Vodafone UK to Launch 2.2Gbps Home Broadband in Early 2024
Mobile operator and UK ISP Vodafone has this morning confirmed that they will finally launch a CityFibre based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTT) broadband package that offers symmetric speeds of 2.2Gbps (Gigabits per second) during “early 2024“, which will come with their premium “Pro II Broadband” features as standard.
The provider was actually the first ISP to test the service at the start this year (here), which is based off CityFibre’s new 2.5Gbps speed wholesale tier on their latest XGS-PON powered full fibre network (advertising rules mean that Vodafone have reduced this to be promoted as 2.2Gbps, but it’s still the same tier).
The new wholesale tier was then formally launched in July 2023 (here), albeit currently only offered via the odd smaller ISP. Part of the reason why it may be taking some ISPs longer to introduce is because they, firstly, need to ensure plenty of extra capacity to feed the service and, secondly, may prefer to wait until CityFibre has completed more of its GPON to XGS-PON upgrade programme (XGS-PON can cope with 10Gbps speeds).
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By the end of 2023, CityFibre currently expects to have deployed its XGS-PON equipment into over 90% of its fibre exchanges.
Max Taylor, Chief Commercial Officer at Vodafone UK, said:
“We’re the biggest Full Fibre provider in the UK, with the UKs fastest router at unbeatable value for money. These new 2.2Gbps speeds are going to be a game changer in 2024. Being able to provide our customers with these phenomenal speeds, showcases the true capability of our Pro II Broadband, customers will be able to get the fastest broadband speeds, in all corners of the home and at an amazing price.”
The provider’s Pro II packages typically add a number of premium features, such as their latest WiFi6e Ultra Hub (router) and Booster, automatic 4G backup and support via dedicated Wi-Fi “Xperts“. The announcement notes that their PRO II plans are priced “from only £38 a month“, but we don’t yet know how much their new 2.2Gbps package will cost.
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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and 0.1% of people will buy it
And those 0.1% will be happy. Good for them! 🙂
And the other 99.9% will continue to moan about a service they are not interested in.
I’m more than happy for 99.9% of my street, people like you I assume. It means less contention for me and my new 2.5Gb (2.2Gb) of pure joyous bandwidth.
I’m more than happy for 99.9% of my street, people like you I assume to not buy it. It means less contention for me and my new 2.5Gb (2.2Gb) of pure joyous bandwidth.
I just got 2.5Gbps with Yayzi – £99 setup and £50 for 18 months but the price is fixed for 3 years guaranteed.Minimum Speed Guarantee of 2Gbps. So even if people don’t need it they will probably buy it anyway like I did! Oh and as it’s classed as a Pro pacakge you get the AX6000 with it. That’s a decent router.
Vodafone should consider getting onboard with Netomnia. They can sell symmetrical uncapped if they like via them.
At some point I’d love to know why Vodafone, among others, haven’t built their own network in the UK. They’ve either acquired cable networks or built FTTP in the odd place elsewhere but their home nation they’ve done neither.
Sky are another one. I can only assume that their repeated threats to either build their own or make more use of altnets ensured some sweet deals from Openreach.
TBF, I think they got a lot of the benefits by being early adopters of CityFibre. They had an exclusivity agreement. In fact, AFAICT, they still have rolling one-year exclusivity for every new premise, in the original 12 cities.
Sky did build their own fibre network. They then sold it to virgin media. Seems crazy to me on the outside.
Sky didn’t sell their network to Virgin! They rent a small amount of backhaul from them, and it is small in the grand scheme of their network
Do you think a big player offering this may be the clout to get CityFibre to upgrade those streets without it quicker?
Hopefully. And if CityFibre are saying they’ll have upgraded 90% of their exchanges by the end of the year, then hopefully 90% of CityFibre customers will be able to order the new package (whether on Vodafone or another ISP).
