Fibre-Optic Land-Lines

[Sean Regan]

We've been with Virgin since they took over NTL World.
We've a land-Line socket in the hall, which we don't use, (which was installed by Cable & Wireless before they were taken over by NTL) to which, sockets in the lounge and my office upstairs are connected.
The one upstairs is rarely used, but essential, If I'm out and the phone rings and my wife is upstairs, there's no way she could get downstairs to answer the one in the lounge before the caller thought we were out and rang off.
The one in the lounge is near my wife's chair, it's a wireless phone which lives in its charger on the sideboard next to her chair.

On 13 April, we're going fibre-optic. We've received an adapter into which we're supposed to plug the phone and the adapter into the Hub behind the TV in the far corner of the lounge.
She only needs to put the phone in the charger at the end of the day. So the charger can sit on the TV stand and she can keep the phone next to her on the sideboard.

"Simples"

Not really, as then the phone upstairs won't work, nor any others we might have had in other rooms.

I managed to get through to Virgin today.

Continually pressing the "hash key" and ignoring all the automated, "press, 1,2,3,4, we'll send an app to your mobile. etc., "
can get you "a real person" sometimes and fortunately today , it wasn't "that nicely spoken but unintelligible lady in India with a dog that barks, who works from home." The guy I spoke too had no idea of how to resolve the problem, but said, "he knew a man who does."

He'd arrange for someone to come out and sort it out. He'd phone me back with a date, but so far he can't have found one, as he hasn't phoned.

As I see it, we'll need a long extension cable, plugged into the adapter and then the hub. The cable will then have to be run around two walls between the edge of the carpet and the skirting boards and then, with it and the cable from the phone plugged into a double adapter, plugged into the socket behind the sideboard. Then the phone upstairs "in theory" should work.
But they can do that, I pay them enough each month.

Apparently, all phone companies are going fibre-optic over the nest two years.

 

[Owdboggy]

Great, but what about people like me who do not an d will not own a smart phone,one wonders?

 

[Sean Regan]

Great, but what about people like me who do not an d will not own a smart phone,one wonders?

I'm one of those who doesn't think it's smart to have a smart phone.
I'm of an age that when I lived with my parents, "our first phone" was conveniently placed in a red box on the other side of the road.
As they say, "each to their own," but I think smart phones are a con, as "you can do all sorts of things with them now, that you didn't find necessary before."
I do have a "pay as you go" mobile. I take it with me when I go out, in case of emergencies. Road-side phones on motorways are a long way apart now. The phone is also handy to ring home from the golf club car park to check wither my wife wants any "just get mes" before I arrive home. It's also used sometimes for PayPal to send me a security code when buying something on-line, though you can choose an e-mail.

The problem is that when in the past, you lost either a TV connection, an internet connection or a phone connection, now you'll lose all three at the same time. There's progress for you.