Community Fibre Reviews

Being of a certain age, I have land-line phones in several rooms. They were originally all BT 'bell' phones, but over the years changed piecemeal to DECT. So 4 DECT base stations. I wanted to retain this when going VOIP from fibre. CF said not possible - only one DECT base station possible. (Some DECT phones can be re-paired to a single base station but not all) So after the CF install, I had one base station only connected. After my BT number was ported over and working OK, I disconnected the BT line from the house wiring. Added a BT socket at the start of the house phone wiring. Used a BT to RJ11 lead (as used on all the DECT base stations) to connect to the CF VOIP adaptor. All the house phones now work as before.

I had two failed installation appointments by Community Fibre, but when the engineer finally came he was very good and very helpful. The TV and Broadband have been working perfectly, but the main problem I am now having, is Community Fibre have still not ported my landline number. I placed my order online on the 6th July, the installation was finally completed on the 22nd July. Now a month later my landline has still not been ported. This is despite phone calls and emails. The last email was to Graeme Oxby the CEO, I have not even had a reply from him. This landline number is literally life and death for my wife because of her health, it is a contact number for many NHS departments. The porting process should only take 12 working days, hence the reason I have only given a 1 star. Why am I being completely ignored?

I've had Community Fibre 3Gbps for around 5 months.

The installation process was not without hiccups. While the engineer turned up on time and got things going, they gave me the wrong ONT (2.5Gbps port) despite me having signed up to a 3Gbps plan.

While the last mile connection (XGS-PON) was rock solid, they've had some wobbles in their core network portions:
1. Weird routing issues which preventing some CloudFlare endpoints from being accessed (not confirmed but resolved)
2. IPv6 prefix delegation resizing - it gave me a good 2 weeks of on-and-off IPv6 connectivity (confirmed)

These issues were unlikely to be noticed by the average user (prob swept under the carpet of bad wifi issues), but as I am an experienced engineer working with internet technologies, I found it extremely difficult to escalate these technical issues through their support ever since they outsourced to a South African company.

Every time I tried to raise a fault with CF support I was told to download the Linksys app and do a bunch of IT Crowd esque troubleshooting steps. Needless to say it was frustrating at the very least.

Otherwise, their internet had been solid ever since those wobbles, for the price that I am paying (currently £49/month, 3Gbps, no wifi package) I am happy with the service. Just pray I won't have to contact their support any time again soon!

I wanted to change my internet contract because Virgin is expensive with old customers. So, I did some research on who is in my area, I contacted the one that seemed most convenient Community Fibre. I called them, they gave me a new contract, made an appointment with the engineer. Two engineers came and told me the same is not possible to install anything, they sends the report in front of me.
I call to cancel the contract, they tell me it's cancelled, they send me an email saying it's cancelled.
A few days later they send me an email asking how the service is going.
All the emails they send are no replay, I call again, they pass me left and right. until a guy assures me that the contract is cancelled for sure. I cannot tell you how many time this repeated, I call, I write emails, they assures me that the contract is cancelled and is not, they lie unashamedly. I warn them not to dare to take money, they did it anyway. Moral of the story, never use them ever, don't give them your bank details, and spread the voice they are the worse scammer on the market. If I could give them less that 1 star I would, gladly.

I signed up to Community Fibre for their 3Gbps speed in July 2023. The installation process was delayed due to them not having enough Technicolor routers in stock that can handle 3Gbps, it took 3 weeks to solve the issue (Community fibre engineers carried out my install and they were fantastic).

I also recommended CF to my parents and a friend of mine, who had extremely poor installation experiences due to Community Fibre relying on Kelly Communications for installations. Missed appointments and aborted visits numerous times, it was a disaster. Community Fibre customer service is also lacking as they clearly can not keep up with their massive growth.

