Full Fibre

[GG.]

Anyone upgraded to this & have any experiences to share?

I'm out of contract now for Virgin and the price has shot up from originally £30pcm in mid 2022 to £57pcm (reversion to normal rolling monthly price and loss of £6pcm monthly discount). This is for 250mbps speeds, though speedtest.net is telling me I'm only getting 120mbps. Apparently their best price is £45pcm for 500mbps. I'm fine at current speeds and would rather not pay extra for speed i'm not using and/or which is not achievable.

If I have to change to Sky however, they look to use an even older method of connection through a phone socket so I'm considering their full fibre option which is only £34pcm for 500mbps...

Is is more likely to get closer to that speed if full fibre / FTTP?

[Mito Man]

I’ve had full fibre for many years with Hyperoptic, 1gbps which it actually does when I do a Speedtest through my PC which is connected via Ethernet, otherwise WiFi is about a quarter of that.
And no, I don’t need 1gbps but whenever I go to renew my contract after 2 years they give me this for the same price as 500mbps

[drcarlos]

Father in law moved to the provider around here that I can also get. He was on a Virgin connection and paid for 1GB, which it achieved sometimes (but Virgin have a really big issue with contention ratio) but only at quiet periods.
He moved to Toob who do 1GB up and down for £25pcm and binned off Virgin, including all of the TV and now just streams from Netflix, prime, 4, 5 and ITV-X. He doesn't use BBC anymore and cancelled his licence too.
Everytime he comes round now he's smug about how much it's saved him and say it's been 100% reliable.
He also got the fixed IP and moved his server back home from the hosting provider, not that he works anymore, but I guess old habits die hard.
It's good to have a guinea pig to test for me and on the back of it I'll be moving myself later this year (Virgin contract is up in Aug), but I think I'll also get NowTV and keep the licence as the wife likes to watch Eastenders and live TV.

[dinny_g]

I have Virgin Full Fibre to the home which costs £33 per month. It's "Up to 900Mbps" with 450 guaranteed. I'm am getting about 480 over Wifi in the Living room where the router is. As that's where Sky and the Smart TV are, this is more than enough.

I have a Vodaphone booster (which was free) in my office and get 300 to 350 range here which again, is more than adequate for work, Teams Calls etc . Mini-dinny gets about the same in his room which is more than enough for his xBox.

Service was shaky for the first month or 6 weeks but overall, it's pretty solid.

[Sundayjumper]

Yep, we have 150mbps with ZZOOMM and get a totally solid 190 down & very slightly more up. The modem has failed twice which is a pain but they replaced it FOC both times.

I keep considering upgrading to one of their faster packages (I notice they now offer up to 2 gig) but I'm not sure I'd actually notice any difference ? It has no trouble streaming 4k from Netflix / Amazon and that's the most demanding thing I ever do.

[Jobbo]

I had Virgin fibre (which is to the box in the street, not all the way to your house, so not quite FTTP but still good) for many years. Then moved to the sticks and got Gigaclear FTTP which was solid and fast up and down. Now I’ve gone for Plusnet Full Fibre which seems to be FTTP; it’s fine and low latency but still has a slower upload than download speed. Price is much less the gouging Gigaclear - there is competition unlike the properly rural stuff where you’re just grateful for more than two cups and a piece of string.

[Beany]

550 up/down here with IDnet, realisitically it's ~450 any time of the day you want it, and even than some of that might be down to my modem/firewall/traffic shaping settings I have locally on my router. I'm not too fussed by headline speeds so I run some moderately fancy stupidity on there, etc.

One word of warning is that if you're in an area that's having full fibre rolled out, then do expect the odd dropout till the work is completed - some backbone providers are better than others at arranging planned maintenance.

The impression I got from IDNet - and for the purposes of the tape, they didn't they these exact words but I could hear their eyes rolling over the phone - was that they were really rather unimpressed with one of their providers (Cityfibre) who seemed to be just letting any apprentice splice the fibres up, and fuck things up.

Seems they've given them absolute laldy about it (given that with IDnet, their service level and that you never need to call them is like, their main selling point...) as it's been fine since.

