UK ISP Vispa Boosts City Wireless Broadband Capacity in Warrington

Cheshire-based ISP Vispa claims to be “working hard to fix the problems” that have recently impacted customers on its new up to 60Mbps (Megabits per second) capable City Wireless broadband network in Burtonwood, Winwick and Chapelford (Warrington, England).

The network, which sprang to life in the spring of last year, typically targets parts of Warrington that suffer from slow fixed line broadband connections (e.g. below 0.5Mbps). Unfortunately no new network project goes without a hitch and some of Vispa’s initial customers have reported a variety of connection and separate performance woes due to “overwhelming demand“.

Vispas City Wireless Statement

As many of you will be aware, there have been several issues with the wireless network in these areas and we have been working hard to fix the problems. Due to Christmas being in the way, it’s been a little difficult for us to make any progress, however as soon as we moved into the new year, we started to make good progress.

Apparently “one of the most common problems” that customers in the area have experienced concerns Vispa’s supplied TP-Link 1042/1043 router, which sometimes hangs (freezes) and requires a “power cycle” (that’s old techy slang for switching it off and on again) in order to reconnect to the wifi and Internet. Thankfully a new BETA Firmware has been released that should resolve this.

Vispa believes that “the majority of support tickets we have received regarding poor performance” also related to the firmware problem, although that hasn’t stopped the ISP moving to increase its backhaul capacity in Warrington. Indeed Vispa admits that performance drops during peak times, which recently forced it to introduce some Quality of Service (QoS) restrictions, were most likely down a lack of effective capacity.

Vispas Statement Added:

In the background, we have been working hard alongside our suppliers to survey, plan and execute the installation of a new fibre backhaul link that will replace our 30km+ wireless backhaul links which connect to our core network in Manchester, as we believe that although these links have worked well and served their purpose in proving the concept and demand for a superfast broadband service in these areas, the intention was always to replace them with fibre when the time was right.

Unfortunately for Vispa, we didn’t expect this to happen so soon as it did and due the overwhelming demand and use of the network, we’ve had to work extremely quickly to bring the network build forward.

The ISP claims that after 6-8 weeks of work it has now finally agreed terms with a local high-rise building landlord, which should enable them to have a “central point of presence” that will provide backhaul to each area with “redundancy also built into the network“. Only “minimal construction work” is said to be needed and Vispa hopes to exchange contracts and place an order within the next 30 days.

It’s understood that a go-live date for the new capacity has not yet been set but the ISP expects to confirm something once the contracts have been sorted.