Lila Connect - VX Fibre 1gig - Stoke on Trent

The1nonly1 · 17 Dec 2020 at 18:46

Pad the £49 the other day but have a person coming tomorrow to do a survey on where the fibre cables will enter the property. The standard is to the front of the house but this wouldn't work for me as I have kitchen and bathroom at the front with living room at the back. I want the cables coming down the drive, into garage and then on the wall that is the other side of my living room.

Oyeee · 11 Jan 2021 at 11:59

The1nonly1 said:
Pad the £49 the other day but have a person coming tomorrow to do a survey on where the fibre cables will enter the property. The standard is to the front of the house but this wouldn't work for me as I have kitchen and bathroom at the front with living room at the back. I want the cables coming down the drive, into garage and then on the wall that is the other side of my living room.

How did it go?

The1nonly1 · 11 Jan 2021 at 22:31

Oyeee said:
How did it go?

I was meant to update this other day, thanks for the reminder

They had no issue putting the fiber cable into this garage and last Monday, they came out and installed it. My download speed (on their tool) is 1Gbps, upload is around 730Mbps. Speedtest dot net gives me 946Mbps download and 679Mbps upload. I went with Breeze as my provider, mainly due to them being an IT company and know what they are on about first time. The guy there has been very helpful setting it all up.

Oyeee · 11 Jan 2021 at 22:53

The1nonly1 said:
I was meant to update this other day, thanks for the reminder

They had no issue putting the fiber cable into this garage and last Monday, they came out and installed it. My download speed (on their tool) is 1Gbps, upload is around 730Mbps. Speedtest dot net gives me 946Mbps download and 679Mbps upload. I went with Breeze as my provider, mainly due to them being an IT company and know what they are on about first time. The guy there has been very helpful setting it all up.

That's good to hear. I believe they've dug up our street and installed their lines as well and I'm tempted with my contract running out soon. How's the ping and have you noticed any issues with latency in gaming?

Just concerned that since all these are small companies, I might be on my own if things go wrong even though council is involved. I know huge number of people have had issues with solarplicity scamming people with solar panel contracts but council is not getting involved hence the reluctance.

The1nonly1 · 11 Jan 2021 at 23:36

Oyeee said:
That's good to hear. I believe they've dug up our street and installed their lines as well and I'm tempted with my contract running out soon. How's the ping and have you noticed any issues with latency in gaming?

Just concerned that since all these are small companies, I might be on my own if things go wrong even though council is involved. I know huge number of people have had issues with solarplicity scamming people with solar panel contracts but council is not getting involved hence the reluctance.

I was still in contract with Plus Net until middle of August, called them Saturday to cancel, and will cost me around £58 so done that. For ping, I get around 6ms on speedtest and in COD WZ, around 11ms on my own and for quads it depends on who the host is to what I then get, mainly around 25-30ms.

I would say that both Air broadband and Pure broadband are bigger than Breeze and have been around longer but I went with Breeze after speaking direct to them. Instead of a speaking to a customer support team, I was though to someone who knew networking and it was like speaking to 2nd line support, if not higher. Last time I spoke to them, they had changed the contracts so I think I'm on a 2 year deal at £25 for first year and then £30 for second.

Oyeee · 12 Jan 2021 at 00:23

The1nonly1 said:
I was still in contract with Plus Net until middle of August, called them Saturday to cancel, and will cost me around £58 so done that. For ping, I get around 6ms on speedtest and in COD WZ, around 11ms on my own and for quads it depends on who the host is to what I then get, mainly around 25-30ms.

I would say that both Air broadband and Pure broadband are bigger than Breeze and have been around longer but I went with Breeze after speaking direct to them. Instead of a speaking to a customer support team, I was though to someone who knew networking and it was like speaking to 2nd line support, if not higher. Last time I spoke to them, they had changed the contracts so I think I'm on a 2 year deal at £25 for first year and then £30 for second.

Thanks. Sounds like you're pretty happy with them which is good to hear. Are you using your own kit for WiFi? If not, how is their provided kit?

