Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

I suspect that my gardener may have damaged the incoming cable as my services became affected whilst he was digging to put in a fence.

Will they make a charge if this turns out to be the case?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

I do believe it is £100

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Why would you think they wouldn't charge?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Here's the charging info:
https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the...iceguides.html

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

When i accidentally cut through my phone line cable in 2017 VM fixed that for free when the technician came out to fix my low signal TV problem, i was expecting a charge but maybe the fact they had to come out anyway was the reason they didn't.

I would expect them to charge you though for what you described.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Could you argue that the cable was placed at a shallow depth/unprotected by the normal green tube?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

It depends how far down the workman dug down for the fence - a six foot fence post should go down at least two feet, and if that was the case, it’s unlikely...

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

They won't charge, it's very very rare they do

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Normally tradespeople will carry Professional Indemnity Insurance specifically for these situations. So if VM do raise an invoice for the work, which in my opinion they should, all the account holder has to do is pass it on to the tradesperson to resolve.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Thanks for the advice everyone. All sorted, he had damaged the cable so they repulled another one for me (no charge).

I shall be writing to let them know that the CS skills of the engineers was excellent, they couldn't have been more helpful and were totally understanding of the situation and my circumstances.

They couldn't bury the cable as there's a load of tree branches in the way, will this lead to the green protective cover rotting or should I have it buried when this is possible?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

The green tubes dont rot, they are plastic and designed to be burried

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Thanks, i'll have it buried when I can as it will look better. I wonder if they're green to blend in with the greenery of a garden? Unless all the utilities have their own colour for ease of identification when the roads are being dug up.

Out of interest, does anyone know how they repull cables? It must be difficult to pull the end of the new cable from the other end of the duct!

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

They use a rod, stick it down the tee push through to where it needs to go. Attach the cable to the rod and pull it through. On short runs if the duct is clear you can get away with just feeding the cable down the tee

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

I do like a happy ending :)

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Thanks.

Are all the wires copper from the cabinet to the premises? I'm wondering if my gardener cut through one completely (phone), damaged the one for internet as it kept going on and off and only slightly damaged the one for TV as this was only slightly affected with occasional bouts of pixelation.

They offered me a next day appointment, is this the norm? Maybe this was because I am a priority due to being disabled.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Unless you live in one of the areas where they have recently installed Fibre to the Home then yes all of the cables between your home and the cabinet are copper based.

The TV & Internet will be connected to a single Coax cable - similar to a TV aerial cable. Alongside this is a tube carrying standard copper pairs of cable for your phone service. This is why the overall cable looks like a figure of 8 if viewed end on.

This cable will terminate at the box outside and then usually the cables are split off and enter the building - the coax for TV / Internet and the phone cables to your telephone socket.

It is quite possible that the spade or whatever it was went into the cable side on and cut the phone cables completely and damaged the coax which would explain the partial service to TV & Internet, with a total loss of phone service.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

I think that's what must have happened. I'm not FTTP, so they will be copper then.

When it was first announced that NTL would be using fibre optic, I assumed that this was throughout as nobody mentioned that the last bit would be copper. I really don't know why they didn't just make all installations FTTP instead of penny pinching for the last tiny part of the network.

The cables have been down for nearly nineteen years, do they degrade over time? My internet seems to be a lot faster since they were replaced!

I remember when cable first started here and it was TV only. Then, phone lines were introduced. Surely they must have futureproofed their system and didn't have to pull a new cable throughout all their system?!

IIRC, cable had to wait for permission to be granted to be able to offer telephony, so maybe they took a gamble on it being granted and laid all the cables at the same time (which paid off).

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

It’s fibre to the cabinet - it was considerably cheaper to lay copper to the junction to the homes.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

To be fair, decent co-ax has a lot of bandwidth in the region of a GHz. You can get a lot of data down that wire.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Even though copper was cheaper (I don't know about these days as the price of metal has shot up and fibre optic may now have come down in price as it's years old now), I still don't understand the logic in not doing the last tiny part of the circuit in fibre too.

Won't the vast majority of the connection be from the headend to the cabinet with fibre and then they appear to have skimped on the last tiny part with copper :confused:

This must have an impact on the signal or people wouldn't be bothering to uograde to FTTP!?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Until recently, fibre was far too expensive to provide for every customer. Using copper in the streets allowed one pair of fibres to be shared between dozens of homes.

Nowadays, laying fibre is cheaper than copper.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

You need to remember the majority of these networks were built 25-30 years ago. Ignore the telephony for now, but the original networks were just broadcast TV. Some of these networks were originally RF all the way from the headend, through multiple amplifiers in cascade. Meaning the further away you were from the headend, the worse your picture was. Then the next step was to overbuild with fibre (to the node). The cost of having a optical transmitter/receiver at each customer premises in those days would have far outweighed the revenue. Also the PON networks that we are seeing now I imagine we’re pretty much laboratory only, if even invented. The HFC network was tried and tested around the world. The cables are currently still holding their own, it’s the equipment all around it that has evolved. DOCSIS 3.1 when launched will be the big test, if they hit the speeds etc that are claimed, then I imagine HFC has got another 15+ years in it.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Our part of the network is 23 years old.

Did the cable companies foresee things like telephone & broadband services and build them into their infrastructure, or were they only meant for television and the other services were tacked on?

How would they cope if they wanted to add another type of service?

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

This probably answers some of your question:
https://www.cableforum.uk/board/showthread.php?t=6658

In regards to the technology itself, there has been a bit of good fortune in that cables designed for analogue TV have enough capacity to handle Digital TV and Broadband by replacing the kit on either end. DOCSIS was designed to take advantage of that good fortune and continues to do so.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

I believe some of the early franchises were TV only, phones added once licenses were available. Again, different area by area, some were built as 2 way networks, some were built as 1 way, some areas were easily adaptable, others not.

I would imagine going forward the majority of services will be IP based, so shouldn’t be any major cable changes needed. If it’s a different scenario I imagine VM would see if the sums add up as to if it’s a product the want to offer.

Re: Will VM charge for damaged cable?
 

Thanks for the interesting replies.

It really was a hotch potch of a network wasn't it. I think it would have been more sensible to have awarded one franchise for the whole of the UK, it wasn't as if customers could choose which cable company they wanted, so the idea of competition for dividing things up into franchise areas is moot.

It was lucky that a system designed for analogue had enough capacity for phone and broadband on top of TV. AIUI, TV is the least profitable part of the business, so if digital hadn't been invented, I suspect that most cable companies would have gone under.