How reliable is the 'Virgin Cable' Checker?

[Woodw23ard]

On the Virgin site there's a section which lets you enter your postcode and house number to check if you can receive cable broadband.

My house came up saying yes and I've ordered the 30mb to be installed next week. However I just entered my neighbours house number and it says they can't receive it.

We're the 23rd house in the estate, there's 2 more houses past us and then it's a dead end. Neither of those 2 can receive it yet every other house in the street can including us. Does this sound ok?

Thanks for your help, will be nice to put my mind at rest! Just worried about him turning up and saying they can't install it

[Stuart]

It's possible as when they were initially installing cable, when the cable cos ran out of money, a lot of the network installers essentially just stopped where they were.

[Woodw23ard]

Ah ok thanks for the reply. So do you think my house will be OK considering it says it can receive cable when I check on the website?

Most website checkers just have you enter the postcode and they all say fine. It's only the Virgin site which lets me enter the house number.

[Stuart]

There are a couple of reasons why the VM checker also uses house numbers.

One is as above. There are a lot of areas where installers did the above, so there are a lot of roads where some houses have the service and some don't.

The other is that in the case of rented accomodation,VM are required to seek permission from the landlord before installing cable. This is called "wayleave" and if they have obtained it in the past, they log this.

[Chrysalis]

interesting comment on the rented, how does VM know if its rented in the first place? I wasnt asked when I ordered. But my property did already have fittings.

[ccarmock]

I have also had the checker report that my house is in a cabled area. At other times it reported it in an analogue only cable area and also reported it as not being cabled but only had Virgin National service. It is actually in a fully digital cable area. So it's not been 100% reliable when I have checked in the past.

[Ignitionnet]

interesting comment on the rented, how does VM know if its rented in the first place? I wasnt asked when I ordered. But my property did already have fittings.

VM ask if the person taking the service is the property owner or a tenant within the sign up pages.

If they wanted to get that deeply into it the land registry will have the name of the property owner. If this is different from that of the person getting the service that would imply rental.