Slow Peak Time Broadband Speeds Strike Vodafone UK ISP Customers UPDATE2

Not for the first time, customers of Vodafone’s fixed line broadband service (seemingly both FTTC and FTTH) seem to complaining about a significant drop in service speeds and a rise in packet loss during peak times over the past few days. The reports appear to echo the network congestion issues that plagued the ISP last year.

The reports, some of which have reached our inbox, appear to be flooding across social media (e.g. Twitter) and you can also find a large number of seemingly related topics on Vodafone’s own Community Forum. Interestingly a few customers on the operator’s new Cityfibre built FTTH broadband service are also reporting a similar sort of issue to those on their wider Openreach based “superfast” FTTC (VDSL2) packages.

Overall the reports largely all tell the same story, which is that their broadband speeds remain fairly normal – albeit a bit slower than usual – during the daytime but fall away dramatically at peak (busy) times, such as during the evening hours when more people are online. The issue appears to have been occurring for the past few days, although quite a few people suggest that it started around Friday 23rd August 2019.

A number of customers with technical knowledge have also reported a rise in Packet Loss. Generally you want a low-latency connection with minimal packet loss. Networks are designed to auto-correct for packet loss but doing so can also increase the latency. A highly congested (busy) network is one of many possible causes for this sort of problem.

Sample Customer Complaint 1

Hi, For the past three days I’ve been getting speeds of under 10mbps both up and down on my gigafast connection. This only seems to occur during peak time. My Gigafast plan is 500mb.

Sample Customer Complaint 1

Was down to 1.7mbps last night, it was 33mbps this morning, but slowly dropping now down to 18mbps. Contacted Vodafone, what a joke that was, despite on at least 4 occasions advising I was not using their router they wanted me to perform tests on pages on their router. They then asked me to do a speedtest then told me it was my WiFi at fault when I had already told them I was using a hardwired PC. 1st line support is a joke.

Sample Customer Complaint 1

I’ve been having the same issue since Friday night. Meant to be getting up to 72Mbps, dropped right down to 6Mbps. It’s happening all times of the day.

Sample Customer Complaint 1

Same here, Friday night I was down to 1.5Mbps. Same issue on Saturday and Sunday. Things seem a little better today, I’m getting around 15Mbps, still down from my usual 54Mbps.

The fact that this issue started so suddenly suggests that the cause is likely to be related to a wider network fault or possibly the loss of major fibre capacity (e.g. a cable break somewhere). We note that the complaints have come in from across the UK and thus it’s been difficult to pin down.

One difference between this year’s problem and last year’s is that the 2018 issue grew gradually and appeared to stem from a general lack of network capacity. By comparison we hope that this issue may be one that doesn’t take as long to resolve, once all of the staff are back from their bank holiday break that is.

We have asked Vodafone for a comment and they’re investigating. We hope to report back later.

UPDATE 11:35am

I asked Andrew over at Thinkbroadband whether he had also seen a similar problem in his speedtest data and the answer came back in the affirmative. The same trend is not showing on other major ISPs, only Vodafone’s network, and it’s fairly evident when looking at the daily averages. As above the fall started on 23rd.

UPDATE 1:24pm

By the looks of it the problem at Vodafone may only be affecting some routes, while others appear to be more healthy. Meanwhile we’re still awaiting a comment from Vodafone and will be watching tonight to see if the problems return again.

UPDATE 28th Aug 2019 – 9:09am

Several Vodafone customers reported that their broadband speeds were fine during the daytime yesterday but then dropped away after 5pm last night. As it’s early morning we’ve so far only had limited feedback but we should get a better picture as new data arrives. Meanwhile we finally have Vodafone’s statement.

A Vodafone Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We apologise to any of our home broadband customers who recently experienced slower speeds than normal. We have now resolved the issue and customers should now see their broadband speeds improving. The issue was caused by human error when carrying out some routine maintenance work.”

Sadly we aren’t told what kind of “human error” was involved. Hopefully service speeds tonight will be better.