City Fibre

2013 · 17 Mar 2022 at 01:19

Hi Im looking for some advice.
I'm with virgin and have requested a cancelation a few days ago I had a call back but I could hardly hear her, I need to call up and confirm and she told me I could call back.

I signed up with vodafone a 2 months ago installation end of the month, I've just realised the price will be going up in April and they only guarantee half the speed.

My question is what is Vodafone like ? customer service, support speed ?
Will I get full speed and will they increase the price a few days after I join ?

or should I try and stay with virgin ?

the-evaluator · 17 Mar 2022 at 06:43

I assume as you're posting in the City Fibre thread that you're looking at the Vodafone branded City Fibre product and not FTTC or similar?

Vodafone are, like most ISPs, not great when it comes to support but they're better than Virgin. I have a similar speed guarantee from BT for my FTTP connection but with full fibre products you're generally going to get the advertised speeds. I would be much more confident of getting consistent speeds from an FTTP product than from Virgin.

Given the choice between Virgin and any FTTP product I would take the FTTP product 100% of the time. Only you can say if the price is OK for you but I would happily pay more for FTTP over a connection from Virgin.

ChrisD. · 17 Mar 2022 at 07:31

I’d also wait until it’s all installed before cancelling any existing service.

2013 · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:11

the-evaluator said:
I assume as you're posting in the City Fibre thread that you're looking at the Vodafone branded City Fibre product and not FTTC or similar?

Vodafone are, like most ISPs, not great when it comes to support but they're better than Virgin. I have a similar speed guarantee from BT for my FTTP connection but with full fibre products you're generally going to get the advertised speeds. I would be much more confident of getting consistent speeds from an FTTP product than from Virgin.

Given the choice between Virgin and any FTTP product I would take the FTTP product 100% of the time. Only you can say if the price is OK for you but I would happily pay more for FTTP over a connection from Virgin.

Yes Vodafone City Fibre

Ok thanks

ChrisD. said:
I’d also wait until it’s all installed before cancelling any existing service.

I cancel first as I needed to give them 30 day notice, but ill still have 10-13 days after installation to check.

ChrisD. · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:27

Is it a newly built CF area? I ask as a mate recently ordered for a newly built area for installation in January. That's been pushed to April now due to blockages between their network and his house.

And to reiterate what @the-evaluator said - CF is better than VM in pretty much every measurable way in terms of the network. If you are not keen on Vodafone, there are also other resellers available.

2013 · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:40

ChrisD. said:
Is it a newly built CF area? I ask as a mate recently ordered for a newly built area for installation in January. That's been pushed to April now due to blockages between their network and his house.

And to reiterate what @the-evaluator said - CF is better than VM in pretty much every measurable way in terms of the network. If you are not keen on Vodafone, there are also other resellers available.

The area is old but we only got CF in January, Im happy to try vodafone I've never used Vodafone before or any other supplier since no one else offered more than 67mb in my area before (took 5 years), if I can get good service im happy, VM is good stable speeds and if you don't need to ring them the issues occur when you need to call them to resolve a issue.

The issue with vodafone is the price will be going up every year even in contact which wont be a small amount considering the percentage and could be much more that VM also im worried about the speed issues.

(Please note, your monthly bill will increase by £10 a month for Superfast plans and £3 a month for Pro Superfast, Ultrafast and Gigafast plans after your initial 24 month contract.

*Each April, your monthly plan charge will increase by an amount equal to the Consumer Price Index rate published by the Office for National Statistics in January (CPI rate) plus an additional 3.9% on top of the CPI rate. We will apply that CPI rate plus 3.9% adjustment from your April bill. In the event that the CPI rate is negative, this will be ignored but the additional 3.9% will still apply.)

the-evaluator · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:53

Personally I'd totally discount the speed thing. You're so much more likely to have speed issues with Virgin than on an FTTP product.

As for the cost, only you can answer that. FTTP is a better product so to me is worth paying more.

2013 · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:57

the-evaluator said:
Personally I'd totally discount the speed thing. You're so much more likely to have speed issues with Virgin than on an FTTP product.

As for the cost, only you can answer that. FTTP is a better product so to me is worth paying more.

Thanks, hopefully it wont go up by much more. do you know if they also offer discounts at the end of the contact ?

the-evaluator · 17 Mar 2022 at 09:58

No idea.

Turn · 17 Mar 2022 at 21:19

2013 said:
My question is what is Vodafone like ? customer service, support speed ?

Customer service isn't the best, I always ask for a manager/supervisor when I speak to the live chat now as you just go in a circle with them otherwise - not sure how it is on the phone.
I wouldn't be bothered about customer service too much honestly, it'll be very rare you'll have to contact them, the only time I've had to contact them is for PPPoE information (for 3rd party router) & Billing when changing/upgrading plans.
When speaking to someone superior things were much more swift, & was sorted out quickly.

2013 said:
Will I get full speed and will they increase the price a few days after I join ?

Yes you will get the full speed, it's Fibre, you won't have the same issues that you have with a copper line.
No, the price will only change for CPI.

2013 said:
Thanks, hopefully it wont go up by much more. do you know if they also offer discounts at the end of the contact ?

Not sure myself either, but before my renewal I was able to upgrade to a better plan that was available to everyone.
Their pricing isn't very fixed, by that I mean the pricing is constantly changing with new offers, went from paying £52/mo for 18months, to £31/mo (no CPI increases) for 24months (both 900Mbps).
I was also able to upgrade mid contract, not sure if that's always possible, it was during the Black Friday sale.

2013 said:
or should I try and stay with virgin ?

100% No.

