ISP Vodafone UK Discount Openreach and CityFibre FTTP Prices
Mobile operator and fixed line ISP Vodafone UK has today further reduced the already discounted prices of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) powered home broadband packages for new customers, which are available on both Openreach and CityFibre’s respective national full fibre networks. The slower FTTC plans have also been cut.
At present Openreach’s gigabit-capable FTTP network already covers over 6 million premises, while CityFibre’s has recently reached 1 million premises. Both operators aim to significantly expand their coverage to include millions of additional homes over the next few years.
The new Vodafone deals will be available to order until 31st March 2022. As usual, all customers will receive a wireless broadband router, unlimited usage and a 24-month minimum contract term. Some packages also now come with the operator’s “Pro” add-ons included as part of the offer (Wi-Fi Guarantee, Automatic 4G Broadband Back-Up, Dedicated WiFi Xperts and 12 Months Free Norton 360 Premium), which normally costs extra.
We note that Vodafone’s advertised package speeds and prices have diverged to reflect the differences between CityFibre and Openreach’s respective networks, thus we’ve separated them all out below.
Openreach Powered Vodafone Packages
Superfast 1
Average download: 36Mbps
Average upload: 9Mbps
Price: £18 per monthSuperfast 2
Average download: 73Mbps
Average upload: 18Mbps
Price: £19 per monthSuperfast 100
Average download: 100Mbps
Average upload: 18Mbps
Price: £22 per monthUltrafast 200 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 200Mbps
Average upload: 27Mbps
Price: £32 per monthUltrafast 500 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 500Mbps
Average upload: 68Mbps
Price: £32 per month (same price as above plan)Gigafast 900 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 910Mbps
Average upload: 105Mbps
Price: £70 per monthCityFibre Powered Vodafone Packages
Superfast 1
Average download: 41Mbps
Average upload: 41Mbps
Price: £18 per monthSuperfast 2
Average download: 82Mbps
Average upload: 82Mbps
Price: £19 per monthSuperfast 100
Average download: 100Mbps
Average upload: 100Mbps
Price: £22 per monthUltrafast 200 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 200Mbps
Average upload: 200Mbps
Price: £32 per monthUltrafast 500 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 500Mbps
Average upload: 500Mbps
Price: £32 per month (same price as above plan)Gigafast 900 (includes ‘Pro’ extras)
Average download: 910Mbps
Average upload: 910Mbps
Price: £35 per month
One other change that we noticed is in the small print, which seems to reflect a significant post-contract price rise for the provider’s slowest “superfast” plans. Oddly, this price increase is significantly more than on their FTTP tiers, which might make sense if they were trying to push users from copper to fibre, but it applies to FTTP lines too and doesn’t seem very proportional.
The relevant text states: “Please note, your monthly bill will increase by £10 a month for Superfast plans and £3 a month for Pro Superfast, Ultrafast and Gigafast plans after your initial 24-month contract.”
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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So is Vodafone’s Openreach packages being done via a rollout? Because I have BT/OR FTTP but Vodafone are only offering me FTTC on the website.
Coverage availability can vary between networks and ISPs due to all sorts of reasons, although it’s often related to issues of backhaul capacity, a possible lack of an unbundled exchange or the provider simply not having updated their database. Also, in Vodafone’s case, if you’re in an area where CityFibre plan to build then Vodafone may prefer to wait for that network to arrive as part of their agreement.
The result for consumers is, of course, just more annoying confusion.
@Mark
Thanks.
@tech3475
If you are after 900Mbps via Openreach FTTP, then if BT don’t offer you a good renewal price, you could get closer to the £40 mark for a 12 months contract:
Cuckoo Broadband – Until January 31st 2022, you can sign up with 3 months free on a 12 month contract for 900Mbps at £54.99 a month (no set up fee) with no price rises for 12 months. This gives you an effective monthly price of around £41 a month.
You can get a further £20 off as credit as well bringing the effective price to £39.58 a month. This is their website which will show the offer up until that date. After that you can still get £20 off in any case:
cuckoo.co/r/glamorous-thriving-starling
After 12 months, the customer automatically goes onto the rolling contract at the same price as a new customer at that point.
Would be nice if bt would hurry up as its a street away from me sick of waiting
Its been over a year now since OR came available in my area and voda have yet to offer it, I’ve tried multiple contact points but no joy do ended up getting a good offer from BT.
If you can wait the deals from Vodafone are great so hang fire I just annoyed and the deal came close in cost so jumped.
