Vodafone Fibre

[Andy14]

Afternoon all. I am being royally overcharged (£54 / month) by BT for my broadband and very interested in moving over to Vodafone (which comes in at nearer £30 for the same service). Currently I'm on BT Infinity 2 and use my own Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router. I'm aware that Vodafone will not allow me to use my own router. I do not need any land line phone calls (disconnected all phones a year ago due to continual spam calls).

• Does anyone have any experience of the Vodafone router ?
• Has anyone moved over from BT Infinity - were the speeds after the same ?

I don't need anything too techy, but I do need a strong signal, stable device & at least the same basic speeds as I get now.

Thanks for any help.

[jimborae]

Yep I'm a Vodafone fibre customer and have been for a long time (since the service was launched) & was previously a BT Infinity customer. Line sync and and actual download speeds are less than I had with BT by about 10Mb/s I get around 52Mb/s whereas I used to get 62 with BT. The router is more a mixed bag as I have an older white one rather than the Black Huawei model that every one gets now. However I can tell you from a hardware perspective and independent testing that the Huawei is better quality router. As for coverage and performance my router is nearly as good as my Asus RT-AC87 but it is alot slower navigating around the interface. I hammer the router pretty hard with lots of connected devices and lots of torrenting and downloading going on all the time. Plus the kids Xbox and devices streaming from Amazon and Netflix.

On Vodafone's forums you will see a few people complaining about the router but for an ISP provided box I think it's pretty decent. As for speeds etc I know lots of VF customers who have not had my experrirnece and are actually getting the same or better speeds than they had with BT, so your milage may vary.

At the end of the day it depends in my experience it depends what is more important to you. Value or consistency of service. I found BT Infinity hugely reliable and I got the same speed day or night 365 days a year. But the cost kept going up & up. VF however is much much cheaper but the service and speed is more variable.

I would also say that when I left BT there retention's department tried to get me to stay with some good deals but as I have staff deal with VF they couldn't get anywhere near close to the price I pay with VF. However I doubt that's your position so it maybe worth calling up and trying to get your monthly bill reduced with BT by threatening to leave.

[The Hand]

I wouldn't touch Vodafone with a barge pole personally, but that's just me and I haven't experienced the broadband side of things, though if it's anything like mobile side you'll wish you hadn't switched.

I think Jim above has the best the advice, it's about pretending to leave and then accepting a lot better deal from BT. I would consider plusnet if you really do want to switch since they are offering fibre for £23.99 per month for 18months on contract.

[Andy14]

I wouldn't touch Vodafone with a barge pole personally, but that's just me and I haven't experienced the broadband side of things, though if it's anything like mobile side you'll wish you hadn't switched.

I'm already a Vodafone Mobile customer and have been since moving from O2 many years ago. I've had excellent service, get a great deal and very pleased. Even moved my Dad over recently, got him on VF Fibre and added a Sure Signal. He's now chuffed.

PlusNet is more expensive for the equivalent 76Mb deal including Line Rental.

Cheers for the experiences Jim. I agree that with BT my service is pretty consistent all the time. No complains with the actual product, and although their router was appalling I could at least replace it with my own.

Comparing customer service, Vodafone seems miles ahead, much easier and faster to get through to someone (in my experience recently). And my Dad (who's almost 80) has had to call them several times and found VF excellent too.

How much do you find the service degrades during busy hours on Vodafone ? BT are due to put prices up AGAIN in April, so it's making more and more sense to move. I've always had a thing against BT too, they are close to monopoly in this business and they milk it whilst driving innovation only when they have to.

When I called BT today, asked them for the best deal and talked about moving to Vodafone they came up with £45 / month if I signed up for 2 years !! In 2 years everyone will be line rental free and using G-Fast connections.!!!

[jimborae]

Contention during busy times is sometimes a problem with speeds dropping to single figures however there are couple of points to make here.

