Someone has already posted a link to the wholesale dsl availability checker, but you haven’t posted your result, or even commented on if you have checked, you just repeat apparently what the company’s you are considering using told you, without any evidence that what you are being told is even true, and you have been told at least one falsehood, that ports are reserved for particular ISP’s, that is just wrong.
If there are limited FTTC ports, then obviously either way of dealing with this issue and those potential customers waiting for access , presents problems, the system as is it , move provider, you give up your port, not a problem if spare ports exist ( you get a different one) , but obviously a waiting list means someone waiting gets your old port and you become the ‘waiter’ , or the other way , would be to move provider and keep the port you are on , and OR reconfigure that port to point at your new providers network , this would mean once you had a port you would never lose it ( unless you left the OR system completely) , and would mean that those waiting are even less likely to get a port, as well as OR having to arrange for the port reconfiguration to be done on a particular date, rather than in advance, there isn’t a perfect system, and it’s almost certain that the current process wasn’t just OR’s decision, but done at the behest of Ofcom and the ISP industry.
If Virgin is available to you, then presumably it’s also available to your neighbours, if you are considering VM as your provider, what makes you think others currently on Openreach’s FTTC network are not also considering VM,( in areas where VM and OR exist VM quite often have over 50% market share) and as FTTC where available is the usual method of provision for customers on OR, (rather than ADSL) then why are you so convinced that their are no spare FTTC ports and that will remain the case ?, it only needs one customer like you to move to VM to create a spare slot