Been with Vodafone home fibre since about 2018. Best service so far!
Got the superfast 2 [openreach network] for £18 since last renewal.
No its because Openreach limit the uploads so it doesn’t kill off some of its leased line business. No technical reasons.
The difference in upload speeds isn’t a technology issue as the network architectures are broadly the same, both being G-PON – based (this is true of most alt-nets too). G-PON is not symmetric, unlike the latest iteration of the technology (XGX-PON).
The primary reason for the difference is that the companies are making different calculations about the level of network contention that they are prepared to tolerate, or are deciding to load less than the usual number of customers per card in order to make symmetric speeds practical.
In my view Openreach is simply being more upfront about the bandwidth limitations of G-PON, no doubt others have reached different conclusions. Of course, for most of us the difference is irrelevant as we typically download significantly more data than we upload anyway, even allowing for video calls, cloud use etc.
Symmetric speeds will become more commonplace as networks migrate to XGS-PON, driven by customer demand. I’m sure Openreach would accelerate such a deployment if their customers, the ISPs, were pushing for it, especially as the cost difference between the two technologies has narrowed significantly.
I am not so sure about its leased line business. Almost every competitor to BT has better leased line deals.
And there are types of small businesses where symmetric fibre is important, some users do more than merely using the internet as an entertainment downstream service. Many altnets have recognized this fact and, unlike BT, offer symmetric fibre.
Let’s hope that this beggar known as BT won’t ask for more taxpayer’s money again in the future. It certainly can afford from its own funds to upgrade its old GPON to e.g. XGS-PON.
Can someone please explain to my pea brained self, why upload speeds on products using openreach’s FTTP network, are always significantly inferior to Altnet products, but priced either the same or higher.
How can Altnets offer more bandwidth for less? Shouldn’t openreach benefit from some economies of scale compared to Altnets?
Many altnets use a different PON technology, such as XGS-PON instead of GPON. See e.g. this article: https://www.calix.com/blog/2017/september/xg-pon–xgs-pon–ng-pon2-which-option-is-right-for-your-network-.html
@Bob
See my post above in response to Damien about the availability of symmetric speeds. For most users, symmetric speeds are not needed, at least at the moment, bearing in mind that the majority of customers are still choosing the slower speed services. Gigabit speeds are not really a big seller just now.
In terms of pricing, the altnets have to better the prices offered by the big ISPs that are generally using the Openreach network in order to tempt customers to try them, especially as the UK consumer market seems to be pretty price sensitive.
Bob, They’re pretty much selling the same thing.
An example: GPON at 2.5gbps down, 1gbps up is then shared between multiple customers by the ISP.
Obviously, that’s more down than up. Altnets are basically oversubscribing the upstream more than the downstream. BT are being more conservative, and thats why they sell products with a slower upload speed.
Altnets are essentially banking on people mostly using their connections for downloading. This means the contention won’t be a problem. If everyone starts uploading huge amounts of data – they’re probably going to have a bad time.
@bob
Higher costs on Openreach products are due to the altnets using the courts to ensure OFCOM will not let Openreach under cut them.
So the alt nets expect OFCOM to price Openreach and the BT Group products at a level that makes them look uncompetitive.
Openreach are highly regulated and can’t over subscribe as easily as some Alt-nets can.
Openreach also guarantee the full upstream bandwidth on all of their FTTP tiers.
For example on the 1000/115 product they only guarantee 110Mb/s on the downstream but guarantee the full 115Mb/s upstream.
Openreach also have lucrative leased line products that they don’t want to undercut.
GPON is 2:1 down/up (2.4Gb/s down and 1.2Gb/s up) so selling their gigabit tier at close to a 10:1 down/up ratio is purely a business decision and not a technical limitation.
Although many people keep commenting that they do want the additional upstream bandwidth or that some small businesses might actually need it, the majority don’t want or need it.
I don’t expect the downstream / upstream ratios to improve any time soon.
Getting frustrated. CityFibre advise me that Full Fibre is live outside my house but unfortunately no providers are currently connected to it. Presume only be Juice (local Dorset ISP) and Vodafone. With those prices wish to get on the bandwagon but more annoyance I can’t. Anything has to be better than my 25-30mb BT FTTC.
If you put your postcode into Cityfibres checker it tells you who is offering it at your address. It will be likely only one provider offering it for your postcode. for me its TalkTalk.
