MSE News: Vodafone launches b'band speed guarantee

Chassy

I was previously with Virgin, receiving my 75Mb/s broadband service via their dedicated cables (we're well-wired here in Newcastle) and frequently getting a little bit more throughput than I paid for. The costs had been creeping up gradually over the seven years I'd been with them, and although Virgin offered to upgrade me to 100Mb/s for nothing extra (75Mb/s isn't offered as a standard speed now), I decided to nearly half my costs by taking advantage of the current Vodafone offer. I joined Vodafone's 76Mb/s FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) service on the 23rd February, and although the connection has been reliable, and the latency (PING) is considerably quicker than Virgin, the throughput is much lower.
Using the get_iplayer app on my PC hard-wired (i.e. not wi-fi) to the Virgin router, I was usually getting somewhere between 68 - 72Mb/s fairly consistently when downloading. Now using Vodafone's router (still hard-wired), throughput consistently drops to 20 - 22Mb/s, and often drops to single figures in the evening. I'm no fan of Virgin and their pretty ropey customer service, but I never noticed speeds and/or throughput dropping off at certain times of the day or days of the week.
Now I've had BT Openreach install my new line for £60, I wont be going back to Virgin. However I'll be cancelling the Vodafone service this week, and looking for another broadband provider.
I hoped my experiences were unusual, but Vodafone's forums are filled with invective regarding slow speeds, low throughput, and an inability to get out of a contract after the "cooling off" period.
Of course, your mileage may vary...

Chassy

Just to add to my last post...

It's worth mentioning that the standard speed checking sites (like Ookla and Broadband Speed Checker) report speeds close to Vodafone's headline figures, but when used for downloading, the throughput is considerably slower (and can become completely dire in the evenings).