineer won't spot the disconnection and put it back.
Our's hate the length of ali cable that I think runs from about half a mile away to and past us. They keep complaining to their manager(s) that it ought to be replaced, partly because it's unreliable and partly because there are no (working) spare pairs. They but don't hold out much hope of that ever happening. These days if they did replace it'd make a lot of sense to use fibre to each property and a box to provide "POTS". Snag is they'd have to dig, the cables are armoured direct burial, no ducts to pull the cable out of and draw in fibre. B-(
I say "I think" as any line faults are always in that section, never from that 1/2 mile point and the 2 miles back to the exchange. It might be that there are no other customers connected into the cable over that two miles of course so it doesn't get disturbed.
I hadn't bothered with Netflix, but then I got interested in making it work with Kodi, more from a technical point of view, yes it breaks their T&C but so what? Got it working (widevine library extracted from Chrome's Linux installer is a bit picky).
So I binge watched a few old series a couple of films, then thought "now what?" there doesn't seem enough there to stay interested in, so I'll probably cancel it soon.
It was dug up a few years back. I know the digger driver, he'd used a dector thingy but it didn't detect anything. Digging away, that's a funny looking root, twang, oh roots aren't full of pretty coloured strands, oops.
BT repaired it if a few hours, two joint posts about 15' apart and length of new cable between them. Not much choice, they have to get customers reconneted asap, not the week or two it'd take to do the physical replacement of the whole cable length.
Half the village here has had to wait a week, twice, for them to replace stolen cables ... no doubt if the scrotes try to steal the copper again, they'll damage the fibre in the process :-(
You are right. Thanks for the tip on what to take.
It is now unofficially working again but with a 3dB insertion loss from the extra joint and the high probability that my fatter coax doesn't have quite the same impedance as theirs. The story is of course a bit more interesting than the initial one so I will relate it.
He was an early adopter of Virgin and despite having a trench dug through his garden the cowboy installers actually stole the connection from next door. This led to problems when he unsubscribed from some channels and they vanished off next doors set too (yonks ago). They then came and dug the new trench and pretended to lay another cable (he wouldn't have known this) and we have been careful when gardening along the line of the cable "trench" ever since.
Next door knew *they* had Virgin and their builders found their line and kept it safe then started breaking up the old path with a jack hammer and guess what - they throroughly mangled the other line which was practically on the surface of the soil where the concrete path was.
So it was Virgin's cowboy installers at fault and the contractors working next door proved to be charming and very helpful. They even did a bit of tree surgery for us to make up for the inconvenience. They certainly were not at fault. They had found the Virgin connection under a proper conduit to their side of the semidetatched house and had no reason to suspect another active cable lurking in the same trench.
The neighbours was amazingly properly installed. My friends was lying on the surface (OK maybe it had been an inch deep) but a jack hammer went right through it breaking it and stretching and tearing the insulation.
Thanks. I just hope it holds out. Sealed it with self amalgamating tape with the adhesive loaded heat shrink wrap on top for good measure. Lost about 3dB signal strength but in practice it was still plenty fast enough afterwards. If it seems stable he will cancel the support call. I can't imagine Virgin like you doing DIY repairs on their cables...
When it next fails I think he should insist that they install a line properly on his land since the other one is going to be under a wall!
You can do quite a bit of that with FreeView playback too. Without having to pay any extra. And if you don't insist on seeing the latest blockbuster when it comes out, most can be seen later for a lot less cost.
Most folk don't realise that there is a significant difference in broadband over BT lines and broadband cable - even if both are copper.
The broadband cable netwrok was originally designed for analogue TV and the signal to noise ratio and distortion figures are specified (in the licence) at extremely low levels anywhere on the network - the technical specification being in a British Standard.
Therefore, someone at the very furthest point in the local network gets exactly the same level of service to a customer who has the fibre cabinet in front of their house.
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