Vodafone Cut Price of 500Mbps and 900Mbps Broadband by £8
Mobile operator and ISP Vodafone UK appears to have cut the price of their top two Gigafast Broadband products (500Mbps and 900Mbps) by £8 per month, which is what they offer in urban areas covered by Cityfibre’s on-going Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network build.
The entry-level package remains unchanged and costs £28 per month for an unlimited 100Mbps symmetric speed service on and 18 month contract term (includes a good wireless broadband router). However their 500Mbps and 900Mbps (average speed) tiers have now seen their prices fall from £38 to £30 and £48 to £40 per month respectively (credits to Dan for spotting this), which makes them one of the cheapest such providers in the whole market.
Cityfibre currently aims to invest £4bn in order to deploy their Gigabit capable “full fibre” broadband infrastructure to cover “at least” 1 million UK premises by the end of 2021 (phase one – costing c.£500m), before potentially rising to 8 million premises by the end of 2025 or later (here). We’re expecting an updated roll-out plan to be announced once the FibreNation purchase from TalkTalk completes next month.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Quite surprising there is even any profit at that sort of price
You have to assume they got a pretty sweet deal from cityfibre as the first mover, and then an ever sweeter deal when they agreed to relax exclusivity
They maybe also taking a loss just so they can increase uptake of their Fttp service as most of the general public won’t know the difference between FTTC or FTTP as the advertising of FTTC spoke about being fibre broadband, so take a short term loss to move people over and hopefully retain them in the future.
There probably isn’t
if Hyperoptic makes money, they probably make money too..
A couple of things to unpack here.
Gain market share before others get onto CityFibre network as their exclusivity period expires.
Gain market share before Openreach release 550 / 1000 FTTP at consumer prices.
Provide a stick to beat Openreach with over the pricing of FTTP – if they can offer this pricing via CityFibre they’ll be wanting to get Openreach as close as possible.
Very clever. I have my doubts about the sustainability of this pricing however if they converge the mobile and fixed line networks fully that’ll help.
Early bird gets the worm.
Giffgaff mobile SIM was the same when it first launched, really cheap prices (£10/month unlimited everything). Tons of customers signed up, and their friends/families.
Now years later when they are normal or even expensive, some people are still with them due to never bothering to leave or search for cheaper.
They’ll probably coordinate selling mobile plans as well. It’s good to have some competition all round.
Seems like decent pricing. If this is possible via CityFibre, then why on Earth can the likes of BT (and others via Openreach) not offer similar pricing if they have ECONOMIES OF SCALE? Openreach is by far larger, and has more bargaining power. It’s like the likes of Tesco unable to offer a better price than a local hardware store, despite having more bargaining power with suppliers.
If one can get 900Mbps for the price of £40 a month, it seems bizarre to pay £49.99 to BT for a 330Mbps service, and that too only with a “guaranteed speed fo 150Mbps”!?
On another note, does the DSL checker showing “up to 330” on Openreach mean that the property can go “up to 1000” if one was recently told the property is FTTP ready (Openreach)? As far as I’m aware the FTTC cabinet is Huawei (which is not where the Fibre comes from), no idea how to tell whether the node/exchange where the Fibre comes from is ECI or Huawei, but I was under the impression that Openreach said all new FTTP lines would be future proof?
How can one tell if the DSL checker is just speed limited artificially and what you can get? Because I guess the ‘salesperson’ for BT or whoever will just use that to judge what product they can sell you even after March 2020?
It seems bizarre also that we will end up with a situation where we may get “overbuild” in the country with two, or three fibre lines to properties and yet zero lines to other parts of the country. Will CityFibre even build out to places where Openreach has delivered (albeit extremely late)? I rang up Vodafone now and someone said that “oh yes your property is on the list for the CityFibre build out which is 70% done.” Yet an automated e-mail from a CityFibre enquiry said that they weren’t planning this area just yet and the usual spiel about 2025 as a national target??
Smacks of desperation. For the majority of users, 100/100 vs 500/500 doesn’t make any practical difference, and this move shows that hardly anyone was prepared to pay a £10 premium for it. They’re testing the waters to see if users will pay a £2 premium instead.
Could it be that the decision to offer symmetric speeds has turned around to bite them? 100/100 is simply too good a service at the price point. It is a pretty decent leased line replacement.
With Openreach’s new products, if you want 100M of upload then you are forced to pay for 1G of download, whether you will use it or not.
Upload limited as OR have a very large ethernet estate to protect. If they were to do symmetric services, how many biz users would ditch their ££££ ethernet for ££ FTTP.
If a customer can get 500/500 for a fraction of what they pay for a similar leased line service, many will jump based on price alone.
None of the broadband propositions run at a profit for Vodafone, its loss making. However the goal is oi gain market share.
As for Cityfibre exclusivity, that only lasts 18 months from when a market goes live.
And the small print for this deal say “Prices may change during your contract” so you may not be paying this amount for the full 18 months.
BTW if you pay the full £48 for the 900Mb service, you get an Apple TV 4k box and a 1 year Apple TV sub thrown in. Plus that is the only contract guaranteed to have no in contract price rise.
But you’re starting at a lower price point. Versus BT who charge £49.99 a month for a 330Mbps service, with a guaranteed speed of half that (150Mbps). And they most certainly will increase the price at least once a year.