I only seem able to see the ‘up to’ 200Mbps service, the 500 and 900Mbps services are not showing for me and there’s no reason why – checking a local postcode that has FTTP (and has for the past 6 months).
Any reason why some FTTP packages are offered but not all? This is all I can see: https://www.cloudhq.net/c/56a2fd6a0a2c55
My FTTP service should be live in the next month, so I’m looking for a good deal at the moment! 🙂
Checked another postcode in a different area, both only offer up to the 200Mbps service (Openreach network). Perhaps worth querying this with Vodafone @Mark as the article suggests the fastest 2 packages should be available?
Same here. Don’t get offered a anything above 200Mbps by Vodafone.
Vodafone often limit the availability of the higher tiers in areas that are currently congested or require backhaul upgrades.
When those upgrades are done the higher tiers will become available.
900mbps for £70? Jesus no one is paying for that, £32 for 500 sounds good though.
Quidco price comparison for broadband in my local area is showing the following.
https://www.cloudhq.net/c/e075f77a78b79f
£35 for 900Mbps, 24 months. If that’s true it’s a great deal. However, when I click to view the offer on the VF website it’s not showing.
@JamesP
If you’re lucky enough to be in a CityFibre area, £35 is indeed a great price for 900/900. I thought they even did Openreach FTTP 900/115 for £40 at one point. Their website though seems to show the same address as available one day, and not the next. It’s been mentioned on their own forums as well.
If you are after 900Mbps FTTP and willing to go on Openreach FTTP, then you could get closer to the £40 mark for a 12 months contract:
Cuckoo – Until January 31st 2022, you can sign up with 3 months free on a 12 month contract for 900Mbps at £54.99 a month (no set up fee) with no price rises for 12 months. This gives you an effective monthly price of around £41 a month.
You can get a further £20 off as credit as well bringing the effective price to £39.58 a month. This is their website which will show the offer up until that date. After that you can still get £20 off in any case:
cuckoo.co/r/glamorous-thriving-starling
After 12 months, the customer automatically goes onto the rolling contract at the same price as a new customer at that point.
Two questions; What router do they provide for CityFibre FTTP?
And Does anyone know when Vodafone will be available in Newcastle east as according to CityFibre’s own website you can only get TalkTalk and it doesn’t come up as orderable when you put your postcode into Vodafones checker.
99.9% of standard retail would be more than happy with the Superfast 100 offering over Openreach, with the 18mb/s upload speed. Some business users may require faster upload speeds, if for example they were involved in game development, Graphic design, or running a server hosting service, where remote users are accessing data requiring faster upload speeds. Strictly speaking, anyone running a business would likely need enhanced SLA’s, compared to the average home user, so their business would likely need a leased line option anyway, with fast SLA’s to ensure their business continuity. It’s no good having 910mb/s both way working if you lose service for days due to a fault, which is where leased services come in.
As far as Gaming, latency is more important than bandwidth, once you reach a certain speed, and latency is as much about Core Network as the Access Network. For most, symmetrical working isn’t required, and the ones that do need it should probably think about leased service, with better SLA fix times.
I think 100Mbps is an underestimate.
VM’s mean download speed was 153.5Mbps in 2021 (371Mbps for the top 10% of users).
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/12/the-2021-vs-2020-top-fastest-uk-mobile-and-home-broadband-isps.html
They offer nominal 50,100,200,350,500 and 1000Mbps packages.
It’s probably fair to say that 200Mbps would suit 90% of users.
“It’s probably fair to say that 200Mbps would suit 90% of users.”
I’m currently working on FTTC, and just ran a couple of speed tests. Currently it comes back with a download speed of 30.82 MB/s, upload speed of 6.99 MB/s, and I am working fine with the news streaming over SkyGo in the background. I consider myself an average user; Why would I need 200 MB/s, when I’m working fine with less than a third of the speed offered by Superfast 100?
@Ex Telecom Engineer – I agree, for the vast majority of the UK population, the basic Ultrafast 150Mbps package will be ample especially if you’re not a large family. I currently get by on a 20/1Mbps FTTC connection and to be honest apart from the upload this is generally fine for my needs – I work from home and we perhaps consume around 300Gb of data per month (streaming, a bit of gaming, music, general browsing, working, etc), this won’t really change once we’re on FTTP (but we’ll have a more solid connection and a bit more bandwidth available!).
It would be interesting to see the average data consumption of those on the 900Mbps package. It may be suprisingly low?!
