Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: NewtronStar on August 18, 2016, 09:23:39 PM
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Just checked on their Web site https://www.vodafone.co.uk/broadband (https://www.vodafone.co.uk/broadband) but it comes up with this
None of our Vodafone Broadband bundles are available at your address right now. You may still be able to get 3G or 4G coverage online by using Mobile Wi-Fi or a data dongle.
Have even had Vodafone call us on the contract mobile a few weeks ago saying they could provide us with upto 38Mbps fibre.
Is Vodafone one of those LLU ISPs ?
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I've just checked for my local exchange (EABSE) and Vodafone shows up under the "LLU operator presence" heading on the SamKnows (https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EABSE) site.
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I think at the moment Vodafone are reselling Openreach connections, we are with Vodafone but according to SamKnows Vodafone isn't listed under LLU at our exchange.
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I think at the moment Vodafone are reselling Openreach connections, we are with Vodafone but according to SamKnows Vodafone isn't listed under LLU at our exchange.
That sounds like they are using BTw for your circuit and is your line rental with vodafone £0.00 sounds to good to be true well here is a list of ISP providers at my exchange :o with samknows all red X's https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NIHB (https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NIHB)
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£0 Line Rental :O
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Vodafone bought out the C&W LLU network a couple of years ago but afaik dont appear to have done much with it. Its quite patchy so they do also use BTw.
I've been bombarded with text messages, emails, phone calls and even snail mail about their £0 line rental for the past few weeks. ???
Meant to make a post about it before but I forgot. They appeared to have turned 'free broadband' on its head by charging full rate for DSL and discounting the line rental element.
Vodafone/CW arent at my local exchange and I have been offered the new deal (numerous times!). They are at my head-end exchange though.
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What DLM profile do they use?
I can't find it for some reason and with the antics I pull I don't want to be on a stable profile.
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I dont know sorry :/
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None of our Vodafone Broadband bundles are available at your address right now. You may still be able to get 3G or 4G coverage online by using Mobile Wi-Fi or a data dongle.
Any address round here gets the same, I checked lines on three different exchanges. Not sure if it's 20CN or the "non low cost areas" that they don't like.
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It seems to be in my area KT19
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Appreciate other users checking out this ISP, for me any reduction in monthly payments is very welcome contract ends with EE in December and if I was able to order this package with Vodafone it would save me £20 per month.
To me it's looking like a LLU'd ISP for the larger exchanges same as Talktalk and SKy seriously it still puts my back up having to pay a premium for Broadband in this area with only BTw ISP's to choose from and we are talking about a few quid of a difference from BT to Plusnet.
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I'm switching one of my lines to it, will take awhile to switch as I'm going ADSL to FTTC to get rid of god awful banding.
Edit: I was broken somehow on their systems after they put my postcode in it came up as me having 0 lines, so I opted for TalkTalk a choice I may yet live to regret.
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Just purely looking at price when I did a quick survey a while ago I found the Post Office looked lowest price in our area. They're the only ISP that I found, other than A&A and BT, who don't charge a premium either for 20CN or for Market (1, A or whatever it's called now).
Another cheap one is SSE which our next door neighbour is happy with, but it looks as if the offer is only available to SSE electricity customers now. When I checked a couple of months ago they were offering at £8/pm plus £13.49 line rental, but now it just comes up as not available.
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Available here at ng5 (Nottingham)
Unlimited Fibre 38
Price:
£25 a month
+ £0 a month line rental, 18 Months agreement
+ £49 one-off fibre connection fee
or
Unlimited Fibre 76
Price:
£28 a month
+ £0 a month line rental, 18 Months agreement
+ £49 one-off fibre connection fee
So essentially £30.72 over an 18 months period. I'm with Plusnet for £24.49 a month on the 76/20 package for 18 months (without LRS), but it's good to know. I was getting free TV for the last couple of years too, but that trail ended sadly (but they did let us keep the TV boxes). I'd call that value :lol:
DB
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BTW had it confirmed today that they are majorly using their own backhaul (Ex Cable and Wireless LLU) which is why it may not be available at all exchanges.
