That’s almost exactly my situation except the Building Digital UK contract isn’t with Openreach in my area and the network isn’t using poles at all - it’s all underground right up to the boundary of the houses, and it stops there ready for the final connection once customers order it. Only we can’t order it yet!
Some kind of validation/testing is still to be done, and splicing of some of the upstream fibre to connect our fibre into the active cabinet which is already live. I literally have neighbours who are already connected while I’m not!
I think the only reason the (old) phone line poles are used in this example is to ‘hang’ the intended fibre cables above ground, before the next stage of installing them underground occurs. But when that is is anybody’s guess. In fact…
Interesting, in some areas Openreach do use their old poles to connect properties to Fibre, but this is generally in rural areas where it is a few properties to a pole. If it is more urban near you, they may just bury it for added longevity.
I do understand & respect that these are massive logistical projects (and in the midst of a pandemic too) so can’t be too harsh, but it is questionable how it has taken so long from the point of the infrastructure being physically available (right outside the house) to now. It’s been almost 12 months watching the fibre cable dangle in the wind every day.
Has anyone used or know if Vodafone broadband is good - I want to move from Virgin and see vodafone apparently do 900mbps up for £29 - a lot cheaper than what I pay now.
Anarchist
(Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)
53
I’ve had Vodafone Broadband for many years now. We don’t get FTTP, so speeds are as advertised for me (roughly 25MBps).
The WiFi drops out regularly around 10pm and at other times of the day but is “within normal limits.” I’ve kept it because it’s been cheap (£22pm reduced from £25pm) and I’m due a compensation payment because my landline wasn’t working for about 4 months so it should effectively be free for a couple of years or so.
You’ve just missed their annual increase which is good, and, of course, you might well have a perfect service but I wouldn’t particularly recommend them. They are a bit like Three; cheap, but a bit crap.
I think their customer service is based abroad; the agents are of variable quality, and I have had some trouble understanding what they say. There’s a lot of “I will definitely be able to sort this out for you,” then they don’t.
ive found virgins 1g to be the most stable with both of us wfh of course its tied into our tv package not sure what sort of deal you have but when we looked to split broadband from tv it increased the tv package cost
The other thing worth mentioning is impact on upload speeds.
Virgin’s older Hybrid-Fibre-Coaxial cable (as you say, fibre only up to the local cabinet and coaxial cable from there to your house, for a “hybrid” connection) uses a technology called DOCSIS which is not symmetrical. Essentially, to get a high download speed out of the line, the upload speed is “sacrificed” and ends up slower. So you don’t get a symmetric connection speed for download and upload.
Sometimes this happens on FTTP too, depending on the technology involved, but usually isn’t such an issue. FTTP often uses GPON, but sometimes uses point-to-point fibre. GPON can result in slower upload speeds than download, similar to DOCSIS.
I’d still leave Virgin and go for full FTTP anyway, though, if you aren’t currently on a full fibre Virgin line.
Vodafone use CityFibre’s network in some areas and Openreach (BT’s) network in others. Check the eligibility checkers for BT and Cityfibre to find out which it is in your area, as you may also be able to check for good deals from other ISPs that use the same physical network.
Tried contacting Community Fibre to ask when they will be getting to my street but never received a reply.
Also, ordered a Three 5G router but it never got delivered. When I contacted customer service they wouldn’t look into why and just told me to order again. This put me off a bit. They also wouldn’t give me much info about upload speeds.
In the end, I ended up staying with Virgin Media as was reluctant to move away from something that has been reliable for me.
I didn’t manage to get it this cheap. The lowest I got offered was £26/month for 100mb and that was even after declining all initial offers, setting up a service cancellation date and waiting for them to call back with better offer.
How long ago did you get these deals?
Anyway £26/month is ok with me so in the end I called back after a few weeks and went with that offer.
Asked for lower multiple times and across 3 separate interactions. £26/month was the lowest offer I received. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a bad price - only pushed for lower because others mentioned getting it for around £20/month.
Mobile data is very different to fixed line/optic therefore no guarantee on speeds up or down. Upload still relies on 4G so if you’ve a three mobile then you can see what you’re likely to get.
Latency and reliability are never going to be as good with a solution that isn’t fixed line.
Modern satellite solutions have improved dramatically and 5G is much better than 4G in terms of latency but you still have a risk of unreliability all the time.
Copper ADSL is also quite unreliable, direct fibre optic really is the gold standard in not just speed but also connection quality.
@o99 You seem to have managed to negotiate a fairly good price out of Virgin Media which will cover you well for now, and in the meantime you can follow the progress of altnets (and VM themselves in their fibre upgrade) to see what your future options will be. I think that’s probably a far better position to be in than merely making do with mobile broadband, in the hope that a fibre rollout will finish soon. Such rollouts are often subject to delays and there is no guarantee that they will be ready any time soon.
They didn’t even mention that. I wasn’t left with a very good impression of their customer support and this was a significant factor in me not bothering to pursue.
I will be giving it a try. In addition to the virgin media speed boost, the O2 Travel Inclusive Zone Bolt On is very appealing.
Come across something new (to me) in my house move - staying with Zen Internet and there’s no phone line (not that I use it much) because the connection is SoGEA.
