Does anyone here use either of these providers? They are both installing their FTTP networks around town at the moment but I’ve heard next to zero user experiences of them. I’m currently using Zen FTTC and getting 59 down and 15 up. Openreach have said that their FTTP is coming to town but have given no timescale other than “before December 2026”
Lightspeed & Upp broadband - any experiences?
- Thread starter No-One
- Start date
I’m on Upp in Norfolk. I have two lines with them, one personal on the home 900/900 and one business on the 1000/1000. No issues other than their outrageous additional charge for a fixed IP address. They both give 940-950Mbps up and down so I think the 1000/1000 thing is to make business folks feel a bit better about spending 3x the money for a fixed IP address and a better support package.
If you’re happy with their home packages then you get a lot of speed for very little money. No authentication, it’s just DHCP so plug in any router you like and it will just work. I’ve not seen any evidence of traffic shaping or throttling on the home line and I hammer both with triangular backup protocols for work plus I run a livestream of demo CCTV cameras which puts quite a bit of stress on the line at times.
If you’re happy with their home packages then you get a lot of speed for very little money. No authentication, it’s just DHCP so plug in any router you like and it will just work. I’ve not seen any evidence of traffic shaping or throttling on the home line and I hammer both with triangular backup protocols for work plus I run a livestream of demo CCTV cameras which puts quite a bit of stress on the line at times.
Lightspeed are also installing into my area, one downside with Lightspeed is they force you to use their Nokia XG-Pon unit but I guess that may change over time.
Once they have finished the install here, I will replace my other FTTC line with them as they are pretty cheap for the service they offer.
Once they have finished the install here, I will replace my other FTTC line with them as they are pretty cheap for the service they offer.
Has anyone got anymore thoughts about light speed?
Just had their letter through the good and I’m out of my BT based FTTP 150mb contract next week supplied by Talk Talk which has been rock solid since it was put in.
If I sign up in the next 2 weeks, I can have 1000/1000 for 39.99/month and 6 months free.
It’s bit nuts that a tiny down in the back and beyond of Suffolk is now wired for BT FTTP and now an altnet provider. We got FTTP seemingly quietly as well given it was never on BTs published rollout plans.
Just had their letter through the good and I’m out of my BT based FTTP 150mb contract next week supplied by Talk Talk which has been rock solid since it was put in.
If I sign up in the next 2 weeks, I can have 1000/1000 for 39.99/month and 6 months free.
It’s bit nuts that a tiny down in the back and beyond of Suffolk is now wired for BT FTTP and now an altnet provider. We got FTTP seemingly quietly as well given it was never on BTs published rollout plans.
I've had lightspeed since the middle of September, and so far the experience has been really positive, and got it on an offer that I couldn't in my right mind refuse!
They were installing in the village I live in, and I was on talktalk with the end of the contract imminent, so I waited until the last minute for the fiber network to go live in my area before having to renew the contract with talktalk the day before, well more like about 6 hours before it was due to swap over to their out of contract extortionate prices. 3 weeks later I got an email saying that they was going live. A couple of weeks later we had salesmen going door to door trying to get people to sign up, I was at the time about to walk out the door with dogs who were at this point clipped into their seatbelt buckles and attached to their harnesses ready to go, but he was talking to me like an actual person instead of trying to push it on me, and when I told him that he missed out by about 6 weeks (it was about at this point now), so he told me that they had an unadvertised offer they could do of match the contract end date of talktalk for free with free installation too, leaving me only 2 months of contract left to pay for by the time the install was done, all I needed to do was email him a screenshot showing the current contract end date with talktalk which I did whilst I was talking to him.
The biggest issue I have with them is I can access my webserver from outside of the "local network" at home, and I have spoken to customer services and they have said that currently it is not something they offer but know about it and are working on it to get it implemented. Another small issue is the Nokia XG router, it is configured so as when you login with the username/password, they have it setup on a semi-restricted profile of sorts, for example you are unable to backup and restore config files for it, and when I spoke to the customer services, I was told that it is something that you will be given if you ask for, which then sends you into a more comprehensive menu system where you can actually configure the router properly.
The speeds that I get compare to talktalks "Faster fiber" fttc of 76Mbps are night and day, but I have only managed to max out the download speed once by hitting up several torrent files whilst simutainously downloading a Windows 11 ISO direct from Microsoft, I only seem to manage to hit approx 400 to 500Mbps download speed on any 1 thing, but with them being relatively new and that you're only as fast as the slowest part of the network and will still be ironing out the kinks in their hardware and software systems, so when I have to renew the SSL certificate with LetsEncrypt, I have to breakout the talktalk router so I can get the incoming connection that is needed to produce and auto install it for me (as I am being as idle as possible and swapping 1 cable over and plugging in the old router means I don't have to think at silly o'clock in the morning when I end up doing these things.
