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Hey!Broadband in High Wycombe

kirbyan

Member
Hey!BB have been building out their fiber network in High Wycombe. They've finally reached my part of town and I've been watching them with interest. A lot of the work seems to be installing boxes at the top of existing BT poles and pulling fibers under the pavement. There's been next to no digging that I can see. So it's quite exciting seeing this going on but Hey!BB have been very quiet and respond with "not available in your area" if you ask anything.

I have some questions and wonder if anyone has experience of Hey!BB to be able to answer them:

While the visible build seems to be focused on Poles, a number of properties, like mine, are served by underground cables. We can't see what they're doing underground, but where Hey!BB have previously deployed, do they only connect via poles, or underground too?

So if Hey!BB are putting their boxes on BT's poles, will other operators be able to use the network to provide service or is it only for Hey!BB. If other operators do the same thing they will quickly run out of space on the poles.

Does the arrival of Hey!BB mean that we'll go bottom of the list for openreach to deploy fibre?

So far the effect of Hey!BB arriving i the area seems to have been that the previously badly overloaded Virgin Media cable internet has really settled down and is humming along nicely with no peaks in latency or slowdown at peak times. Not sure if Virgin fixed anything, but they did tell me that due to Covid they we're not planning on upgrading any infrastructure in the next 12 months, which was what was needed.
 
I have HB's symmetrical gigabit service. Mine is fed from a Pole so it was just a matter of running some Fibre to my home and presenting it into the room I asked for. AFAIK, if your phone line comes in underground, they will feed their fibre in the same way. If the duct is blocked or otherwise inaccessible, they ask Openreach to come out and address that. If your garden / driveway needs digging up, they can ask you to pick up some/all of the costs of that too.

HB's network is run over Fibre & Wireless' infrastructure. They are an AltNet who AFAIK do not resell to anyone else at this time. Looking them up on Companies House, they look like the same company to me.

OR had no plans to deploy in my area at all according to their website. Then HB and Swish Fibre turned up and started actively deploying. Then all of a sudden OpenReach's vans were all over my area and their service is now live. You decide whether that was coincidence or not.
 
So as you mention, you are only seeing the visible portion of the build with the equipment being mounted on the poles. HB's build won't just be using the poles but will be available to anyone fed underground as well.

In terms of other providers, although HB are using Openreach's ducts and poles HB have no requirement to allow other providers to access their own fibre so the chances are that they will be the only option until another provider also builds out. And as you spotted, the more providers that build in a pole-covered area, the more likely that they will encounter congestion issues at the pole-top. This is something that is constantly in discussion between OR and PIA companies but there are brackets, etc that can be mounted to allow better use of the pole-top space.

And as ADW has found, it's not uncommon for Openreach to suddenly arrive and start building fibre in areas where Altnets are building. In theory the main part of OR are not supposed to know what plans have been submitted by PIA companies, but we all have our own theories on that...
 
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I've just pre-ordered the HB 100Mbps service In High Wycombe also (Booker Common) as they've been doing a lot of the poles around here and on New Road A4010. Hoping they don't take too long in getting a connection to me as Plusnet just binned their IPTV Youview service and that was the only reason I was hanging on to their VDSL service which is now struggling @ under 20Mbps.
It does make me laugh seeing Swish and HB (plus BT OR) fighting for the much more affluent customer base immediately around High Wycombe itself (thinking Beaconsfield mainly). It's a lovely metaphor for the local area. :)
 
It was about 5 months from the fibre nodes being deployed on my Street's poles before the service went live.....but I think that was an anomaly as I know F&W had challenges with OpenReach cutting their Fibre to their hub site by mistake which delayed the go-live in my area.
 
Last edited:
Thanks. I'm eagerly awaiting the appearance of the fibre nodes on the poles on my road now!
 
Today we have the fibre node box being installed on the pole outside our next door neighbours house. So another step towards losing the extremely long metal cable (of unknown makeup) and getting faster than 20Mbps speeds! šŸ˜
 
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Plenty more duct fibre pulling occurring on New Road in the last week which I'm guessing means the poles are getting their connections to the network.
 
So seven months on, it seems like connection to HeyBB is only possible if your original BT line was from a pole and anyone with a connection through underground duct (even as is my case there is a pole with HeyBB fibre adjacent to the front garden) it's a case of "computer says no" with no possibility to negotiate.
 
A quick update. I had my connection installed a couple of weeks ago. They fitted an Adtran 854-v6 router, which is fine if you only want a simple network and WiFi connection. I requested a bridge connection yesterday so that I can use my existing Draytek vigor 2862 router. Today an engineer called in and swapped out the Adtran router for an Adtran SDX 611 GPON ONT (fibre modem). I'll be able to connect that to the WAN2 (etherwan) on the Draytek. Sorted.
 
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A quick update. I had my connection installed a couple of weeks ago. They fitted an Adtran 854-v6 router, which is fine if you only want a simple network and WiFi connection. I requested a bridge connection yesterday so that I can use my existing Draytek vigor 2862 router. Today an engineer called in and swapped out the Adtran router for an Adtran SDX 611 GPON ONT (fibre modem). I'll be able to connect that to the WAN2 (etherwan) on the Draytek. Sorted.
Hi, I am sorry to trouble you during the holidays, but I am quite desperate. I got Hey Broadband couple of months ago, but have been having issues all the time. Finally decided to go the own equipment route like yourself. It got installed couple of days ago. The engineer gave me the PPPoE user name and password, but despite trying all options on two routers - no luck at all. And as expected het support is not there when I need them! Could you please help? Are there any other settings for the PPPoE connection and do you know how to log in into the ONT interface as I have a feeling that the issue may be there?

Any guidance will be much appreciated.

Thanks!
 
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