cofiguring a Netgear MR814v2TW router

My neighbour next door bought from eBay.. http://tinyurl.com/ckswd
However, he soon discovered that it was a Blueyonder router. I tried to
get the thing to accept the NTL connection, but it was having nothing to
do with it.. I thought it might have been a dodgy Network card, so I
fitted a new one -nothing.
Then I discovered that the router in question is a Chipped one. i.e
designed only to accept blueyonder connections... I found this info,
from the netgear forum.. http://tinyurl.com/93pqa it seems the original
post was from someone who has exactly the same problem as my neighbour!
In vain, I tried contacting Tec support with Telewest, but they weren't
interested, as for the original seller on eBay, guess what, nothing..
Netgear didn't want to know as well, so it looks like he's stuck, he
thought that ALL routers accepted incoming signals from various ISP's
but apparently not...
I wonder how to solve this problem?
Graham