Guessing you're paying £10 extra for the line to Lila connect.

The1nonly1 · 12 Jan 2021 at 00:28

Oyeee said:
Thanks. Sounds like you're pretty happy with them which is good to hear. Are you using your own kit for WiFi? If not, how is their provided kit?

Guessing you're paying £10 extra for the line to Lila connect.

Very happy so far. Downloading games and updates takes no time at all. 60gb was about 10 minutes, before that would have taken me hours on 38Mb.

I use my own router, Linksys wrt1900acs, but providers will give you one. I opted to not have one sent to me.

For the cost, I paid it as a one off as I don't plan on moving home. The £10 per month is indefinitely which put me off. I could afford to pay the £650 so did that instead.

Oyeee · 12 Jan 2021 at 00:41

The1nonly1 said:
Very happy so far. Downloading games and updates takes no time at all. 60gb was about 10 minutes, before that would have taken me hours on 38Mb.

I use my own router, Linksys wrt1900acs, but providers will give you one. I opted to not have one sent to me.

For the cost, I paid it as a one off as I don't plan on moving home. The £10 per month is indefinitely which put me off. I could afford to pay the £650 so did that instead.

Hmmm. I thought £10 was just till £650 was paid off. Indefinite is mentla tbh

The1nonly1 · 12 Jan 2021 at 11:17

Oyeee said:
Hmmm. I thought £10 was just till £650 was paid off. Indefinite is mentla tbh

I thought the same but I asked them when I phoned before Christmas.

ed4ran · 25 Jan 2021 at 12:38

I'm waiting for our area to go live, Q2 / Q3 2021 apparently.

I can confirm it's basically line rental, or you buy the line out right for £650, Lila maintain the line either way.
Aimed at people who might not live in the same house for more than a few years.

Line rental of £10/month
or Buy the line outright for £650,
plus £50 installation / booking fee,
then ISP cost per month.

I would have "thought" it would be handled the same as ADSL is now with line rental cost added to your bill for the ISP but not sure how linked they are to know if you own the line?

rorton · 25 Jan 2021 at 15:47

what are people thinking about phone? Does anyone bother with a landline these days? Something like a sip gate basic account is free so you can receive calls over IP and keep your number if you wanted?

The1nonly1 · 25 Jan 2021 at 15:56

ed4ran said:
I'm waiting for our area to go live, Q2 / Q3 2021 apparently.

I can confirm it's basically line rental, or you buy the line out right for £650, Lila maintain the line either way.
Aimed at people who might not live in the same house for more than a few years.

Line rental of £10/month
or Buy the line outright for £650,
plus £50 installation / booking fee,
then ISP cost per month.

I would have "thought" it would be handled the same as ADSL is now with line rental cost added to your bill for the ISP but not sure how linked they are to know if you own the line?

Basically, yes. It's just line rental. I paid it in full as I don't plan on moving.

rorton said:
what are people thinking about phone? Does anyone bother with a landline these days? Something like a sip gate basic account is free so you can receive calls over IP and keep your number if you wanted?

Not had once since 2015 and no intention to get one. It is possible though to have VoIP.

Scooby_WR1 · 25 Jan 2021 at 23:46

I shall be giving virgin media the middle finger once this is available in my area after yet another price rise.
How is this so cheap though?
Going to be paying VM £60 a month now for 350meg but Lila are offering 1Gig up and down for about £40 a month. How does that even work?

Jez · 26 Jan 2021 at 09:14

Scooby_WR1 said:
I shall be giving virgin media the middle finger once this is available in my area after yet another price rise.
How is this so cheap though?
Going to be paying VM £60 a month now for 350meg but Lila are offering 1Gig up and down for about £40 a month. How does that even work?

£60 is nowhere near what virgin broadband actually costs once you haggle each time your contract is over to be fair. The advertised price is £38.99 for that package which is in line with other ISPs. Lila is good value, although I pay Gigaclear similar for symmetric 1g, so it’s pricing while low isn’t extraordinary...

rorton · 1 Feb 2021 at 14:17

anyone know if they would run the fibre to the loft space, my comms cab/router/switch etc are here, so would prefer it to be run here.