1. My colleagues dont all suffer this. In fact very few.
2. Of late this has not been happening.
3. Speaking to VF broadband engineers (not customer service bods) this shouldn't be happening and could only have been a BT issue in the cabinet on my road. Vodafone own their own network from the exchange back (the old Cable & Wireless network) and there are no contention issues here.
4. The one time I've had no service it was fixed pretty quickly, a switch in the network failed and a number of customers were affected. I was updated regularly and service was restored before the eta given.

[Andy14]

By the sounds of things Jim, you are pretty happy with the service and know of many others that are too. I take your comments in a positive way. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

My Dad btw was told he'd get 36 by the speed checker, but in fact gets 21. As he was on a very basic deal previously there's nothing to compare against though, and 21 is enough for him to stream Netflix & Amazon (just - he has a new TV). For myself it's very important I keep as close as possible to the 55 I'm getting and the speed checker seems to confirm this (if I trusted it).

[jimborae]

Yeah I am pretty happy overall if im honest.

[flearider]

hmm would save me nearly £20 a month on ee .. intresting

[Andy14]

I took the plunge and signed up yesterday. The savings are too good to pass up & I like to get behind any movement that may phase out "line rental". I have an installation date of Feb 8th.

For reference, I had to call because when I tried to sign up via the internet their system could not cope with sending my router to an address which wasn't the one selected for installation. Once again the experience with Vodafone's team is that they were fast to answer, no need to listen to 100 annoying messages / "press 4 to ..." & were very friendly.

I still haven't had an email confirming all the details though, which I was told to expect.

Last 2 weeks of BT...

[me-yeah]

hmm would save me nearly £20 a month on ee .. intresting

you don't want to go with EE, they are on the path to ending up like O2, i've had 10kbs on my phone for a few days, its BT's bid to try and get you to have a landline after getting a invite in the post, not going to work, i will just get a 3 sim

[flearider]

you don't want to go with EE, they are on the path to ending up like O2, i've had 10kbs on my phone for a few days, its BT's bid to try and get you to have a landline after getting a invite in the post, not going to work, i will just get a 3 sim

lol that's ee fiber as it's a fiber thread .. I'm paying £44 atm
they did phone me up a few weeks back and asked if I wanted a different contract but declined as they said I'd be locked in for another 18 months

[me-yeah]

lol that's ee fiber as it's a fiber thread .. I'm paying £44 atm
they did phone me up a few weeks back and asked if I wanted a different contract but declined as they said I'd be locked in for another 18 months

EE own's their own fibre which they laid down mostly for 4g and why BT brought them, all other mobile telecoms use EE fibre, if you live in a big city, your connection will just be as bad as BT within a year or two and ofcom won't do anything about it because they are owned by BT

[jimborae]

EE own's their own fibre which they laid down mostly for 4g and why BT brought them, all other mobile telecoms use EE fibre, if you live in a big city, your connection will just be as bad as BT within a year or two and ofcom won't do anything about it because they are owned by BT

Please everybody ignore the above post by me-yeah on the basis that it is complete & utter.....sorry, not based on any kind of facts or reality

@me-yeah I read your posts and most of the time just ignore them as rantings of an uninformed person who has verbal diarrhoea & thinks it's ok to just spout off without any consideration for the truth. But please many of us here have worked/do work in telecoms or the IT sector and will read the above post and just laugh our arses off at that completely incorrect statement.

So much of it is wrong I really dont know where to begin...

[me-yeah]

Please everybody ignore the above post by me-yeah on the basis that it is complete & utter.....sorry, not based on any kind of facts or reality

@me-yeah I read your posts and most of the time just ignore them as rantings of an uninformed person who has verbal diarrhoea & thinks it's ok to just spout off without any consideration for the truth. But please many of us here have worked/do work in telecoms or the IT sector and will read the above post and just laugh our arses off at that completely incorrect statement.