Be aware that although your local exchange may not be LLU, your headend from the cab may have a presence.
Although various people have tried to be helpful and the query has risen up the ranks several times for the question on which DLM profile they are using, no-one seems to know.
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Not really sure if I should be posting this here or starting a thread so apologies if this is the wrong place.
I'm looking to move from my current ADSL package to fibre and am looking at who to go with. I've just done a search on my exchange via SamKnows and it's saying that Vodafone have a 'LLU presence'.
Would there be any benefit to me going with Vodafone because of this compared to AN Other company who uses non LLU?
Thanks
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So, just finished an online chat session with Vodafone and thought is was worthwhile posting a few things I found out:-
Q1 - Can you use your own modem / route: Yes
Q2 - Are there any download limits and what is your FUP: There's no limits, it's truly unlimited
Q3 - Do you block any websites: Not sure - I was given a link to their T&Cs
Q4 - Do you apply any traffic shaping: No, it's the same speed all the time
Q5 - What speed would I get (I had to provide postcode and house number) - for this I got the same response as other providers for min and max except for guaranteed min speed. Others have all quoted me 19Mbps: 30Mbps minimum guaranteed download speed
Q6 - Why is your minimum guaranteed 30Mbps when others have quoted 19Mbps: We, as Vodafone will set up new Fibre ports in your area that will give you a dedicated connection from the assigned ports to your home (FTTC - Fibre to the Cabinet) . It will not be a shared connection where the speed actually gets divided while transmitting
Sounds v tempting at £28/month for a a 76mb fibre package including phone :)
What do people think?
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So, just finished an online chat session with Vodafone and thought is was worthwhile posting a few things I found out:-
Q1 - Can you use your own modem / route: Yes
They seem to have stopped giving out router login details irrespective of what their sales staff tell you....
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18652.msg335011.html#msg335011
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Hey psychopomp1, thanks for the link. I was thinking I may go with Vodafone but I'm not too sure now given the info in that other thread.
My experience via chat was really positive and I do have an email of the transcript stating I could use my own router. Wonder what they'd say if later they refused to give out the relevant info and I then produced it :-[
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I would be very suspicious, mainly because there response to your Q6 is complete and utter rubbish. They do not have their own FTTC ports, they use the standard Openreach cabinets and phone lines. I know you were talking to sales but who comes up with this nonsense for their scripts.
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I would be very suspicious, mainly because there response to your Q6 is complete and utter rubbish. They do not have their own FTTC ports, they use the standard Openreach cabinets and phone lines. I know you were talking to sales but who comes up with this nonsense for their scripts.
OK, decision made, won't be going with Vodafone.
I'm almost tempted to post the email transcript of the chat session considering most of it is starting to sound like absolute ******** :rant:
Just for my own awareness, what does it mean if my exchange has a Vodafone LLU. I had assumed that was something to do with their answer (bear with me, I'm new to all of this)
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As psycopomp pointed out they seem to have recently changed their stance on giving out login details. :(
zaphron hasnt got back to us yet to let us know how he got on taking it further, after they refused to give him a login despite being told he could use his own modem.
We, as Vodafone will set up new Fibre ports in your area that will give you a dedicated connection from the assigned ports to your home (FTTC - Fibre to the Cabinet) . It will not be a shared connection where the speed actually gets divided while transmitting
Hmmm... thats a bit of an exaggeration :( The ports are owned by Openreach. The connection most certainly is contended with other users down their backhaul and across their network.
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ETA
My post crossed with RealAleMadrid's which wasnt there when I started my reply.
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Just for my own awareness, what does it mean if my exchange has a Vodafone LLU. I had assumed that was something to do with their answer (bear with me, I'm new to all of this)
It means that they use their own backhaul pipe from the exchange rather than using BTw's backhaul.
Note: "Their own backhaul" means it is shared by all Vodafone customers. In the same way that with adsl, the backhaul bandwidth is shared with other users.
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It means that they use their own backhaul pipe from the exchange rather than using BTw's backhaul.
Note: "Their own backhaul" means it is shared by all Vodafone customers. In the same way that with adsl, the backhaul bandwidth is shared with other users.