What I would do to achieve speeds like that. I’m happy with my 74 meg
So does that mean it is only 30 not 38 now for my 500mbps?
or what lol.
Yes
100mb is £28
500mb is £30
900mb is £40
I’ve been a customer of the 500mb package for £38 since it went live in Aberdeen, was installed on the first day they started doing installs in my area.
Phoned up VF today and asked could I change to £30 for the 500 instead of the £38 price and was told no as I was in contract at £38
Bit they did allow a mid contract upgrade to 900mb for just £2 more without extending the term.
Of course I took it. Gigabit speed for £2 than I was currently spending, not a bad deal
You’re lucky. Waiting to see if CityFibre will roll out around here. Openreach just upgraded this postcode to FTTP, but it’s £49.99 for just 330Mbps. To get 900Mbps for £40 is awesome!
I rang Voda to ask about this. They wouldn’t give me the price reduction as I am on the 900 service. They tried to offer me the AppleTV 4K but couldn’t do that as it only applies to new users. No matter, I’ll keep paying the £48 then.
You’re extremely lucky. What others of us wouldn’t give to even get the £48 price for a 900Mbps service. Right now, finally see I’m FTTP ready with Openreach, but the BT price is £49.99 for 330Mbps (with guaranteed speed of only 150).
I asked Vodafone if CityFibre are coming here and they said yes it’s imminent, but CityFibre itself responded to an enquiry and said they aren’t coming here just yet.
Is Gigafast good so far? It’s great for people like you who are lucky enough to have a choice!
Extremely decent pricing. If this is possible via CityFibre, then why on Earth can the likes of BT (and others via Openreach) not offer similar pricing?
If one can get 900Mbps for the price of £40 a month, it seems bizarre to pay £49.99 to BT for a 330Mbps service, and that too only with a “guaranteed speed fo 150Mbps”!?
On another note, does the DSL checker showing “up to 330” on Openreach mean that the property can go “up to 1000” if one was recently told the property is FTTP ready (Openreach)? As far as I’m aware cabinet is Huawei, no idea how to tell whether the node/exchange where the Fibre comes from is ECI or Huawei, but I was under the impression that Openreach said all new FTTP lines would be future proof?
It seems bizarre also that we will end up with a situation where we may get “overbuild” in the country with two, or three fibre lines to properties and yet zero lines to other parts of the country. Will CityFibre even build out to places where Openreach has delivered (albeit extremely late)?
I’m quite aware of why you’re seeing 330 on the BT Wholesale checker however given how much you seem to love to complain I wouldn’t want to deprive you the opportunity to whinge some more.
2-3 Mb and you’d rather stay on that and whine online about how much you’re getting ripped off only having a service available to 10% of the UK population available than actually order something with a view to an upgrade later, or because smaller operators that aren’t regulated charge less.
Just stay on ADSL. You get to carry on whinging and you get to pay less. You clearly don’t need faster else you’d have bought it already and if it works well you will have to find something else to complain about.
FYI, though, if Openreach charge too little Ofcom will kick off. They have to keep their pricing high to some extent to ensure CityFibre, etc, can make a business case to build.
Regarding the guaranteed speeds check the guaranteed speed on Gigafast.
That’d be zero.
CarlT
No one here is whinging or using ad hominem except you. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.
You assume that people here are happy with ADSL and only use it. Many of us use wireless/mobile internet because we have no choice, which costs money. Obviously people would love to have FTTP.
Nothing you said negated my question or point. BT charging £49.99 for 330Mbps when another provider (in this case Vodafone) charges £40 for 900Mbps is obviously a silly situation.
Nor did you answer my legitimate question about the 330 and 1000 availability on Openreach with regards to the DSL checker. It’s important for people to know their options.
If you can help then answer (which helps everyone). If you’re here to just blindly justify blatant flaws in the fibre rollout and attack others, then may you live in interesting times.
I live in times interesting enough to have better things to do than write novella because a small minority of people have better/cheaper FTTP access than I, John.
That aside the checker you are using is BT Wholesale, not Openreach.
If you are determined to not jump until you can get higher speeds at lower cost my recommendation would be to wait for TalkTalk, Vodafone and Sky to join the Openreach party which should happen imminently. Certainly no later than end of March.
Comparable speeds within the ballpark of CityFibre pricing over Openreach should be a thing towards the back end of this year. Possibly earlier.
LLAP.
At John Uncle:
I wasn’t complaining about the price as such, just wanted to see what Voda would do as this new offer is available. I’ve really enjoyed the benefits of these speeds because as a blind person, I make use of real time OCR and cloud services. There’s an app called “Be My Eyes” which lets you connect to remote assistance for product identification and things using video feeds. It’s a lot more reliable on gigafast as would be expected.
I don’t want people thinking I was whining about the price cut – just seeing if I could get something from them.
@James Jolley
I wasn’t suggesting you were complaining. I was commending your available service. Very happy that it helps you in the ways you’ve described. FTTP and fast speeds really can help people in many ways. Yours is a great example. Hoping we get a similar service from Vodafone/CityFibre soon over here. Also pretty sure Vodafone will discount you/give you a mobile deal as an existing customer. Best wishes