Basically, it's broadly worth it, if the price is right, although a fibre link to your house just means it's not going to suffer signal loss - if your ISP does shit network management, that part is still the same.

So if you've been disappointed with Virgin/BT/whomever because the speed drops in peak times, the speed will probably still drop in peak times even on full fibre because that's managed further 'up the stack' and isn't affected by what physical layer you're using, etc.

IE Virgins network has historically been oversubscribed, for profit - just because they have more bandwidth on hand doesn't mean they're gonna stop that practise, there's no shareholder value in that...

[scotta]

Ive got SKY 500 FTTP i usually get 550 meg down and around 80 up. Service is rock solid and their support IME has been decent in the odd occasion its not.

Weve also got sky Q. It uses the mini boxes for wifi mesh.

[MikeHunt]

Another vote for plusnet, you really cant go wrong, I think there is a referral scheme.

[integrale_evo]

Had by fibre to the property for years, don’t think I’ve ever known it to slow down or drop out.

Only went for it because adsl was dog turd, and would usually sit around 5mb. We ‘only’ get 150mb, but it’s always more than enough for anything we use so seems pointless paying for more for the couple of times a year I download a big game.

[Rich B]

I ditched Sky altogether (tv/broadband) and got Trooli 900mb for £20 a month. I get about 700mb sat next to the router, and about 300 at the worst in the house. The upload is a similar number too.

[Simon]

I've still only got FTTC here and get about 60/20. It's pathetic. And according to the openreach planner they don't plan on even getting FTTP here until the end of '26, by which time our new build estate next door will have had it for 17 years (from build). Really really shit. Openreach need a rocket up their arse.

[DeskJockey]

I upgraded to Vodafone FF yesterday. Had been waiting for Community Fibre for several years, but last time I checked their message had gone from "nearly there" (borne out by the stickers on the cabinets around here) to "jog on", so I gave up and just upgraded my Vodafone copper to FF.

Compared to when I tried getting BT FF three years ago (when the road was "lit up") it was a night and day experience, despite OpenReach (subcontractors) doing the work both times. First time round I cancelled when they failed to bring a lift for the third time. They had decided they needed it, but were unable to get one. Or somesuch rubbish.

This time two guys showed up, i said you'll need a lift, they said no, and proceeded to fit the cable exactly as I asked, leaving no mess and everything working. I now get 500/70 on WiFi sat on the sofa. That's spot on the advertised speeds, and all for 42p/month more than I was paying before.

[240PP]

70Mb through Plusnet. There’s generally only me in the house day to day but it’s fine/fast. I just assumed that any broadband deal over 50Mb would be sufficient for anyone, is that not the case?

[Matty]

We've got a private company called "Voneus" installing their own FTTP in our village as Openreach don't have any plans until 2026. I've signed up....but who knows how long it'll take - they've been working in the nearby streets for a few months now.

Only on 18/2, so moving upto 500/500 will be a decent improvement.

[mik]

BT fibre for several years now. Happy with it. It’s fast.

[Rich B]

70Mb through Plusnet. There’s generally only me in the house day to day but it’s fine/fast. I just assumed that any broadband deal over 50Mb would be sufficient for anyone, is that not the case?

300mb+ speed meant I could start this call of duty update when I got home from work and be playing with my mates online by 9. At 50mb I'd be waiting til the next day.

[mik]

I should have said - 900mb for mine. Have measured 950 on a laptop plugged into the input, but it’s half that on the WiFi. Still ample howevah.

[Jobbo]

70Mb through Plusnet. There’s generally only me in the house day to day but it’s fine/fast. I just assumed that any broadband deal over 50Mb would be sufficient for anyone, is that not the case?

As soon as you have multiple teenagers wanting to download updates at the same time, it’s not enough. But for me, 30-40mpbs would cover everything happily.

[scotta]

70Mb through Plusnet. There’s generally only me in the house day to day but it’s fine/fast. I just assumed that any broadband deal over 50Mb would be sufficient for anyone, is that not the case?

Is that on dial up grandad