Any BT telephone/Virgin cable engineers on here?

A question if I may. We are almost at the end of a laminate floor laying project in our property and there is a lot of old telephone cable and a number of sockets around the place, some of which hasn't been hidden under the new flooring. We are connected to Virgin and I can see quite plainly where that comes into the living room, feeding the landline, tv box and internet hub.

My question is this: can I cut the old cable wherever it cannot be hidden or will that affect my Virgin connection? I think I can, but I am scared of messing it up!

 

I’m no engineer but recently did a similar thing on my house. The master box is where it comes into your house which you say is your Living Room. Thats the critical one.

All others must be connected to that one in some way, either directly or via another box. Cutting any of these won’t damage your main connection so cut any you dont need. The question is, do you need the other boxes for any other reason (additional phone, sky box, wired internet connection for computer). If not then take the opportunity to get rid.

I have my BT Hub connected to the main box then everything else is wireless - although I do have a couple of signal boosters. You can also use Powerlines if you need a wired connection in a different room.

 

Thanks for the reply. We don’t need anything in the other rooms - it’s a top floor flat in an old Georgian house and wifi transmits easily from the living room hub to our smart phones wherever we bay be (even two floors down to the front garden).

I’ve seen some arguments about “what if you want to sell”. I don’t see that as an issue. The virgin connection is generally faultless and if anyone decided they wanted to switch to BT it wouldn’t be a big rewiring job.

 

No problem.

Does your BT line come in to the house at the same place? If not then it might be worth just making sure that one is left alone.

I dont think the selling argument is as big of a problem now in a wireless world and as a last resort a decent powerline would do as good a job as an attached phone line.

 

The virgin phone line comes in with the TV / Broadband coax. It’s a thick black cable that’s often buried in your front garden and comes up to a small box. Normally on the outside wall, at the back of TV. Here it splits the phone line and TV / Broadband.
BT lines normally come from overhead telephone poles which attach to your house. Both are completely separate.
Cutting the old internal BT wire shouldn’t effect your virgin phone. But if at a later date, you move back to BT or an ADSL / Fibre Broadband, then you may need to re-run the wires.

 

Virgin at the front, BT at the back from a telegraph pole

 

Thanks for that. It’s all just as you say with the two installations quite separate. For as long as we live here I will never want to ditch cable and opt for BT.
I’ve heard some comments in other places saying there may be a small charge in the telephone wiring. If so am I going to get an electric shock when I cut?

 

They’re 50V DC. Not enough to kill you unless you have a pacemaker. Be just a tingle, like when you lick a 9V battery.

 

Do you know, I don't think I have EVER licked a 9v battery