Sponsored Links

No Openreach FTTP. Should I go Virgin, O2 mobile sim or Hey Broadband ?

DOOFER

Casual Member
Currently with Voda broadband Superfast 2 on Openreach ADSL that tops out at 36Mb/s guaranteed speed, out of contract and overpaying £32/month.
Openreach said Nov 2023 for FTTP but that slipped to "Before end 2026" and again to "Not yet available" . Pathetic

I'm considering going to mobile as have a O2 5g mast that achieves 300Mb/s nearby but can't find an unlimited sim to put with a ZYXEL NR5103E that will work without restrictions.
Alternatively Virgin Media M250 264 Mb/s for £28.99/month or scratching around Hey Broadband who are live 10 houses away with a shiny new junction box. Can anyone confirm it is a Hey Broadband box ? **EDIT I've seen from another posting it is actually a Virgin media cabinet which will explain the lack of a date from Hey Broadband and the "plastic pelicases hanging from telegraph poles in the adjoining streets that will likely be Hey (my road has underground ducts ONLY.) > It doesnt explain the Openreach FTTP dates being all over the place though :-)
Hey's "Customer support" is offshore and knows naff all.

cabinet.webp

Any suggestions ?
 
Last edited:
Is that box you have photo'd adjacent to a traditional Virgin Media cabinet?

From the reference I wonder if that box is VM it's a little more than local distribution and the HEME-X- bit indicates some kind of trunk handover from (guess) Hemel? Round my area the local distribution cabinets are all a 6 character references similar to what appears after the X but there are two in my locality that have the longer reference like yours above and I suspect that they don't have any house level distribution, only the fibre distribution to other similar cabinets.

All this is a bit hypothetical though - as far as I know due to "computer says no" issues Virgin's front end systems are with a few exceptions still unable to retail connections onto their new full fibre infrastructure yet and this has been going on for over a year now, and in the vast majority of areas new orders will be on their traditional HFC (DOCSIS) network, with the variability and latency that has.
 
Last edited:
you may have already, but have you checked on https://bidb.uk ?
this is what is available for me on the VM "partners" link
1723195893382.webp


if you or anyone at home has o2, you can volt it to 1gig for free too. so you'd get 1000/100 for £31.99
 
Sponsored Links
I second this, you may find that CF is available and you didn't know
 
Is that the VM Reward Gateway, rather than the partner's F&F Links? If not, those prices seem very steep. I got Gig1 for about £26 with basic TV and phone included not too long ago via that site.
I got offered £34 for M500 using next door neighbours address through BIDB, I don't have a clue whether it would be that gateway, just clicked on the link next to VM is live (1000mbps - HFC).
 

That's the reward gateway. But there's also a friends and family version of this same website that has much lower prices.


In the above link the question marks would be replaced with a unique code generated by a VMO2 Employee.

Until recently, these employee codes used to spread like wildfire all over the internet so anyone could take advantage even if they didn't actually know any employees.
 
Sponsored Links

That's the reward gateway. But there's also a friends and family version of this same website that has much lower prices.


In the above link the question marks would be replaced with a unique code generated by a VMO2 Employee.

Until recently, these employee codes used to spread like wildfire all over the internet so anyone could take advantage even if they didn't actually know any employees.
Ah ok. Shame existing customers can never use these offers, M500 for £32 seems good and it would be 1Gig with the 2 O2 SIMs
 
Is that box you have photo'd adjacent to a traditional Virgin Media cabinet?

From the reference I wonder if that box is VM it's a little more than local distribution and the HEME-X- bit indicates some kind of trunk handover from (guess) Hemel? Round my area the local distribution cabinets are all a 6 character references similar to what appears after the X but there are two in my locality that have the longer reference like yours above and I suspect that they don't have any house level distribution, only the fibre distribution to other similar cabinets.

All this is a bit hypothetical though - as far as I know due to "computer says no" issues Virgin's front end systems are with a few exceptions still unable to retail connections onto their new full fibre infrastructure yet and this has been going on for over a year now, and in the vast majority of areas new orders will be on their traditional HFC (DOCSIS) network, with the variability and latency that has.
Yes it seems from looking at another post on here that it is in fact a virgin box. Which is quite spooky as I had been led to believe the works around that area of the pavement were in fact openreach ..... resulting in a new manhole with a bt logo on it the other side of the road. So who knows what is going on.

Re HFC (DOCSIS) I am a complete noobie about this as i have always been on openreach adsl but my house does have an old NTL/Virgin coax cable that we have never used since we moved in. I had always thought coax latency, speed and generally NTL/Virgin connectivity was rubbish but have never had the bottle to try it out. Looking at the virgin website they are offering 564Mbps which I am guessing will use the existing coax as opposed to fibre. Do you think this would be a gamble worth taking or is the older coax/infrastructure just not worth the hassle ?
Would Virgin be able to put in fibre using the BT ducting or is that a no no. ??
 
99% of virgin's internet delivery is still based on Coax (HFC is hybrid fibre coax, DOCSIS is the protocol cable operators traditionally used for delivery of multiple services over coax).

If your internet needs are not demanding or complex that Virgin is generally ok. I used it for 15 years with really minimal problems and single digit outages that I noticed.

However if you're a gamer then their elevated latency (ping times) will frustrate you, and if your local infrastructure is overloaded then slower than contracted speeds maybe be a thing and jitter could impact realtime protocols like Facetime, Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom calls. I think its also fair to say that Virgin support is mediocre to poor, and most people do not have a lot of love for the Virgin Media hub, techies who care put it into modem mode and use their own router/WiFi, the most recent version of the hub doesn't yet have modem mode support but you would likely only get that new hub with an order for 1G+ speeds. I have laboured most of the perceived negatives of VirginMedia but millions do use it and most don't have any complaints.

Going with the coax will be a decision between your slow ADSL against more speed with a bit more latency and crap hardware and support.

Virgin won't use any OpenReach (BT) ducts.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6024)
  2. BT (3638)
  3. Politics (2720)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2143)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1899)
  10. 4G (1813)
  11. Virgin Media (1762)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1404)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules