Community Fibre - dodgy? good?

notional

I live in inner London and we do not have BT Openreach fibre internet in our street, unbelievably.  The telephone infrastructure is ancient and everyone complains. I have had endless problems for years with my broadband dropping out, going slow etc. I've been with Plusnet for 12 years and they have been good with trying to find the faults and giving me credits on my account, but I'd really just like internet that actually works.

I am on a normal broadband deal, every year I haggle like the devil with Plusnet and get good deals, so in 12 years I have never moved provider.  Last time I whittled at them so hard it is £17.99 a month (hilarious as that's below the line rental). The contract is 18 months ending in August, I have just done a year which means I can cancel the contract now. 

A guy came round selling Community Fibre. He didn't pressure me, seemed fairly legit, gave me a leaflet with his name and phone number etc.  There was an offer of 6 months free (no doubt on a 2 year contract). I looked at their website and they look ok, people on Reddit are saying good things about them.  However there's a thread on here with an example of dodgy sales practices - ie telling people how to lie to get out of a contract with another company. Of course that could be an isolated case of salesperson on commission doing their own thing.  It doesn't necessarily mean the company is bad as a whole. I could go via the website and ignore the sales guy.

I am feeling fairly desperate for a decent broadband connection.  Has anyone gone ahead and had this fibre installed? How is it?

chong168

I just had my install this morning and am using now.  They did some work on the on my street a few months ago laying new fibre cables and running them up the Openreach  telephone poles, and was surprised when I later checked my address to see that the service is available to me.  It is full FTTP service, they run a fibre cable from the telephone pole to your house, and then drill a hole to feed the cable through to a modem which is then hooked up to a wifi router.  The speed is what you expect from having a fibre line.  They offer 150/300/920Mbps packages at great prices.  I was with Virgin before and gave them my notice to terminate my contract when they introduced the latest price rises.  Let me know if u need a referral for them as there is a Amazon voucher incentive.  Hope this helps.

lisyloo

We had community fibre in central London and it was good.
Our building was an early adopter due to being a public building ironically (by that I mean lots of council tenants who won't be able to benefit).
We had a much higher Mbps than we paid for. 
I think we paid for 100 and got around 200, but they may well have changed the packages since.

Bronvahl

notional said:

I live in inner London and we do not have BT Openreach fibre internet in our street, unbelievably.  The telephone infrastructure is ancient and everyone complains. I have had endless problems for years with my broadband dropping out, going slow etc. I've been with Plusnet for 12 years and they have been good with trying to find the faults and giving me credits on my account, but I'd really just like internet that actually works.

I am on a normal broadband deal, every year I haggle like the devil with Plusnet and get good deals, so in 12 years I have never moved provider.  Last time I whittled at them so hard it is £17.99 a month (hilarious as that's below the line rental). The contract is 18 months ending in August, I have just done a year which means I can cancel the contract now. 

A guy came round selling Community Fibre. He didn't pressure me, seemed fairly legit, gave me a leaflet with his name and phone number etc.  There was an offer of 6 months free (no doubt on a 2 year contract). I looked at their website and they look ok, people on Reddit are saying good things about them.  However there's a thread on here with an example of dodgy sales practices - ie telling people how to lie to get out of a contract with another company. Of course that could be an isolated case of salesperson on commission doing their own thing.  It doesn't necessarily mean the company is bad as a whole. I could go via the website and ignore the sales guy.

I am feeling fairly desperate for a decent broadband connection.  Has anyone gone ahead and had this fibre installed? How is it?

Start by figuring out what services are available in your street by visiting Sam Knows

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

You will get a report like this

• Summary
• BT ADSL
• BT SDSL
• BT FTTC
• BT FTTP
• FTTC
• LLU
• Cable
• Wireless
• BT 21CN
• Locality
• Check Again

Summary of results for SW1A2AA at 14:41 23/03/2023

Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area.

The following services are available in your location:

• BT Wholesale ADSL
• BT Wholesale ADSL Max
• BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
• BT Wholesale SDSL
• TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
• Sky Broadband
• Relish Wireless
• Zen LLU
• Urban Wimax

Please select the options on the left for more information about broadband availability at your location.

» Confused about what's available to you? Click here

Then you just decide what you want.

I hate to burst your bubble but £18 is not great price, although it might be for the next few months because of price hikes giving vendors a reason not to compete.  I think in a few months it will be back down to £16 odd for 30mb Fibre.

They all increased prices so that lemmings keep on paying whatever they say and so that they can appear to offer good discounts.

A friend of mine in London lives in a small block, they moved their freehold to their own right to manage company and use that company to carry out repairs and communal services etc.  She was telling me that they got a high end 900mb business fibre for £60 a month inc VAT to their company, it presents in the communal area half way up the building, then ran ethernet to a Wifi Router each flat and put in a professional router in meter cupboard with VLANS to separate the traffic.   None of them has a Landline, they all use mobile or VoIP.  They share the cost by way of the service charge for each flat.  I don't know how they configured it but for 6 flats it is equivalent to 150mb each.

I am not saying you should do this but in some areas it is worth considering.