If Cityfibre ever does get switched on here I’m going for this. I was told the project was paused at the beginning of September, but it appears work although minimal has started again.
Hopefully they will make live streets already complete to make some use of the months of disruption. The current work listed seems to have ‘LA Defect’ as it’s heading whatever that is?
Local Authority reported defect. The local authority inspected the work and found issues so they are being fixed. There are a lot of regulations around the work and it’s not at all difficult to mess it up and fail inspections.
Doesn’t mean the work is dangerous, however it comes with a 2 year guarantee and the local authority want to make sure that when they adopt the work it’s up to scratch.
Thanks for that. So it’s not work related to making serviceable the completed areas. Other work is listed into next year in terms of laying cable also.
Lanes-I told me personally that it’s all gone a bit wrong and they don’t know what happens now (that was in September), but they appear to be back doing this further work.
Just a constant game of wait and see…
Why need 2.2Gbps for home? I bet very small percent will buy it!
If you can sell it why not sell it? It’s good for public relations and advertising.
Why buy a Ferrari when you can buy a Skoda?
I have a Skoda i’d not buy a Ferrari 😀
I bet if Cuckoo Oak was enabled this bloke would have a very different tune. Is he still hundreds a month in credit with Plusnet?
Faster packages will put downward pressure on the pricing of lower packages. Even if you don’t want 2Gbps, there’s that benefit.
@I love Starlink lol I am not with Plusnet anymore, left them back in 2021.
Wish it was available in my area. CityFibre currently have no plans to extend the services here.
Vodafone deserve more credit for this. Whilst they still have a long way to go to improve their terrible mobile packages, they are really leading the pack on home Broadband.
This is surely the fastest speed offered by a major high-street Broadband provider (That average Joe will actually have heard of), and by some way.
That is a big deal.
The funny thing is they couldn’t offer this on BT even if it was a product available due to all the congested 1Gbps backhaul in the network. The only way Vodafone can offer this is by relying on City Fibre’s superior infrastructure, and having it dumped onto Vodafone over an interconnect to bypass all the VF access network.
And then Vodafone can go to the media and tout how amazing their network is, despite it coming half way in through the network, onto a core node or two and then straight out onto transit!
For some reason Max has left that part out though.
City Fibre superior infrastructure LMAO
Which access infrastructure is capable of supporting XGS-PON speeds again? Hint: it’s not Vodafone’s.
And all the brain-dead blokes who love to brag about having the latest iPhone, or the latest EV, blah blah blah, will rush to get this so they can take a screen grab of their 2gbps Ookla speedtest to show their mates in the pub. And then go home and carry on using less than 10% of the bandwidth. Hilarious.
It’s more about the burst in speed when downloading something. No one asked you to purchase this products, but some of us have busy households with multiple gamers wanting to download the latest patch for a game at the same time
2.2Gb/s is a niche product aimed at enthusiasts, and more about marketing. We’re currently with Plusnet on FTTC and expecting FTTP availability soon, we’ll probably go for the 145Mb/s deal currently on offer for £27.99 per month; When we come out of contract on 145Mb/s, dependent on pricing, sub 100Mb/s offerings would be more than adequate for us, so it’ll be more about price than speeds above 100Mb/s.
My point is that most households will likely choose budget over speed.
Symmetrical speeds exist with YOU fibre 1000mbs for example sets you back £27.99 a month, also a fixed price for 24 months. One step ahead and a great service.
Any news on when this will be announced?
Early 2024 no announcements yet…
Spoke to Voda this week about that, answer was “very very soon” and a smiley face.
The problem is the routing with VF. Could you ask them about that, Mark? So many customers are getting routed via Gateways at the other end of the country and suffer from bad pings with Vodafone 🙁
Agree with Jason, VFs routing is so bad, they route people randomly places from where they live, I live in London they routed me to outside London which then has to go back into London which makes the pings very HIGH. smh
Also they will not fix it or route you correctly, spoke to CS/complaints team etc.