Vodafone Explains Why Some FTTP Areas Only Offered 200Mbps
Some of Vodafone’s potential UK broadband ISP customers, specifically those trying to order one of their Openreach powered Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) plans, have run into an unusual problem that limits their choice of package to a top speed of 200Mbps (instead of 900Mbps+). But don’t worry, it’s only a temporary measure.
Historically, there can be a number of reasons why service or speed availability may differ between ISPs on the same physical network, which often causes confusion for consumers. Some of the most common causes tend to flow from issues related to local capacity, as well as the use of older ECI hardware (some areas on Openreach’s full fibre network are still hobbled by this) or the unbundled (or not) status of a local exchange etc.
In this case, a small number of Vodafone’s potential customers were finding that the operator could only offer them top download speeds of up to 200Mbps (they usually go up to 900Mbps+), which is despite other ISPs (e.g. BT, Zen Internet etc.) on the same network being able to offer the full gigabit-speed tiers.
Vodafone has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that there are a few “small pockets” of their network where this may be occurring, but it should only be temporary. In these locations, the provider informed us that there had been a delay to their planned capacity upgrade to help support the top speeds.
Issues like this normally tend to result in providers withdrawing the associated products from sale to new customers, until resolved. But in this case, Vodafone chose to deliver a smaller cable link to ensure that customers are able to get FTTP (albeit up to just 200Mbps) rather than only offer the slow hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) tiers. Once the main upgrade is delivered then the top speeds should become available again.
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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I’m one of those. Completely new network and I was the first one to be connected but the max speed was only 200Mbps.
Find the capacity issue hard to accept when BT, Zen, EE, etc are all offering up to 900Mbps.
“Small pockets” – I tried quite a few different postcodes in Kent, all only offered up to 200Mbps. That would suggest “Small pockets” are probably only able to get up to 900Mbps?!
“Find the capacity issue hard to accept when BT, Zen, EE, etc are all offering up to 900Mbps”
That’s because they have their own backhaul, remember that Openreach operate the access network and once at the handover exchange is goes to the ISPs backhaul.
All three you mentioned above use multiple providers or BT Wholesale. Vodafone have some areas with equipment with no 10G ports and deliveries of equipment have been very, very delayed.
You may be interested to know that on my exchange Zen’s Plexus network only goes up to 500 Mbit for the same reasons. To sell higher they have to use BT Wholesale. That’s fine for them as they already have contracts and capacity in place while Vodafone, like TalkTalk and Sky, do not.
Spending 6 figures building out 10G+ NNIs with BT Wholesale for the sake of serving a few 900 customers doesn’t really make sense.
I’d rather it was this way round than selling gigabit services in areas that can’t support it, and going through months of the connection being all but unusable in peak times. Looks like they might have learned from the problems they had when they launched FTTC.
Just another reason you don’t choose bucket shop ISP’s.
“Just another reason you don’t choose bucket shop ISP’s.”
You’ll find the smaller (more expensive) ISPs use the same backhaul as “bucket shop ISPs”…
I cannot order anything from Vodafone since our exchange area went FTTP only. The headend is Nokia. Even the 200Mps mailer I had from them does not work!
The headend or layer 2 switch (l2s) makes no difference, Nokia in this case, cable links to the isp network is the limiting factor, And there backbone infrastructure, am on a gigabit service via a Nokia headend and have no speed issues at all
Just shows how things can been read differently between people, I mentioned that the head end is Nokia, as ECI had been mentioned to make it clear that is not the problem. Just an observation that Vodafone seem to be behind with true fibre rollout especially if the headend exchange is now a fibre priority area.
Been on FTTP 18 months. Originally Vodafone had the highest speed as 100Mbps, now 200Mbps is available.
This is in a large town.
Certainly hasn’t been a ‘short time.
Agreed! Vodafone call it “temporary”. Going by their own Vodafone Broadband forum, you can see existing customers mentioning this major issue since at least 2019, and many new posts/comments on the matter since all the way up to now in 2022. It still looks like they haven’t got their act together and will inevitably lose existing customers to other FTTP providers on Openreach. Maybe they can re-compete in the future on Openreach, but they surely have shot themselves in the foot with such disorganisation, or incompetence. I get that CityFibre services was a big deal. But nevertheless, when Openreach started rolling out FTTP, and Vodafone are offering only up to 200Mbps at a poor price relative to others, who is going to join them? Indeed existing customers on FTTC will just leave to another competitor. Which looking at their forums, is what many people seem to have done in the end to either Sky, or BT. If people are leaving to go and join BT of all people, then things must really be disorganised!
So is the real story here. Openreach are offering a very poor oversaturated GPON connection ratio? And thus limiting bandwidth to compensate? If so thank God for CityFibre…
It’s nothing to do with Openreach is Vodafone’s backhaul, remember that Openreach operate the access network and once at the handover exchange is goes to the ISPs backhaul.
CityFibre is using the exact same GPON type as Openreach and upto 1:32 split also.
The news article makes clear it’s nothing to do with Openreach, Anthony.
@Anon
PON works by having a single fibre split between multiple customers. This gives a shared bandwidth between X amount of customers (2.5, 10, 25gbps for for GPON,XGS PON and 25 PON respectively.
@anon
PON technologies such as GPON and XGS-PON work by sharing a single fibre at the provider end to multiple premises on the customer side. This split ratio can generally be anywhere from 1:1 to 1:128 depending on how far you want the signal to reach (each time you split the signal the optical signal gets weaker, all within designed boundaries).
