Virgin Media UK IP Phone Customers Still Facing Ghost Calls Bug

Some of UK broadband ISP Virgin Media’s phone customers, primarily those on their latest Hub 5 router who have been moved to their new IP (VoIP) based voice platform, have spent the best part of a year having to deal with lots of phantom “ghost calls” (no number calls). But a firmware fix is finally in the works.

The issue typically occurs for people who have had their old analogue landline migrated to Virgin Media’s new IP based phone solution. Customers with the provider’s new Hub 5 router then typically connect their old analogue handsets into one of the router’s two phone ports, which converts the analogue signal into a digital one that can be transmitted over your broadband connection.

However, customers have been complaining – some since as far back as June 2022 – that their received calls report soon started logging lots of daily calls from “no number“, which makes it tedious to identify any real calls that you might have missed. The phone itself never rings for these ghost calls, and no messages are left. Virgin’s Community Forum is littered with related threads, including one 65 page long mega-thread (here).

Over time, it’s become clear that this is a bug that only occurs when certain handsets are connected to the router (Gigaset C530A, BT 8600, BT Decor 2600 v2 and Panasonic KX-TGJ424EB etc.), while others seem to work without a problem.

The good news is that a solution might finally be in sight, which came after one of Virgin Media’s support agents confirmed last Friday that “the route cause is located on the handsets’ sensitivity to power fluctuations received from the Hub.” At the time, the provider’s support team added that they would need to discuss with their equipment vendors how best to resolve the problem, which they added “may take some time“.

Some customers also found that calls received through the Hub 5’s IP lines appeared to be resetting the individual phone timers forward by one hour (we saw a similar issue on Sky’s IP phone service in the past).

A Spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re aware that a small number of customers using particular home phones are experiencing an issue where their handset display is erroneously reporting missed calls. This is limited to certain handset models and we’re investigating how we can help resolve this. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Since then there’s been a further update from the provider’s support team, which yesterday confirmed that Virgin Media plan to implement a fix via new firmware and this is said to be “on its way soon“. But the same support member later added that “updates are tricky and can take a while to be tested and made ready,” so take that use of “soon” with a pinch of salt. Still, what’s another few weeks or months of waiting..