Fibre being installed in my building - only possible to use the provider that is installing it?

JayS90

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anyone could shed some light on this situation for me.

4th Utility are installing fibre in my building (I live in a flat) in the next few days. I was just wondering whether once it's installed if it's possible to then take out a contract with a different provider, and not with 4th Utility?

I ask as 4th Utility seem to be a tad pricier than other providers such as Community Fibre. Frustratingly I've just taken out a 2 year deal with Vodafone (and then received the leaflet in the post about the fibre installation ) so it'll be a bit of wait, unless I can convince their customer services to waive the early termination fee (which surprisingly I have managed to do in the past).

Essentially I'd like to know so I can decide whether to badger Vodafone's CS team or just wait patiently until my contract expires 

TIA!

biscan25

Did you sign up with Vodafone less than 14 days ago? If so, you may be in luck with the cooling off period.

JayS90

biscan25 said:

Did you sign up with Vodafone less than 14 days ago? If so, you may be in luck with the cooling off period.

Unfortunately not. My line went live on 6th Jan 

onomatopoeia99

Looks like they operate similar to Virgin Media and most / all alternative networks, so if you have their physical connection you have to use their ISP (which would be like being forced to use BT on an Openreach line).  It's basically only on the Openreach infrastructure you get a choice, OFCOM has not forced alternate networks to open up to wholesale access in the same way.  

JayS90

onomatopoeia99 said:

Looks like they operate similar to Virgin Media and most / all alternative networks, so if you have their physical connection you have to use their ISP (which would be like being forced to use BT on an Openreach line).  It's basically only on the Openreach infrastructure you get a choice, OFCOM has not forced alternate networks to open up to wholesale access in the same way.  

I thought that may be the case - thanks for confirming! I guess I'll ride out my Vodafone contract (which is cheaper and faster than 4th Utility's cheapest fibre package anyway) and hope that they drop their prices by the end of 2023