So much of it is wrong I really dont know where to begin...

you can read it all on the register over the years

[jimborae]

you can read it all on the register over the years

I do read the Reg, everyday usually and comment from time to time as well. But I can tell you for a fact that not all mobile companies connect to "EE fibre", which is in fact BT's which was laid well before BT bought/merged with EE and it was not the reason BT bought EE.

Mobile companies use a variety of providers to connect their cell sites to their core network, including Colt Telecom, BT, C&W (now Vodafone) and point to point microwave suppliers, to name but a few. My first job in Vodafone, over 16 years ago, was to order links to connect our cell sites up and usually we choose which provider to use based on cost and time to connect.

[watercooled]

EE own's their own fibre which they laid down mostly for 4g and why BT brought them, all other mobile telecoms use EE fibre, if you live in a big city, your connection will just be as bad as BT within a year or two and ofcom won't do anything about it because they are owned by BT

That's not the whole truth. The mobile networks use a range of different backhaul providers and technologies, largely depending on location, and no one network has a backhaul monopoly like you describe. EE is a joint company formed from T-Mobile (formerly One-2-One) and Orange and both arrived later in the 2G market than BT Cellnet (now known as O2) and Vodafone, which is why the two ended up with so much 1800MHz spectrum between them, as a large portion of this spectrum was set aside for the new market entrants in order to better compete with the well-established 900MHz networks of Cellnet and Vodafone. What I'm getting at, is Voda/O2 had established networks before T-Mobile and Orange even existed, let alone EE.

EE's success in the market was mostly because of this merger which by itself gave them the largest customer base, combined with their large 1800MHz spectrum allowing them to get a head start on the LTE market before the spectrum auctions allowed other providers to compete. This is the reason BT was interested in them - they had a lot of money to spend, and EE has the most UK market share. They also considered O2, and I doubt either Vodafone or Hutchinson 3 would have been willing to sell their UK operations to BT (and they're both larger than BT so buying them like they did with EE was never an option).

Back to the question of fibre - BT Group has the largest and most expansive fibre network in the UK, no question, with Virgin somewhere after that, and importantly they both have huge metro networks (i.e. branching out within cities/towns as opposed to long-haul WAN networks usually linking major interconnection points in cities) - the sort of thing used for cell tower backhaul. There are lots of companies that 'own their own fibre networks' but this terminology is a bit ambiguous, and the market is very complex - many smaller companies rent either lit capacity, dark fibres or lambdas (wavelengths over WDM circuits) for at least part of their networks - in fact even bigger companies do this renting of each others' networks, especially in more economically challenging areas.

Cityfibre is another company offering cell tower backhaul to companies like EE. EE, like all the physical mobile networks, will invest in their own physical fibre networks where it makes sense, but networks owned by the likes of BT, Virgin and more recently Cityfibre are used extensively for backhaul. And just to further complicate things, microwave backhaul is used heavily for cell towers (that's usually what the 'unpaired spectrum' you see in spectrum auctions refers to), it's not all fibre.

With regard to EE's 'fibre broadband' package, it's a BT Wholesale WBMC/WBC product not unlike what Plusnet, offer - they're not an LLU provider like Sky/TalkTalk/Vodafone who manage their own backhaul networks in unbundled areas. So BT gain no fibre from EE's fixed line broadband business, which itself has little to do with their mobile network.

So to summarise, I doubt EE's fibre network was much of a selling point for BT, and nor is it as extensive in the mobile space as claimed. Further, backhaul using leased lines is not like sharing a broadband connection - you get dedicated, guaranteed capacity - contention doesn't come into it.

The mobile companies have formed partnerships for mutual benefit, e.g. sharing cell sites or towers to save costs of every company having to build own their own fully independent networks and cell sites. EE and Three through MBNL, and Vodafone+O2 through Cornerstone.

Interestingly here's a press report of MBNL signing a large contract with Virgin for backhaul: http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk...ves/2011/MBNL/

Edit: Sorry, didn't refresh before posting.