The1nonly1 · 1 Feb 2021 at 17:03

rorton said:
anyone know if they would run the fibre to the loft space, my comms cab/router/switch etc are here, so would prefer it to be run here.

It's worth asking them, telephone number is 01782 365782.

Before I ordered mine, I rang them as the standard fiber installation is to the front of the house (the box they install inside the property needs power). I wanted the fiber cable into the garage as my living room is the other side, and this is where my router is, so they sent out someone to survey and see if what I wanted was possible (it was). I have the fiber cable running from the street, under front lawn to a box outside on the front of the house. There is then a fiber cable that runs along the house to another box (the one that needs power) in my garage. From this, I have a Ethernet cable running though the wall to the router.

Jarrod · 6 Feb 2021 at 02:12

VXFiber are digging up my street next week and I've had my introductory letter through the post from Lila Connect. Would be interested although, my drive is block paved so not sure how they would the line to the property without digging up the drive?

The1nonly1 · 8 Feb 2021 at 14:45

Jarrod said:
VXFiber are digging up my street next week and I've had my introductory letter through the post from Lila Connect. Would be interested although, my drive is block paved so not sure how they would the line to the property without digging up the drive?

Likely they would have to remove some of the blocks to run the fiber cable to the house. My property is grass from street but then there is about a meter of blocked paving from grass to door outside the front. They removed some of these, put the cable in and put them back. I can't tell where they removed and put them back. I'll get a picture soon to better explain it.

Farsider · 8 Feb 2021 at 17:15

Hi its interesting to hear peoples experiences with Lila Connect and the "ISP" partners. Im personally have many years of backgrond in the ISP field and am currently reaseaching and thinking of moving but honestly so far have some major alarm bells going off with the scalability of these services.

All the providers seem to be fairly small fry and seems to me that although things might look good for the first 10-100 customers who sign up they dont seem to have the network infrastructure to support the sorts of speeds there offering. Which in the long term will lead to heavy contention issues and poor speeds. A lot of the information on bandwidth routing and transit is publically available if you know where to look and what your looking at. From my reasearch so far it appears some of the providers only have 1-2Gbps of connectivity out to some portions of the internet which doesn't mean it will impact customers as in ISP world contention is always part of the maths and not everyone is maxing out a path all the time and at the same time.

But also not seeing anything to reassure me that in 18months time the actual speeds to parts of the internet will not be 10-50Mbps by the time there is 100's or 1000s people all trying to consume the same limited backend infrustruture.

Not saying these providers wont grow and expand with the customer base but it very easy and cheap to fulfill the first 100 customers but are they ready to invest and grow at scale or will they just cash cow and let services slide until people leave.

Jarrod · 8 Feb 2021 at 18:08

Farsider said:
Hi its interesting to hear peoples experiences with Lila Connect and the "ISP" partners. Im personally have many years of backgrond in the ISP field and am currently reaseaching and thinking of moving but honestly so far have some major alarm bells going off with the scalability of these services.

All the providers seem to be fairly small fry and seems to me that although things might look good for the first 10-100 customers who sign up they dont seem to have the network infrastructure to support the sorts of speeds there offering. Which in the long term will lead to heavy contention issues and poor speeds. A lot of the information on bandwidth routing and transit is publically available if you know where to look and what your looking at. From my reasearch so far it appears some of the providers only have 1-2Gbps of connectivity out to some portions of the internet which doesn't mean it will impact customers as in ISP world contention is always part of the maths and not everyone is maxing out a path all the time and at the same time.

But also not seeing anything to reassure me that in 18months time the actual speeds to parts of the internet will not be 10-50Mbps by the time there is 100's or 1000s people all trying to consume the same limited backend infrustruture.

Not saying these providers wont grow and expand with the customer base but it very easy and cheap to fulfill the first 100 customers but are they ready to invest and grow at scale or will they just cash cow and let services slide until people leave.

I must admit, I don't like the fact I've not heard of any of the ISPs that VXFibre have partnered with.