2013 · 17 Mar 2022 at 23:41

0007 said:
Customer service isn't the best, I always ask for a manager/supervisor when I speak to the live chat now as you just go in a circle with them otherwise - not sure how it is on the phone.
I wouldn't be bothered about customer service too much honestly, it'll be very rare you'll have to contact them, the only time I've had to contact them is for PPPoE information (for 3rd party router) & Billing when changing/upgrading plans.
When speaking to someone superior things were much more swift, & was sorted out quickly.

Yes you will get the full speed, it's Fibre, you won't have the same issues that you have with a copper line.
No, the price will only change for CPI.

Not sure myself either, but before my renewal I was able to upgrade to a better plan that was available to everyone.
Their pricing isn't very fixed, by that I mean the pricing is constantly changing with new offers, went from paying £52/mo for 18months, to £31/mo (no CPI increases) for 24months (both 900Mbps).
I was also able to upgrade mid contract, not sure if that's always possible, it was during the Black Friday sale.

100% No.

Thanks that was very helpful, Im going to wait for installation and see how things go.

Shac · 18 Mar 2022 at 22:25

You can up or downgrade you plan with Vodafone at any time.
Plan on renewing your contract around Black Friday because they always seem to have deals on around that time.
No idea what current plan costs are but i changed from the 500 package to the 900 / 900 for I believe £34 / month.

lltfdaniel · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:03

Bit of a heads up if you are not aware of which isps use the city fibre network in your area.

Go here and put your postcode in > https://cityfibre.com/

Dan.

Steviepunk · 29 Mar 2022 at 11:35

I just got my CityFibre setup yesterday - been a bit of a saga getting it in (blocked ducting in the street caused problems) but now it's up and running. Have gone from 53Mb/18Mb to 510Mb/790Mb (I'm assuming someone mistyped the config for my upload rate....)

I'm using Zen, their support has been good - even helped me get my own router setup (without giving the usual, "we don't support.." speech that most ISPs do), which turned out required a specific VLAN Id that the technical details on the customer portal didn't provide!

Now that this is in place finally time to trigger all the game updates that are queued up on my Xbox, PS and PC

Now that I'll be able to ditch the old BT line, does anyone have suggestions for good VOIP providers?

Glanza · 29 Mar 2022 at 11:49

Steviepunk said:
I just got my CityFibre setup yesterday - been a bit of a saga getting it in (blocked ducting in the street caused problems) but now it's up and running. Have gone from 53Mb/18Mb to 510Mb/790Mb (I'm assuming someone mistyped the config for my upload rate....)

I'm using Zen, their support has been good - even helped me get my own router setup (without giving the usual, "we don't support.." speech that most ISPs do), which turned out required a specific VLAN Id that the technical details on the customer portal didn't provide!

Now that this is in place finally time to trigger all the game updates that are queued up on my Xbox, PS and PC

Now that I'll be able to ditch the old BT line, does anyone have suggestions for good VOIP providers?

Zen offer VOIP, would reach out first for their pricing then have a look around.

Steviepunk · 29 Mar 2022 at 11:53

They told me it wasn't available when I placed my order. I'll check again and see if it is available now, though they did also say I would need to use their router to use the VOIP when it was available - do you know if there is a workaround for that?

Turn · 29 Mar 2022 at 21:14

Steviepunk said:
I'm using Zen, their support has been good

Could you send a traceroute please, I'd like to see how it compares to Vodafone. Maybe to fastly.com / bbc.co.uk or similar

Steviepunk · 30 Mar 2022 at 12:22

0007 said:
Could you send a traceroute please, I'd like to see how it compares to Vodafone. Maybe to fastly.com / bbc.co.uk or similar

Sure, here you go

Code:

>tracert fastly.com

Tracing route to fastly.com [151.101.65.57]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  [removed]
  2    17 ms    18 ms    16 ms  lo0-0.bng2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.77.129]
  3    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  lag-5.p2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.91]
  4    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  lag-2.p2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.138]
  5    16 ms    16 ms    15 ms  lag-1.br2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.169]
  6    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  195.66.225.91
  7    15 ms    16 ms    15 ms  151.101.65.57

Trace complete.

Phreaky · 1 Apr 2022 at 09:21

Just for context, here is a local ISP (Fibrehop) via CityFibre to the same address (South West):

Code:

 1  network.isp.uk.net (185.14.136.4)  9.855 ms  10.060 ms  9.991 ms
 2  network.isp.uk.net (185.14.136.14)  10.177 ms  10.108 ms  10.389 ms
 3  te0-1-0-2-2.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (149.11.142.197)  10.529 ms  10.644 ms  10.471 ms
 4  149.6.2.38 (149.6.2.38)  16.324 ms  16.316 ms  16.420 ms
 5  151.101.193.57 (151.101.193.57)  10.108 ms  10.006 ms  9.824 ms

Was a hair quicker than that originally (8ms to first hop) but some routing changes in the first few days settled on the above.

chrcoluk · 8 Apr 2022 at 04:07

Well well.

Looks like rollout abandoned on my entire street, have fired off an email in the hope its a checker glitch.

The other side of the park which was previously "available" as well as my entire part of the road now says unplanned, if I check any neighbouring side streets they are still planned.

There is no planned openreach, so if they have abandoned it means i am in a top 10 city with no planned FTTP, and i am not aware of any city community FTTP programs.

The proximity to enabled or planned properties is ridiculous, and can see why others in similar situations like when half cul de sac enabled or something feel the same way, how cam a company put all the effort in to roll out a service but then decide to leave out random spots of a few properties. If I go the other direction to the closest planned side street which has a planned house right on the corner, its under 30m. They going to claim they 30m short of fibre or something?

If I was to speculate I expect its market segmentation, a fair few business properties on my road, and business FTTP has been available here for over 3 years.