Frustration in Rural Wales as Village Suffers Poor Voneus Connectivity
Residents of the tiny Monmouthshire (Wales) village of Llangwm, which is covered by Voneus’ full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network, have complained about the dire state of local internet connectivity and missed medical appointments because the local service is often said to be “sporadic” and “slow“.
The community, which is home to just over 400 people, sits in a very remote and rural area some 3 miles (4.8km) east of Usk. As a result of this, the village can suffer from poor mobile signals and isn’t reached by Openreach’s hybrid fibre (FTTC / VDSL2) broadband network, although it is possible to get a slow ADSL line in parts of the community.
Happily the situation started to improve in 2021, which occurred after alternative network operator Broadway Partners (Broadway Broadband) began to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the village and several other locations as part of a £2m scheme – supported by Monmouthshire County Council (here).
Advertisement
At this point our regular readers may well recall that Broadway Partners fell into administration in May 2023, which was said to have been caused by “adverse macroeconomic issues, including raising interest rates and inflation, in a highly competitive environment“ (here). Network operator Voneus ultimately ended up acquiring the operator’s network a few months later (here).
According to the BBC News, internet connectivity in Llangwm has suffered as a result of the fallout from Broadway’s troubles, while new owner Voneus appears to be struggling to get on top of things. The complaints highlight long service outages, extremely slow speeds, a lack of support from Voneus (their service status page for Monmouthshire highlights no problems), as well as difficulty accessing popular websites and other online services. Not what you’d expect from a modern FTTP network.
A spokesperson for Voneus said:
“We greatly appreciate the community’s patience and understanding whilst we continue to upgrade the network, and we are confident that the changes we’re making will result in a stronger, more dependable network for everyone in the community.”
According to Voneus, the infrastructure it acquired from Broadway “did not meet our high standards” and they are now “investing significantly to upgrade the network“. The provider also apologised for its poor communication and customer service in the area and said they are “working hard to improve the network“. But it remains unclear how long locals will have to wait for that improvement to arrive.
The situation in the community appears to echo some of the recent complaints from the Shropshire (England) village of Brockton (Lydbury North), which is also served Voneus and suffered from a protracted period of connectivity woes (here). But the cause in that situation was rather different and has since been resolved.
Advertisement
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.
« Wildanet Enhances UK FTTP Broadband Network Testing and Monitoring
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message. By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your comment content, display name, IP, email and / or website details in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
NOTE 1: Sometimes your comment might not appear immediately due to site cache (this is cleared every few hours) or it may be caught by automated moderation / anti-spam.
NOTE 2: Comments that break our rules, spam, troll or post via known fake IP/proxy servers may be blocked or removed.
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5904)
- BT (3616)
- Politics (2677)
- Business (2392)
- Openreach (2382)
- Building Digital UK (2311)
- Mobile Broadband (2099)
- FTTC (2073)
- Statistics (1870)
- 4G (1771)
- Virgin Media (1721)
- Ofcom Regulation (1552)
- Fibre Optic (1452)
- Wireless Internet (1444)
- FTTH (1384)
Bad news. Small ISP gets public money, installs FTTP, goes bust, public left up the creek without a paddle. Another ISP takes over, possibly one you would not choose and proceeds to shake head and suck air through teeth; “ooh, I wouldn’t have done it like that”. No wonder people wait for OR.
It’s like a tradesman asking “What cowboys been working on this then?” Making sure someone else gets the blame.
I opened support requests at the start of August, only acknowledged in the last 7 days!
Also hard to get through to on the phone, no response via email to issues.
This proves that Voneus is at fault, not the network, which was functioning properly until they acquired it. All of their statements are baseless.
Presumably this is a problem of backhaul capacity?
Unlikely to be as simple as that. More likely it’s insufficient network clue. Something is broken, and nobody knows how to diagnose it or fix it.
Could be IP routing or peering, could be a faulty link with transmission errors, could be DNS… who knows.
The infrastructure acquired for Voneus used to give me 300 meg download speeds and I could watch amazon and netflix and work so something has changed between now and then and the cable on the pole hasnt. we got a letter over 18 months ago about broadway broadband – its as bad as keir starmer – always someone elses fault. I could speak to people in the past but you spend hours in a que with this lot. Seriously considering Elon Musk for 80 quid a month.
“did not meet our high standards” and they are now “investing significantly to upgrade the network”
Standards were good before they acquired the network and then have dropped?
Yet more talk and no action from Voneus, it’s been a year since they took over, it really wasn’t much of an issue when Broadway operated it, we expected issues now and again as a deeply rural community – but broadway fixed them quickly, Voneus don’t even answer the phone. At least broadway where building a street cabinet to serve the area (or at least we last heard) – but guess that is no longer.
Zero timeframe and zero information to explain what is being upgraded – totally false if you ask me
I asked to speak to the lad in there support team who I got when my ip address broke and nobody is around from Broadway anymore. This lot have not got a clue about it and nobody knows about the new connection we where promised. They just won’t our money. I heard they are struggling and can’t buy things to fix anything.
“did not meet our high standards”
Anyone remember when any phone equipment or installation had to come with an approved green circle? Woe betide anyone using a red triangle piece of equipment.
Why aren’t all the networks being built to an externally approved standard(s) allowing interoperability/takeovers?
What a pickle we’d be in if every electric company decided on a different voltage and plug configuration?
There are as many different ways of building a fibre broadband network as their are altnets. More, in fact. In a fast moving technology, requiring regulatory approval (beyond product safety and Telecoms Security Act compliance) would do nothing more than slow down deployment and raise costs.
As ever, there is a tradeoff between deployment cost, ongoing maintenance cost, ease of expansion and resilience. Throw in pulling any Huawei kit out into the mix and it gets worse
The network was built to the one fibre network standard that openreach implemented. Its been left to rack and ruin with work to increase capacity abandoned due to cost.
“The network was built to the one fibre network standard that openreach implemented.”
There is no such thing. Did you mean the industry developed PON standard?
Frustration is an understatement as we only have ADSL sub 10mbps here.
In 2018 Openreach planned and started FTTP build around 2018 and then stopped due to public funding shortages.
In 2020 Voneus started to offer 30mbps with plan to deploy FTTP in 2020 but nothing has yet materialised.
Broadway Partners then announced a FTTP build in my area just months before falling into administration.
However, EE can provide 5G with speeds of 300mbps.
If EE can provide 300 Mb/s, why are you complaining? Just switch to mobile broadband!
Voneus is similar to Airband, can’t deliver a proper service… It’s a real shame…
Is it ironic that the service page now shows a partial outage for the postcode area?!