Full Fibre ISP CommunityFibre Drop Promise of No Mid-Contract Price Hikes
London-focused UK ISP CommunityFibre, which has so far covered 307,000 homes (and 12,000 businesses) with their 3Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, looks set to drop their long-held promise of “NO mid-contract price hikes” today when they refresh their broadband packages and prices.
Over the past few months we’ve seen a number of ISPs soften or scrap similar pledges on some of their packages, with TalkTalk being one of the most prominent (although they do still offer this, but at an extra cost). Sadly, CommunityFibre’s refreshed packages, which should go online later this morning, have also removed mention of their previously prominent commitment to no mid-contract price hikes (this is also reflected in their updated T&Cs).
On top of that, all 12-month term based offers during January we will now apply a setup fee of £9.95. Otherwise, the refreshed packages will start at £18 per month for a speed of 35Mbps on a 24-month term (£25 thereafter), which goes up to just £25 per month for their symmetric 1Gbps plan (£54 thereafter). You can of course take a shorter 12-month term, albeit at extra cost. The new promotional pricing will last until midnight on 10th February 2022.
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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Not really a huge surprise if they have. It was built on the premise that their own input costs would stay relatively constant over the course of a contract.
I imagine the promotional prices are loss-leaders and alongside the capital expenditure on network build soaking up double figures inflation on new equipment isn’t an option.
Yes, it’s running way higher than CPI inflation, when you can actually purchase the stuff. Vendors are struggling to buy the chips they need and having to pay more for them. That gets passed on to their customers who in turn in the case of ISPs pass it on to theirs.
Ouch! This isn’t good news at all. £25/month for 35Mbps is an insult, quite frankly. This isn’t going to attract new subscribers, where I live only 1 in 3-4 households are CF customers (judging by router SSIDs) and we’ve had it available for 18 months now. The network is all there already with a cable dangling outside everyone’s window and their product is superior, now they need to get new long-term customers and not just to turn the screws on us loyal people until the pips squeak.
Their marketing is almost non-existent, I don’t think people even know about it. If I were them I’d be doing door to door leafletting on the regular and knocking on doors.
Being network builders, leaflets are something they’ll do as standard practice. As for packages, they seem to be one of the cheaper options for faster plans.
Gosh, interesting you say that as I think they have the strongest marketing. We can only get hyperoptic but yet see adverts for CF everywhere I turn..
“£25/month for 35Mbps is an insult, quite frankly”
How come?? It’s cheaper than BT (£28 for 40/10), and you get a far better upload speed.
If you buy right now, you can get 50Mbps symmetric for £20/month for 24 months (reduced from £22.50/month), which is a steal – if you are in a CommunityFibre area of course.
£25 a month for 35Mbps isn’t an insult, its a really bad joke.
Over a year ago they send us a letter explaining soon they’ll be here, but after all the weighting then openreach beat them and installed in our street, so we quickly jumped to the first fttp available… I’m still willing to get community fibre, even if just for 12months to compare to openreach, 1g for 1g package… I’m looking for performance during peak times. I registered interest and still no progress, maybe next year.
In my experience you always get the advertised speed but I am on the 150/150 package, I don’t know how their gigabit package performs but all their network is built (here anyway in Sydenham/Dulwich) with Adtran 10Gb kit so I don’t think it would be a problem.
Heaven knows what you want a gigabit for anyway, 150mbit is obscenely fast and any faster would just be money down the drain.
@ A G
Almost like different people have different requirements. Who’d have thunk.
I’ll stick to 1g packages, thanks.
Similar story here.
Community Fibre previously said they were due to roll-out here by the end of the year – now they are quoting late 2022. This means Openreach will beat them here.
Odd really that CF have such a delay, they surveyed the area and and put markings on streets months ago, OR have just the same..
“We’ve decided not to be as greedy as all the other ISPs”.
Good on ya.