Anyone got one? Any issues?

I sometimes see services that say "customer must have BT landline". Does this mean that someone with, say, Virgin, will be limited in services they have access to?

Finally: what about phone number? Will one's home phone still reflect the regional codes?

Sorry if all those questions sound naive.

We have Virgin and it's fine. I don't know how you get on with a broadband provider, but we have cable BB anyhow, kept the same number too

This would be for a new house, so we aren't moving from one provider to another. The idea would be to use Virgin for landline and broadband.

Unless the STW massif have something bad to say about it.

I think the V+ and broadband packages are good value, and other than Virgin getting our Broadband working to begin with, we've had no bother at all.

Been a Virgin and NTL customer for years, never had any BB probs or TV probs. I will be staying with them as well cheap and reliable in my opinion.

seconded for LL and Broadband, telly is OK, the on demand is pretty damn good – just working my way through series 1 of Fringe.

The only issues you would have really with the LL is if you want BB from a different BB supplier as they use ADSL technology which runs through normal BT lines, if you use Virgin for BB those issues will be irrelevant. XL V+ tv is free for 2 months as well at the minute.

Customer Services can be pants if you get through to their 'offfshore' call centres.

I sometimes see services that say "customer must have BT landline". Does this mean that someone with, say, Virgin, will be limited in services they have access to?

Virgin will use the existing BT landline to your new house. They will simply notify BT that they're "taking it on". Having said that, if you do have an issue with the landline, it will be a BT guy that comes out and fixes it.

Finally: what about phone number? Will one's home phone still reflect the regional codes?

Yes. It will be a BT phone number.

Anyone got one? Any issues?

Customer service can be pants and you pay a premium to call them. They may be late in connecting you up, particularly broadband.

doesn't cost anything to call cust services from your virgin home phone – 150

if they used the BT cable then they would not need to put new cables into your house. This would mean that you could get Virgin andywhere that there is a BT service which is not the case.

I am sure fibre optic cables (virgin) would be rather difficult to connect to Twisted copper Pair (BT)

Virgin install a new phone line I'm affraid, with their magical '2in1' cable, which is a cable stuck onto the side of another one 🙂

However, with a new build, that's probably been done already

I am sure fibre optic cables (virgin) would be rather difficult to connect to Twisted copper Pair (BT)

Really Badblood? I have Virgin broadband and phone via a copper cable (there isn't any cable service in my area). How do you think they do that then?

This would mean that you could get Virgin andywhere that there is a BT service which is not the case.

Virgin "Broadband where ever you are"

doesn't cost anything to call cust services from your virgin home phone – 150

That's for you lucky cable customers.

good cheap reliable free calls to them including technical – not brilliant but free- never had any real problems with service – occasionaly downs of about 2 hours about once a year if that.
Catch up tv and you can chip your box to get Sky – not done this personally though so no idea how reliable

They monitor all your internet browsing…

Virgin will use the existing BT landline to your new house. They will simply notify BT that they're "taking it on". Having said that, if you do have an issue with the landline, it will be a BT guy that comes out and fixes it.

If you have cable, Virgin internet / phone is good, but if you have the landline broadband, it seems pretty rubbish, I'd avoid it if you want internet – ours is too slow to watch iPlayer in the evenings, because they over-sell it and there are too many people on their thing. When we tried to get them to fix it, they basically said that they don't consider what is a 7000kbps line to the exchange (that's what we get when it is not the evening) to be in any way faulty as long as it is getting more than 150kbps. On a weekend, it sometimes can't even play radio on iPlayer, let alone play video.

Looking at traceroutes etc. it slows down somewhere around Manchester where the virgin network goes off to somewhere else, I imagine this is just because virgin oversell the amount of bandwidth they have massively, so it probably happens everywhere in the country.

Basically, I would just recommend going with someone else, even BT was better than this (and I totally wouldn't recommend BT either).

Joe

If you have cable, Virgin internet / phone is good, but if you have the landline broadband, it seems pretty rubbish…

I forgot to mention that it would be landline, as I don't have cable and have no intention of getting a TV.

So on joemarshall's comments above, I've gone searching for other providers, and it appears that, according to reviews, they all suck. What I want is reliable, fast broadband with decent customer service and no run-around when trying to get hooked up.

Does anybody have experience of such a company? 🙁

Virgin will use the existing BT landline to your new house. They will simply notify BT that they're "taking it on". Having said that, if you do have an issue with the landline, it will be a BT guy that comes out and fixes it.

When we had the Virgin Media Broadband/TV/Phone cable package they ran a new cable in, they didn't use the existing BT phone connection – this is now redundant, although they did port the old BT number over. BT have nothing to do with our phone now.

jon1973, the OP was talking about Virgin landline (i.e. copper wires, ADSL & all that crap) not cable.