On the provider side this one fibre then connects to the active equipment and the bandwidth on that port is shared between the connected customers. e.g. GPON is 2.5Gbps down and 1.25Gbps up, shared. In most cases 1:32 is the number of premises severed, but not all of these will actually have an active service so in reality its maybe 1:8 actually sharing the bandwidth.
With XGS-PON you share 8Gbps down, and 6-8gbps up (NOT 10gbps as most people deploying XGS-PON advertise, due to overheads of the technology). But probably at 1:64 or 1:128 because of all the extra bandwidth (again depending on fibre reach you need)
‘With XGS-PON you share 8Gbps down, and 6-8gbps up’
8.5 in both directions, with actual download speeds a little over 8.2 after overheads. It is symmetrical.
https://www.singtel.com/personal/support/broadband/typical-download-speeds
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347293157_Development_of_XGS-PON_Optical_Line_Termination_Equipment_Standardization_for_Broadband_Fiber_Access_Networks_in_Indonesia
Hi
Just saw your item regards Vodofone speeds. I have the 200Mbps deal but my speeds are very low.
My post code is FY7 8AT Fleetwood Lancashire.
I should be getting at least 150Mbps plus but no where near that.
Advise please if you could help.
Thanyou.
Since 200mbps is only available it looks like Vodafone have limited backhaul in your area. Best you can do is notify support of this and unfortunately wait.
@Kenneth
Also remember all these advertised speeds are if you connect to your router with a cable. Over Wifi all bets are off. Even on a 900 package you will never likely pull more than about 500-600 over Wifi stood right next to the router. Throw some walls in there and you could be under 100mbps quite easily.
It caithness the speed lowest. 0.002 mps
Plenty of the Vodafone network is still on 1 gig backhaul, maybe 2x1Gbps.
A lot of investment and upgrades needed to meet current reliability and bandwidth demands. It’s a competitive market out there, and those that are investing in their networks will have a significant business advantage.
Just had notification that we can now get full FTTP through Vodafone – the deal I’m interested in is the Superfast 100mb down for £22, which is half of what we pay now.
We are semi rural which means traditionally internet through the copper phone line was absolutely abysmal (12mb down if lucky / 1mb up) so we signed up with a standalone ISP that provide wireless broadband with amazing latency (around 200mb down) through an aerial on our roof, line of sight to the Bucks county council building. We pay a not insubstantial £42 a month for this, but are on a rolling monthly contract.
I’m in two minds on whether to switch or not. Yes we can save £240 a year, but there are benefits to being on a rolling monthly contract and with a small ISP – They’ve been excellent upto now.
Interested in thoughts on this – should I stick or twist for the savings? Am I likely to be signing up to a lemon with vodafone FTTP? It appears from some research that it would provided by Openreach and not cityfibre – If I search on the cityfibre website it says not available.
Then I think other Openreach based FTTP providers are available to you as well as Vodafone.
That’s a great point about rolling contract. Have you checked if you can get FTTP via other Openreach providers? If you’ve got a decent connection on a rolling contract now, you could wait until prices come to where you like. You have the advantage of flexibility and more negotiating power. There are others that offer higher speeds and shorter contracts than Vodafone right now which seem better “value for money” in terms of price to speed ratio. Just as an example:
Cuckoo Broadband (30 day, or 12 month contracts, FIXED price) 900Mbps at £54.99
http://www.cuckoo.co/r/glamorous-thriving-starling
Saw that via Twitter and a MoneySavingExpert customer service poll.
Giganet (12 month contract, FIXED price) 900Mbps at £69
https://www.giganet.uk
Or those that raise their prices yearly:
BT (12 month contract) 300Mbps at £54.99
https://www.bt.com/broadband/twelve-month-deals
TalkTalk (18 month contract) 900Mbps at £49
https://new.talktalk.co.uk/broadband/fttp
Sky (18 month contract) 500Mbps at £45
https://www.sky.com/broadband/v1
We are one of those. All my neighbours can access 900mb lines. I went with Vodafone as I have been with them for a while and was told before Xmas that 900 would be available in a few weeks. 3 months on and I still only have 200 available. I wish I had jumped ship now but instead I’m stuck on this contract. Poor!
If you sign up with Vodafone you can cancel without penalty within the 14-day cooling off period. I think this is standard for most ISPs.
I believe it’s 14 days from the order date rather than the go live date.
The cooling off period starts from the service activation date. If you cancel within 14 days you have to return any equipment supplied (as hubs/routers are rented) and pay for any service used within thhe usage period.
Vodafone call it “temporary”. Going by their own Vodafone Broadband forum, you can see existing customers mentioning this major issue since at least 2019, with various additional posts/comments on the subject in 2020, 2021 and now in 2022. It still looks like they haven’t got their act together and will inevitably lose existing customers to other FTTP providers on Openreach. Maybe they can re-compete in the future on Openreach, but it does seem like poor form or being completely disorganised in the Broadband department at least when it comes to their Openreach based services.
Good. Fast. Cheap.
Pick one.
Close but it’s pick two. Very true though.
Id love to know there excuse dor areas such as mine where they have FTTC but it’s been over a year since OR FTTP went live in and Vodafail still don’t provide any FTTP options or can even give an ETA
Nice easy one: the FTTP goes to different equipment in the exchange and Vodafone don’t have a connection to it because they haven’t purchased one.
Those that are limited to 200 I supposed to get free upgrade by Vodafone for the fastest speed aren’t they? It’s voda speed promise. Can’t remember name.
Just checked again and VF still only offering 200 – same as 1 year ago. Central London, SE1. Went with Talktalk back then with 500, using Openreach.
we’re having CityFibre installed in our street. Currently only Virgin is available, I’m on M200 atm. Anyone know what the Vodafone/cityfibre deals are?