Broadband: STB to CM migration

[RobM1974]

Hi all

1st post so hope this is the correct place:

I'm moving from a 1Mb broadband connection provided via the Pace set top box to stand alone cable modem. Even though nothing's arrived yet - I'm worried.

I was told when I went for this that there would be no need for an engineer to visit me: all I need to do is install the CM into the spare terminal on the white box on the wall and connect it to my PC.

However last night I discovered only one terminal on the wall. There's space for another one - but it's not there. I then phoned Virgin and they told me the package would come with a splitter. I have my doubts on this one.

My questions are:
1) Assuming the splitter is part of the pack, is there anything to watch out for? They tell me that broadband via STB will be switched off next week to allow me to register the new CM.
2) Therefore for a little period, I'll effectively have 2 broadband connections (one via STB as at present and one via new CM). Are there any problems with this?
3) I'm dubious that all this can be done without an engineer - should I be this pessimistic?

I've been with ntl for 7 years and my usual approach has been to make as few changes as possible - but there seems to be no improvement since they became Virgin. Their customer services still seem to know absolutely nothing.

Cheers
Rob

[punky]

to the forum

Moved from the reference articles section to the main forum

[Tali]

Firends have mine had a self-install pack like this and their pack came with a splitter. It's easy enough to sort it all out

[Spleeny]

Hi robM.

I have just made a similar move from STB to modem. I got delivered a massive box that contained relatively next to nothing by volume!! It did have the following: -

a splitter
3no. cable tv type cables (one in, 2 out... its likely you wont need all these)
an install cd
a modem
a power pack
an install guide
a bag of clips
a massively long ethernet cable

Physically installing was easy. I only have one socket on my wall thing, so I used the wire that had been in my STB as the input to the split and used 2 of the 3 new cable tv cables as outputs (one to tv stb one to the modem). Then I used my existing ethernet cable to attch modem to PC (I'm too scard of wireless). Powered up and I was good to go (kinda).

The PC install went awry you see. Something about my modem not being "activated". Took VM 2 hours to sort it, though to their credit they rang me back immediately to negate most of the charge.

The best news is that the modem is ten fold better than my STB was. I get a steady 3950kbps now all day, all night (providing I dont hit the 750MB limit of the fair use do-dar).

if you cant do it call cs and ask to be trans to quickstart and ask for a manned install which is foc