Other than the listed issues I actually really can't recommend them enough for the average user or family, We have my partners girls (2 of them, 16 and 18) both hitting up video streaming, with my partner watching something else, and me elsewhere in the house usually streaming off either server or 1 of the other services eg youtube, netflix, disney+ etc. Then we also get my 2 older kids (20 and 22) streaming, playing games online etc and haven't had a single issue with upto 7 or 8 HD streams and 2 of us gaming online, and haven't had even the slightest glitch, stutter or buffering in anything, and the WiFi coverage inside the house (WiFi 6 router) has improved to the point I have taken out the signal repeaters I had installed and get a strong signal (still using ax ) on my Note 20 over halfway down the back garden (approx 60 ft away from router, through a wall and window).
I hope this helps and answers any questions you have about them, and yes, they will install the fiber to anywhere you want, ours is around the back of the house in dining room, so approx 150 to 200 feet away from the node on the telegraph pole out the front of the house. Current speeds are approx 1010Mbps Download, 1065Mbps Upload with 3ms ping (this is through the nokia app on phone initiating the speed test from router to lightspeeds hardware somewhere else along the line, but speedtest . net is reporting approx 620Mbps download and 938Mbps upload.)
They were installing in the village I live in, and I was on talktalk with the end of the contract imminent, so I waited until the last minute for the fiber network to go live in my area before having to renew the contract with talktalk the day before, well more like about 6 hours before it was due to swap over to their out of contract extortionate prices. 3 weeks later I got an email saying that they was going live. A couple of weeks later we had salesmen going door to door trying to get people to sign up, I was at the time about to walk out the door with dogs who were at this point clipped into their seatbelt buckles and attached to their harnesses ready to go, but he was talking to me like an actual person instead of trying to push it on me, and when I told him that he missed out by about 6 weeks (it was about at this point now), so he told me that they had an unadvertised offer they could do of match the contract end date of talktalk for free with free installation too, leaving me only 2 months of contract left to pay for by the time the install was done, all I needed to do was email him a screenshot showing the current contract end date with talktalk which I did whilst I was talking to him.
The biggest issue I have with them is I can access my webserver from outside of the "local network" at home, and I have spoken to customer services and they have said that currently it is not something they offer but know about it and are working on it to get it implemented. Another small issue is the Nokia XG router, it is configured so as when you login with the username/password, they have it setup on a semi-restricted profile of sorts, for example you are unable to backup and restore config files for it, and when I spoke to the customer services, I was told that it is something that you will be given if you ask for, which then sends you into a more comprehensive menu system where you can actually configure the router properly.
The speeds that I get compare to talktalks "Faster fiber" fttc of 76Mbps are night and day, but I have only managed to max out the download speed once by hitting up several torrent files whilst simutainously downloading a Windows 11 ISO direct from Microsoft, I only seem to manage to hit approx 400 to 500Mbps download speed on any 1 thing, but with them being relatively new and that you're only as fast as the slowest part of the network and will still be ironing out the kinks in their hardware and software systems, so when I have to renew the SSL certificate with LetsEncrypt, I have to breakout the talktalk router so I can get the incoming connection that is needed to produce and auto install it for me (as I am being as idle as possible and swapping 1 cable over and plugging in the old router means I don't have to think at silly o'clock in the morning when I end up doing these things.
Other than the listed issues I actually really can't recommend them enough for the average user or family, We have my partners girls (2 of them, 16 and 18) both hitting up video streaming, with my partner watching something else, and me elsewhere in the house usually streaming off either server or 1 of the other services eg youtube, netflix, disney+ etc. Then we also get my 2 older kids (20 and 22) streaming, playing games online etc and haven't had a single issue with upto 7 or 8 HD streams and 2 of us gaming online, and haven't had even the slightest glitch, stutter or buffering in anything, and the WiFi coverage inside the house (WiFi 6 router) has improved to the point I have taken out the signal repeaters I had installed and get a strong signal (still using ax ) on my Note 20 over halfway down the back garden (approx 60 ft away from router, through a wall and window).
I hope this helps and answers any questions you have about them, and yes, they will install the fiber to anywhere you want, ours is around the back of the house in dining room, so approx 150 to 200 feet away from the node on the telegraph pole out the front of the house. Current speeds are approx 1010Mbps Download, 1065Mbps Upload with 3ms ping (this is through the nokia app on phone initiating the speed test from router to lightspeeds hardware somewhere else along the line, but speedtest . net is reporting approx 620Mbps download and 938Mbps upload.)
Thanks for that, I pulled the trigger last week, install is due in the middle of December. I wasn’t in any rush as I had to give talk talk a months notice.
Coming from FTTP 150mb (which in reality has been solid) so it should be a big upgrade.
The only thing the sales person mentioned to me is that you can’t use your own router although @WJA96 mentioned above that it does work if you do.
I’ll give it a bash either way, that said I don’t think my USG is good for 1gig lines.