“For most, symmetrical working isn’t required, and the ones that do need it should probably think about leased service”
Looks like you are not a typical user, maybe a low-end user.
There is a big market gap between non-symmetric down-streaming entertainment users and leased line users. Which is where symmetric fibre comes into play, this whole market segment is simply not covered by BT/Openreach. Leased lines are often by a factor of 5 to 10 more expensive for equivalent speeds. And let’s be realistic: Many small businesses don’t use leased lines. We never experienced hours or days of network outages, many professionals will have backup lines, or secondary mobile network connections, anyway.
@Ex Telecom Engineer Are you 99.9% of the population?
I’ve linked data which shows that VM’s 5 million customer base on average choose around 150Mps download and 10% of them choose over 350 Mbps.
If I wasn’t clear I meant 90% of the population would need no more than 200Mps.
“And let’s be realistic: Many small businesses don’t use leased lines. We never experienced hours or days of network outages.”
The types of small business you must mean are probably Opticians, Dentists, Accountants, small retail, etc, most of which would manage with Superfast 1. Hotels/Restaurants/Leisure might go for a faster download speed, but do they really require faster symmetrical upload speeds? After all, they aren’t there to allow customers to run businesses, uploading vast amounts of content, while they serve them coffee. Internet Cafe’s would need a leased connection, since their business model would depend on fast fault fix, since they have no customers without connectivity. Offering fast symmetrical upload is a good marketing tool, but most wont come close to needing it.
As far as outages, we recently lost service due to contracters cutting through the cable feeding our development, and the service was down for 3 days, most businesses would need much faster fix than that. When I worked in Telecoms, leased customers Service Affecting Faults had a 4 hour fix SLA, there’s no way you’d get that on a standard FTTP connection.
“many professionals will have backup lines, or secondary mobile network connections, anyway.”
If they can work happily on tethering, or 4G router connectivity, why would they need 200MB/s Upload/Download? I stand by what I said, most don’t need that sort of speed, which may be why the Gigafast 900 is priced only £3 more than the Ultrafast 200 & 500 service. Chances are most Ultrafast users wont utilise more throughput than users on Superfast 100, but they’ll pay £10 a month more for the bragging rights.
“I’ve linked data which shows that VM’s 5 million customer base on average choose around 150Mps download and 10% of them choose over 350 Mbps.
If I wasn’t clear I meant 90% of the population would need no more than 200Mps.”
You were clear, but my point is that most wont even need 100 MB/s. If all these future users, on 100/200/500/910 MB/s, constantly utilised their full bandwidth, then the providers would have to heavily throttle the data anyway, as the Core networks wouldn’t cope with that level of data throughput. Apparently there are over 8 Million households in the UK, and around 96% have broadband, so when they’re all connected via FTTP, more than 7.5 Million households could potentially utilise 100mb/s plus regularly, which would mean networks would have to continually deal with at least 93,750 Petabytes/s; The current Openreach single day record, on 5 December 2021, was reported as 222 Petabytes. Clearly households wont utilse close to 100 Megabit/s average throughput, as it’s unimaginable that even future core networks could cope with anything close to 93,000 Petabytes per second. It seems clear that the higher speeds aren’t really needed and wont be fully utilised, as the networks wouldn’t cope if they did.
You both make good points, but usage can and is a mixture of steady and bursty data. Netflix with xbox download. The down load is for a few minutes. I want it fast. Rest of night, Netflix.
Sure, networks will be overloaded if we put peddle to the metal but we don’t live like that. Nobody slams the accelerator all the way to work and back yet we buy cars capable of 0 to 60 in 7 seconds or less. Life is stop go and steady speeds.
So yes and no. Most are happy with 20mb. I’m happy with 80mb. Will I pay for gigabit – hell yes, but not from verminmedia.
I should add. Will I use it…. Once a week yes. Twice a week maybe. Do I need it, no. Most of the time I’ll be using 8mbs with 2x streams running and a pc gaming session in the house.
I upload videos from time to time, when I do, my 19mbs upload is painful for 30 minutes to an hour. Sure I can upload just before bed etc. But I don’t want to.
The Internet is convenient and that means I’m willing to pay for potential capacity I often won’t use.
I find people who pay Deliveroo to go get them a McD crazy and bone idle. But hey, its convenient. So they pay for the luxury. Just as I balance the luxury of the Internet. We are all unique and balance What we want to pay for. I drive a crap car but can afford a jag. I chose to invest instead. We’re all free to decide what we want to waste our money on. If they offered me 10gb for about £120 pm, I’d probably pay it!