Got it. Is there any benefit to that?
The way Vodafone worded it suggest there is but I'm now very doubtful. ???
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Got it. Is there any benefit to that?
The way Vodafone worded it suggest there is but I'm now very doubtful. ???
That's probably the only truth they told you ;D It means that from your exchange onwards, you will not be using BT/Openreach's network and Vodafone have 100% control of that. Their network is supposed to be pretty good, they have multiple 10gb/s pipes at exchanges which they've LLU'd so plenty of bandwidth capacity - TalkTalk & Sky use 1gb/s pipes. AFAIK being LLU they don't use any sort of profile cap on ADSL2+ and FTTC services. TBH if you can live with using their router, they'd not bad at all (given user feedback so far) and whilst their technical support isn't at the level of AAISP or Talktalk Business, they're pretty competent - certainly better than their sales staff!!
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Rustybob as for what speeds you'll get put your details in the link below, if you don't have a BT landline number then use the full address checker option.
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/#
All ISPs get the same estimate but some chose to quote the lower figure's. What you actually get will vary depending on the quality and length of your line.
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Thanks Ronski ;).
I've given that a try and the clean high/low rates are what every ISP is quoting. Some however are also giving me a guaranteed minimum rate and with the exception of Talk Talk and Vodafone this is 18.8 to 19Mbps.
Vodafone have given me 30Mbps and when I queried it they gave my the response to Q6 above? Talk Talk have quoted 14Mbps and I'm guessing other providers use BTW hence the consistent ~19 figure.
At the time of my 'chat' with Vodafone I didn't really understand much about LLUs or what having a presence at my exchange meant but, given the comments above I'm assuming this is because they have more bandwidth capacity than say BTW or TT?
It has got me thinking though - how can I find out how much bandwidth each provider has and how much is being used as this will surely influence my speed, especially at periods of high demand/usage?
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@rustybob There will be a bottleneck somewhere, and obviously this is usually your line. In the case where you are talking to a particular web server, that server or the pipe into it could be overloaded though. If your particular ISP has lots of capacity (and that also has to apply to partner carriers if the ISP uses e.g. BTW or TTB for access from customers) into its network and to the wider internet then as long as that's enough considering the weight of traffic from their user base then its good enough. So you want an ISP that either has high capacity links or low-usage customers or few customers. Traffic capacity obviously has to be relative to the number and type of customers that the ISP has. Networks that offer QoS (quality of service) can prioritise some traffic types over others, so that packets get sent first and jump over queues. This reduces latency dramatically and can improve throughput.
To answer your question about how to find out. If your ISP publishes congestion reports then that's a plus. ;-) Otherwise it’s probably a matter of digging around, asking users, rumour mill, or perhaps looking at the results of those speed testers that record which ISP is in use, although these are very difficult to interpret as you can't know how long lines are or whether users’ modems are any good. ISPReview is worth a look as it has users' speed opinions in it. Others might have some constructive suggestions.
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@rustybob There will be a bottleneck somewhere, and obviously this is usually your line. In the case where you are talking to a particular web server, that server or the pipe into it could be overloaded though. If your particular ISP has lots of capacity (and that also has to apply to partner carriers if the ISP uses e.g. BTW or TTB for access from customers) into its network and to the wider internet then as long as that's enough considering the weight of traffic from their user base then its good enough. So you want an ISP that either has high capacity links or low-usage customers or few customers. Traffic capacity obviously has to be relative to the number and type of customers that the ISP has. Networks that offer QoS (quality of service) can prioritise some traffic types over others, so that packets get sent first and jump over queues. This reduces latency dramatically and can improve throughput.
To answer your question about how to find out. If your ISP publishes congestion reports then that's a plus. ;-) Otherwise it’s probably a matter of digging around, asking users, rumour mill, or perhaps looking at the results of those speed testers that record which ISP is in use, although these are very difficult to interpret as you can't know how long lines are or whether users’ modems are any good. ISPReview is worth a look as it has users' speed opinions in it. Others might have some constructive suggestions.
