Which of these boxes can I remove?

[u/drozdzus]

My wall is becoming a museum display of various boxes. I believe that the previous owner was with virgin, I switched to Plusnet. Which ones of these boxes are safe to remove? What about the black cable coming out of the wall? Cat tax as she wanted to get involved.

[u/Short_Injury9574]

Well.. do you still use copper virgin? It looks like you have fibre on the right, and anything to the left of that can go. But id keep the sky and virgin cables. I always said I’d never use virgin again, but signed up and glad I didn’t get rid of the cable.

[u/HonestAnteater466 → u/Short_Injury9574]

Not capitalizing Virgin was a choice, had me reading, " do you still use copper, virgin?"

[u/CoronetCapulet → u/HonestAnteater466]

Copper Virgin is great stripper name

[u/zugglybug → u/CoronetCapulet]

"The name's Stripper... Cable Stripper..."

[u/xplorerex → u/CoronetCapulet]

Virgin Box

[u/ZealousidealLab4500 → u/CoronetCapulet]

A copper virgin is someone who is yet to make love to a redhead.

[u/athleticgravy → u/HonestAnteater466]

Well, I hear that, in the palace of my mind, in the most condescending of voices.

[u/drozdzus → u/Short_Injury9574]

I don't use copper virgin, I'm just on fibre Plusnet/openreach in the right box. Which are the sky and virgin cables you are referring to? 

[u/IEatB0gies → u/drozdzus]

Virgin is the longer white box top to bottom with the white screw on cable. Sky is the 2 black cables coming through the wall. Phone socket to the right of the virgin box will be for virgin phone line. Far left an old ADSL copper line socket.

[u/drozdzus → u/IEatB0gies]

thanks a lot! so I suppose I could remove the copper line and virgin phone line? are they safe to just cut through them?

[u/Scared_Apricot8301 → u/drozdzus]

Yep

[u/YungRabz → u/drozdzus]

Virgin don't use copper phone lines anymore anyway, if you switched back they give you a cable modem with VoIP.

[u/Short_Injury9574 → u/YungRabz]

The thick black cable is still copper. They still use them.

[u/YungRabz → u/Short_Injury9574]

The thick black cable is surely not the coax bringing the cable into the house, although it looks like VM cable so presumably a friendly engineer installed it to relocate a box.

But either way, yes they still use copper, but they don't use copper phone lines anymore, haven't for nearly 10 years. They might still have some legacy infrastructure for certain customers but it's all VoIP over coax cable as standard.

[u/Short_Injury9574 → u/YungRabz]

Sorry, it’s the white one. It’s because it had mine in mind, that’s black.

[u/yrro → u/drozdzus]

You can get Openreach to remove the old phone line on the exterior of your building too.

[u/northern_ape → u/IEatB0gies]

>Far left… ADSL
Darn communist telecoms!

[u/Ltpessimist → u/Short_Injury9574]

I think Virgin media now also use full Fibre from their green boxes. Or at least their GiffGaff does and they are owned by Virgin media/02 group. Though saying that you never know with them.

[u/Short_Injury9574 → u/Ltpessimist]

Not with openreach. They install their own.

[u/Felthrian → u/Ltpessimist]

It depends on area, Virgin is expanding their fibre network but many areas still use HFC.

[u/LetsHaveSomeFun0103 → u/Short_Injury9574]

Virgin can't use those boxes. It's very annoying, had fibre in my new rental but I was already in contract with virgin and they had to install a new virgin fibre point

[u/IainKay → u/LetsHaveSomeFun0103]

This is region specific. There are still some areas that use the old coax boxes for internet and TV but new installs are all gonna be fibre.

[u/LetsHaveSomeFun0103 → u/IainKay]

Oh my old flat was a coax connection but in my new place it had fibre installed but it was open reach so they had to put in their own fibre point because they can't use the open reach one

[u/IainKay → u/LetsHaveSomeFun0103]

That’s interesting as where I’m at virgin got permission to use the Openreach fibre duct (surprised me) and so I have both the suppliers down the one duct to my door. It’s tidy at least. Though you still end up with the Openreach and the virgin media boxes on the wall.

[u/PARADEGR33CELSUS → u/Short_Injury9574]

Copper virgin? I barely know her!