Still, I do recommend them as their speeds are actually incredible and in about 9 months of being a customer I have had ZERO downtime! This is brilliant and I love their service, I have never had an ISP be this reliable. If you sign up, be aware of them using a third party like Kelly Communications for your install, but once its all up and running you should be fine. Hopefully as time goes on they will increase their customer service staff numbers too.

I also filmed a YouTube video regarding my experience which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpxf873ypc8

Thanks for reading my review.

Community Fibre is great,
I get 4gb for £49 a Month
I also have their Call Package
for £10 a Month and their TV Package
also for £10 a Month

The Internet is great,
I get 4gb download speeds all the time
and uploads as well
It has not cut out once, it is very reliable
I also upgraded my Router
to the Linksys Wifi 6E one
and I use the 6Gz Channel,
it has no congestion at all

The Call Package is Okay
but I cannot make Calls to some Businesses
as you cannot Dial out to 0870
and 0990 Numbers or make International Calls

Their TV service relies on Freeview Play
and the Netgem 4K Box
You cannot watch
the Together TV Streaming channels
on Channel Numbers 83 and 285,
which is a shame
They should have given us the Humax Aura Box
They are giving me six months
free service because of this

Community Fibre sucks!
I would strongly recommend to stay as far away as possible from Community Fibre,
They the cake when it comes to terrible and unacceptable Customer Service. This company is a prime example of what NOT TO DO with your Customers.

Was moving houses and wanted to get connected in my new place with Community Fibre (had them on the previous address).
Since new account registration: 14 days, 20-30 calls, hours-long telephone conversations with various departments including escalation managers, 7 failed installation appointments later , I still do not have an internet connection. I tried explaining multiple times that I work from my home and my IT job requires that I have a stable fast internet connection as my livelyhood depends on it, but to no avail.

My latest conversation was yesterday with an escalation manager who committed that it will be done today. What do

Saw a great offer from CF for 500Mb/s in mid-December. Managed to get them to install Fibre a week later.
One hour later with advice from the engineers, and we were up and running. Broadband speeds are extremely fast and stable. If you have multiple floors in the house, you'll likely need an additional node (that you can buy cheaply from eBay) and they are quite easy to integrate within the mesh.

We've had no issues with broadband speeds in the month we've had it. Whilst the speed has quite a large range due to the max speed, the slowest speed is still higher than FTTC (which caps at 80Mb/s).

All in all, for now, I'm extremely happy with the package.

The one thing though I don't like about CF is the lack of customer portal online. So there is no way to view bills or usage or make any amendments to the account online. You must call them up. Hopefully they'll add this soon. For that, I'm downgrading "Services". For Value and Speed, it's second to none (for me anyway).

I am excited and amazed by their service and customer care (Cara), initially, I was meant to have my connection installed in June 2022, however, there were some issues with the Poles and Openreach had to fix it, it took until last Saturday to get it running, however, while waiting, they kept me updated of the progress and even gave me extra for being patient, also I am glad it was delayed, as I didn't want to pay VM early fee termination (2 months was left for my contract to end with VM).

Now the service, I mean it hasn't been long enough for me to say anything negative, from what I have seen and doing many tests to push my connection, it's stable and super reliable.

The technicians were also fantastic, they were friendly, and kept things clean and very tidy after their cabling work, however, they had 3hrs of a nightmare with the router (it was a new router than the usual router they provide), however, this is not their fault, there was a hidden option that no one would have figured out to switch it around, we all had to scratch our heads to figure it out, we ended up watching some youtube videos to find the answer, we all laughed in the end and got it working.

Extremely happy I have switched to such an amazing provider, I can't recommend it more.

For those who might be curious as to how much I am paying, it's £50 for a 24months contract.

Pros:
Excellent ping 2ms gaming London servers
WiFi get 600Mb on our devices
Saturday installation done in 45min
February offer great value
Cabled pc's give full speeds
Friendly support recommended VoIP options including use of App
Allowed one package downgrade during contract but no need to as we maxing out

Cons: One gigabit port out on Velop but used own switch to expand