Sadly for a long contract, the price seems excessively high for their Openreach FTTP. As for the “Pro” element, as far as I understand the Wifi guarantee for the supplied hubs isn’t worth it versus buying your own Mesh system. They also have a hit and miss FTTP checker which may show the same address as FTTP ready up to 900Mbps one day, and not the following month.
If anyone is after Openreach FTTP, I think these are the deals worth considering:
1. Cuckoo – Until January 31st 2022, you can sign up with 3 months free on a 12 month contract with Openreach 900Mbps for £54.99 a month and no set up fee and no price rises for 12 months. This gives you an effective monthly price of around £41 a month. I believe they have rolling monthly contracts for FTTP also with a set up fee.
You can get a further £20 off as credit as well: cuckoo.co/r/glamorous-thriving-starling
Even without the 3 month offer, it would be £54.99 a month.
cuckoo.co/r/glamorous-thriving-starling
2. Shell FTTP 900Mbps for £49.99 for 18 months (with an approximate 9-10% increase in price in April/March) and then £57.99 after that.
https://www.shellenergy.co.uk/broadband/full-fibre
3. TalkTalk FTTP 900Mbps for £49 for 18 months with the Eero system for those who like that.
https://new.talktalk.co.uk/broadband/fttp
4. Sky FTTP 500Mbps for £45 for 18 months (prices may rise though)
I think as far as Openreach FTTP goes, BT and Vodafone have effectively priced themselves out as far as the “one click to order” prices go. The above options are on shorter contracts and all cheaper using the same underlying Openreach infrastructure! And it would appear that Sky and Cuckoo both guarantee a higher download speed as well versus the others.
Go through Quidco Broadband comparison and there are some better deals to be had if you include cashback and vouchers…
EE Fibre Max 500 = £34.50pm for 24 months (900Mbps = £45.58)
Sky Ultrafast+ 500 = £32.89pm for 18 months
James P, Cuckoo’s price beats the EE price for 900Mbps. It comes to £39.58 after the offer on a 12 month contract.
This is referral spam. You posted the same referral code on Money Saving Expert. That thread was deleted.
Man.. How I wish this was available at my address finally… Both Openreach and Cityfibre checkers say that they will start the build at some point… Just wonder when… :/
nah stuff those prices only mugs will pay these 5g broadband get a 5g router 400 quid on amazon unlimited sim only 16 a month.
I thought there was a major hoopla as Openreach were going to drastically drop their FTTP pricing? Are these the pre-dropped prices or after dropped prices? If Pre-dropped, if you signed up to this could Openreach potentially in a months time offer contracts for half this price for FTTP?
@Harold
Thanks, believe it or not but I was looking to sign up to them.
I was just having one last look around before signing up tomorrow.
@tech3475
You’re most welcome. They seem like a decent deal. If you use the referral link, you’ll get £20 credit as well. From what I’ve heard, they have good customer service also.
The 900 Cityfibre package seems to be a 50% until march, it spits out a £70 a month with the discount being -50% until March 31st lowering it to £35 on the breakdown.
The 500 doesn’t do this it just shows the discounted price as the standard price in the breakdown.
Nice if you can get but I expect to stuck on lousy FTTC for a long time to come.
Still got 14mth to go on my current BT FTTC contract :(, otherwise I could get the 100meg for less than I pay now (34meg).
I signed up in the “January Sale” for 500Mb on Cityfibre for £34/month – not due to be activated until March, however it’s now cheaper post-sale than it was before – feels like a DFS furniture sale!!
Anyone know how likely Vodafone would be to honour the new £32/month service? I only signed up last week so should still be able to in theory cancel my order – but would rather them just apply it, rather than cancel and re-order?
Thanks
@Simon I did the same and phoned to ask if they would price match and they was unable to and so I had to cancel the order and they told me to reorder after 24hrs.
What’s the chances of TalkTalk lowering their prices?
I don’t think any of the “big ISPs” are lowering their prices right now despite the fact the wholesale cost from Openreach has gone done under the Equinox offer. Apparently the ISPs are going to actually raise their price in April/March by around 8-10% a month.
Very disappointed in this whole thing, I had a new FTTP line installed in the street last week, and Vodafone give me the chance to upgrade, but only after this deal has expired. I contacted support, but they refused to honour this deal (Ultrafast 500)