Coming from FTTP 150mb (which in reality has been solid) so it should be a big upgrade.
The only thing the sales person mentioned to me is that you can’t use your own router although @WJA96 mentioned above that it does work if you do.
I’ll give it a bash either way, that said I don’t think my USG is good for 1gig lines.
@WJA96 I noted that you can use any router with your connection, however when they installed mine they gave me a Nokia router that the fibre goes into directly so no separate ONT. The Nokia router does not support bridge mode, either that or it is disabled as the setting is there but it is greyed out.
Would my BT ONT work if I swapped the fibre cables over (presumably this is just a media converter) should I want to ditch their router?
EDIT:
@YouWhat - What did you ask customer services for to unlock the full profile on their router?
Would my BT ONT work if I swapped the fibre cables over (presumably this is just a media converter) should I want to ditch their router?
EDIT:
@YouWhat - What did you ask customer services for to unlock the full profile on their router?
Last edited:
Are you on Upp? I don't have Lightspeed. As far as I'm aware (and I only have 1 location and 2 connections) each connection gets an ONT.
I asked about backing up router settings as there wasn't any option for it in the standard config that they had setup on the router. I still believe that there is another more "root" / main or default admin user profile buried in there somewhere, but with the admin user / password I was given, it unlocked telnet access and ssh also on the Nokia XS-2426G-A router, which is running on a version of Zebra linux, currently version 0.95 (mips-linux), although there is a "shell" available through ssh, it remains out of reach having another password that is stopping me from going any further down the rabbit hole.
Hi, all,
Did anyone here sign up with Upp? How's the experience been? I'm considering them when my existing BT contract runs out as they are cheaper. I don't need a landline so Upp would be fine for me as have an VOIP and want to continue using my own router. Do Upp need to enter the premises and replace the BT ONT box with there own or is the change simply on the back end at the exchange side? BT still want to charge more and apparently still need to pay line rental even though i no longer need a landline so looking to switch and save myself approx. £10 a month given current prises, albeit likely to increase by next year but it will still be a saving and no line rental to pay with Upp and no in-contract increases (unless that changes by then). Plus i'll get a slight faster connection compared to BT as looks like Upp is 200 lowest, whereas BT is 150, even though 150 is sufficient for my needs, don't mind the bit extra for a cheaper price
.
Thanks for any feed back.
Kev
Did anyone here sign up with Upp? How's the experience been? I'm considering them when my existing BT contract runs out as they are cheaper. I don't need a landline so Upp would be fine for me as have an VOIP and want to continue using my own router. Do Upp need to enter the premises and replace the BT ONT box with there own or is the change simply on the back end at the exchange side? BT still want to charge more and apparently still need to pay line rental even though i no longer need a landline so looking to switch and save myself approx. £10 a month given current prises, albeit likely to increase by next year but it will still be a saving and no line rental to pay with Upp and no in-contract increases (unless that changes by then). Plus i'll get a slight faster connection compared to BT as looks like Upp is 200 lowest, whereas BT is 150, even though 150 is sufficient for my needs, don't mind the bit extra for a cheaper price
.Thanks for any feed back.
Kev
I have two Upp connections in Thetford. One home 900/900 and one business 1000/1000 with fixed IP address.
It’s very quick and much better value than BT in my opinion.
It’s a completely new ONT mounted next to the BT ONT that we had before. And yes, they need to access the property.
It’s very quick and much better value than BT in my opinion.
It’s a completely new ONT mounted next to the BT ONT that we had before. And yes, they need to access the property.
Thanks for the reply. How has stability/reliability/speed been? Has it ever gone down? I'm looking at the entry level home option of 200/200 as it is slightly quicker than me existing 150 at the moment and I think my upload isn't 150 either with BT, maybe around 30, would have to check and is also cheaper. I like the fact it seems you can use your own router and not tied into the one they provide you as I got everything setup with my Asus router.
Will they simply remove the BT ONT and put the Upp one in it's place or will BT come round to remove the ONT box at some point? Reason being where mine is its there isn't much wall space and there is power coming down the wall for the 2 power sockets next to it and I'd sooner them not start placing the ONT above it etc. The existing ONT is mounted where the cable comes through the wall from outside so would make sense to simply remove the ONT box and put the Upp one in it's place to keen the clean/simply install. I can even return the ONT box, if BT/Openreach need it back.
Kev
Will they simply remove the BT ONT and put the Upp one in it's place or will BT come round to remove the ONT box at some point? Reason being where mine is its there isn't much wall space and there is power coming down the wall for the 2 power sockets next to it and I'd sooner them not start placing the ONT above it etc. The existing ONT is mounted where the cable comes through the wall from outside so would make sense to simply remove the ONT box and put the Upp one in it's place to keen the clean/simply install. I can even return the ONT box, if BT/Openreach need it back.
Kev
