Vodafone/Openreach Installation Taking Ages

fiish

This is more of a rant/vent type post (or sharing of experiences, in nicer language).

We took the keys of our new (just new to us, it's Edwardian!) house on 4 August, and moved in on 17 August. At our previous home we were on Vodafone broadband, as the minimum term in our deal is until June 2024, and they said they could supply our new address, we decided to move our service over. The house didn't have the Openreach fibre, but we were initially told it could be installed and activated by 17 or 18 August, with the service at the old address ending the same day. That seemed good to us, so we agreed with that plan

On 5 August, we got a call from an Openreach engineer who said they were coming that day to look at the installation. This sounded like good news. He turned up, opened a few inspection chambers in the pavement, came back to us saying the ducting was blocked and more work was needed to clear it to enable the fibre to be brought to the pavement outside our home.

A week and a bit later, some people in Openreach high vis jackets were digging around the pavement to unblock the ducts.

Cue another couple of weeks of chasing through calls to Vodafone. By this time we had moved in and had only our phones for internet service. Vodafone said we could expect activation by 5 October, we were not happy about this and asked repeatedly for expediting the process. 

Finally someone turned up on 11 September, but then said he couldn't install the ONT, because the cable hadn't been laid from the pavement through our front garden!

Since then, we've had no updates from Vodafone, other than a message from Openreach through them offering installation on 5 October, or if that was unsuitable, a later date. 

Is it typical for installations to take this long? Also, why did Openreach send someone to install the ONT when the cable hadn't been laid, wasting his and our time? The process is coming across as being badly organized, we started the process before moving, and 2 months later still have no broadband while paying for it (Vodafone promised some £5.83 per day compensation, but this won't be paid until the service is finally activated)

Also, our Vodafone package is the 'Pro' package with a 4G dongle plugged into the router for backup connectivity. However, this isn't working, and apparently they cannot enable it for us  because the broadband service hasn't been activated! Yet this is precisely a situation when this backup would be helpful.

Thankfully 4G has been OK for working from home, I switched my SIM to get much more data at the same cost (54GB for £9/month with iD, thanks MSE!).

spenderdave

Took BT/Openreach seven weeks to do my installation. It needed the pavement and my garden dug up to lay the duct, which needed permission from the roadworks people. When they finally came to install they found the new duct was jamming but fortunately he eventually got the fibre cable through and it was finished. Works fine though.

We also have City Fibre in our road who can seem to do an installation in an hour or so, they seem to be winning customers over openreach!

M25

If it's the same Vodafone Pro I have from 3 years ago I took my dongle SIM and put it in a 4G router, it worked fine before the installation.

I still don't use their dongle just the SIM as a backup.

fiish

@M25 I tried that and it doesn't work, used a known working 4G router borrowed from work that also used a Vodafone SIM. Our own dongle SIM doesn't work, the work SIM actually gets a blue light on the USB dongle when I tried it with the router, but we can't actually get online with the router using it.

Rob5342

spenderdave said:

We also have City Fibre in our road who can seem to do an installation in an hour or so, they seem to be winning customers over openreach!

It depends on the install method they use. In with CityFibre and in my street they put the the fibre through the existing Openreach duct. They turned up the morning after I ordered mine to try and put the fibre through but the duct was blocked. It took a couple of week with various people coming to unblock the duct and get the fibre through, and then another 10 days or so for them to come and install the fibre inside the house. In other streets around here they have laid new fibre to the perimeter of the houses and then lay a microduct across your lawn when you order it which I'd imagine is much quicker as there shouldn't be any blockages.

fiish

Yes, unfortunately it seems we had blockages in the street ducting which resulted in the delay. Also for some reason when they unblocked the ducting, they did not install the Toby box (which brings the fibre to your property boundary, as I understand it), which meant another dig job on the pavement. Thankfully this happened last Friday, and they've scheduled the house installation for later this week.