City Fibre
 

Hi,the streets all around Edinburgh have/are being dug up by City Fibre/Vodaphone.https://www.cityfibre.com/gigabit-cities/

Will this affect my Virgin broadband,or is this a completely separate operation and has no impact on Virgin broadband services..

Re: city fibre
 

CityFibre is a competitor. It won't directly affect Virgin, although I guess a bit of local competition may prompt Virgin to offer better deals in time.

Re: city fibre
 

It won't affect Virgin as it's a different network, unless they cut through your cable! :D

Re: city fibre
 

They could well connect fibre to your house via your telegraph pole so shouldn't come anywhere near your VM connection.

Re: city fibre
 

City fibre have been doing parts of Southend for three years now, they cut quite a few connections round here. They are also very slow at getting things done some trenches were left open for weeks.
My Road was dug up over a year ago and still no sign of being able to connect. I believe only a very small area was connected up in 2019.

Re: city fibre
 

I've heard some good reports about City Fibre, but admittedly the contractors that they use to install their infrastructure need to buck their ideas up.

Re: city fibre
 

Just been reading that, as City Fibre are connected to Vodafone, anyone in an area where they operate can access super fast speeds on their phone.

Anyone know any more about this?

Re: city fibre
 

City fibre are deploying a fibre network and any internet provider in any area could supply services over their network. At present they have deal with Vodafone to use their network but it not as exclusive a deal as it was at first

https://www.telcotitans.com/vodafone...e/1010.article

City Fibre are a genuine national player. They’re building metro/access full fibre networks and they’re nationally connected via the old Torch fibre rings they bought from KCom a few years ago.

Although speaking to people, they’re not getting great penetration. Less than 20% i was told. To be fair their roll out costs may be lower using BT PIA & poles and therefore not digging, but still, I was always on the impression generally that less than 30% penetration was an issue v the cost of investment.

I think any altnet going up against a VM cabled area is a risky proposition. Certainly in Virgin areas it is pretty much accepted that “first in wins”. Insofar that anyone that fibres a new town will pretty much deter anyone else from fibre-ing it. BT have an obligation to, so that would mean a minimum of two full fibre providers everywhere, and a third will rarely be viable.

Re: city fibre
 

The abysmal VM customer service is putting off a lot though. From reading posts, a lot only stay for the speed that they need from VM, so hopefully competition from City Fibre will either allow people to dump VM or force VM to improve.

Re: city fibre
 

Grass is always greener....

Re: city fibre
 

Totally this, combined with the price and crappy upload speeds, why the hell would I pay £40 month for the first 18m then £56 a month for 350/35 from Virgin, when I could pay £40 for life with no annual inflation busting price rises for 1000/1000 on Cityfibre from Zen?

Virgin are absolutely the worst company I have ever dealt with, dealing with Zen since dumping them has been a breath of fresh air. I'm stuck with 80/20 for now but CF should reach me within 12 months (I'm in Ipswich).

Re: city fibre
 

In my experience all large Companies are the same customer service comes second to everything. Obviously I am talking in general, there are some employees who go the extra mile to help people out and believe me I am very grateful to those who do.
I try to use local companies as much as possible as they are far keener to keep customers happy.

Re: city fibre
 

Fat chance, in the short term. I called VM the other day, explaining that I was considering moving to Vodafone/City Fibre. I asked if they might increase my upstream to 100Mb to retain me. The reply was, 'No.' Apparently it is possible on DOCSIS 3.0. All that is required is to set the config to that speed, but I guess the system couldn't support us all getting that speed.

Re: City Fibre
 

Virgin want a national product portfolio and national pricing. Even in Southampton where toob sell 1000/1000 for £25 a month, they are still trying to sell 350/35 for £40 then £56 after 18m.

They wouldn't set up a new config for you. 100mbit up is technically possible with d3.0 but depends on frequency allocations and local infrastructure, remember VM is a hodgepodge of different original builds.

VM won't do regional discounts at all, so they will just bleed customers in fttp towns.

Re: City Fibre
 

The problem for a genuinely national provider is that once they start differentiated pricing it creates a lot of stories of “my mate two streets away pays x” and to be honest as the higher paying customer the fact competition is available elsewhere is unlikely to make them less angry about it.

The best you could hope for is retentions offering deals based on what is available which wouldn’t get the same traction in terms of damage to their reputation.