Thanks Weaver. I've put my investigative hat on :cool: and it looks like I'll be OK if I go with BTW.
I'm on the Chesterfield exchange an pre July 2016 people with say a normal connection speed of around 50 or 60mb were experiencing speeds of only 7.6Mbps at 9.00pm. BT acknowledged a congestion issues and added further capacity in two stages - 14/07/16 and 22/07/16. Post these dates, the same users are quoting speeds of 50Mbps at 9.00pm so it looks like BTW would be a good option.
With regard to TT, I've a friend with them who can loose some of his speed at certain times. Was never really sure of why but I now have my suspicions, assuming I'm not jumping to the wrong conclusion? Probably need to do a little more research on TT though if I'm honest. With regard to Vodafone, there seems very little info out there. Given previous comments I'm guessing they would be OK, however, I've been trying to use their online 'chat' facility all day and keep getting a response of "We're sorry, all our advisers are busy - Unfortunately none of our Advisers are available to chat to you at this time. Please try again shortly". Not great if it was urgent and sort of makes the service pointless!
I should probably have a look at Sky too given Sky, TT and Vodafone all have an LLU presence.
Thanks
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If you have a LLU presence at your local exchange you would be mad not to make use of those LLU ISP's as the price per month would be significantly lower than without LLU all thanks to OFCOM :-\
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@rustybob
TBH, no ISP is immune from exchange or network congestion and adding in more capacity isn't as simple as flicking a switch which can be done overnight. It can take many weeks/months for an ISP to add more backhaul capacity, however there are some ISPs which are pro-active and increase capacity in advance such as AAISP and TalkTalk Business.
I'm with the latter (direct TTB customer) and even though i signed up to an eye watering 24 month contract on their 80/20 vdsl service, they have made it very clear to me that if they cannot resolve any line/broadband fault within 28 days of first reporting it, I can leave them penalty-free d/t some Ofcom business broadband ruling.
TTB's network status page is very detailed, shows what network improvements they have planned:
https://managed.mytalktalkbusiness.co.uk/network-status/
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So, just finished an online chat session with Vodafone...
Q1 - Can you use your own modem / route: Yes
Did you keep a copy of this chat?
I was looking at Vodafone when I found this thread. We weren't entirely comfortable because of the 18 month contract and the doubt over modem/router choice has only dented our confidence further.
I can't even initiate the chat myself. Since last Friday the contact us (https://www.vodafone.co.uk/contact-us/) section, after clicking on the section for home phone and broadband, just shows "we're sorry, all our advisers are busy" :wall:
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Did you keep a copy of this chat?
I was looking at Vodafone when I found this thread. We weren't entirely comfortable because of the 18 month contract and the doubt over modem/router choice has only dented our confidence further.
I can't even initiate the chat myself. Since last Friday the contact us (https://www.vodafone.co.uk/contact-us/) section, after clicking on the section for home phone and broadband, just shows "we're sorry, all our advisers are busy" :wall:
Why not call them and if the sales agent makes it clear that you can use your own router then ask for his/her full name in case they do a U turn.
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I would get the sales agent name and get the confirmation at the time of ordering as well, but it would be nice to have the reassurance of something in writing or email.
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Fair do's :fingers:
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Here you go...... there was more but I've had to delete content from 22:18 onwards as it had some personal info.
Hope it helps.
I can't even initiate the chat myself. Since last Friday the contact us section, after clicking on the section for home phone and broadband, just shows "we're sorry, all our advisers are busy" :wall:
I had that problem too. Throughout the day that's all I got. Post 21.30 gets better but no guarantees!
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Thanks rustybob :)
I finally got into chat myself and got a reply saying own router is fine. Hopefully management have relaxed their stance, I can understand why it's useful for the support to deal with standard kit and roll out firmware updates etc. but I don't see why plugging in the standard issue router should ever be a problem for anyone if a connection problem needs troubleshooting.
EDIT: for anyone else who may be looking to use chat on Vodafone, I think the contact us page is broken and just persistently shows as no advisers available. However the pop out that is half way up the right hand side of the browser windows will allow you to initiate a chat about broadband.