I switched from Virgin to Cityfibre due to assurances that it’s reliable from
trusted friends, and the promise of symmetrical upload and download speeds from Vodafone.
This was a huge mistake.
Installation was supposed to be Monday 26th September. I cancelled Virgin that day and cut the cable so the engineers didn’t need to drill another hole in the wall. Then they said there was some sort of “gap” in the cabling further up the street to the cabinet, so it couldn’t be finished. No idea what the issue was, but whatever. It took Cityfibre until yesterday, Friday 7th October, to send an engineer out to blow the cable. I was promised that it would be arranged “within the next 10 days”, which seems mean “we’ll bother to call you to arrange the visit exactly 10 days from now, then the visit will be at some point after that”. That seemed to work, and the lights on the ONT are all green.
But the internet is STILL not connected. The Internet light on the router is flashing red indicating it cannot be authenticated at Vodafone’s end. It was doing this all day yesterday. I wasted an hour on the phone to be told “everything is done our end, it can go live any time until midnight” even though it was patently obvious it would not magically fix itself at 2 minutes to midnight.
Quelle surprise, it doesn’t work this morning either. I have wasted another hour on the phone to Vodafone, only to be told that it is something Cityfibre need to fix, and they may need an engineer visit. But they’re shut on weekends, so I need to wait until Monday
I have been 12 days without broadband, relying on the 4G backup dongle. I have had to waste HOURS on the phone to both Cityfibre and Vodafone to find out what’s going on. And now it will be 14 complete days without broadband, assuming they actually fix it on Monday, which is seeming increasingly unlikely. No doubt I’ll be waiting another 10 days from Monday for the Cityfibre engineers to bother looking at the appointment system and scheduling me in. I am
not even convinced it’s Cityfibre’s issue here, as the connection test the guy did to the ONT yesterday worked, it’s just the Vodafone authentication that’s not working. It’s definitely not the cable or the router hardware, as I’ve tested my own router (with the correct PPPoE credentials I was provided by Vodafone) and other cables.
I asked Vodafone to just try resetting the PPPoE password credentials, as based on other forum posts, this seems to be the solution. They flat out refused and said “the problem is with Cityfibre”. This constant buck passing and refusal of both sides to accept any responsibility is absolutely ridiculous.
Don’t bother upgrading to Cityfibre through Vodafone if you get a circular through your door promising fast speeds, it’s probably not going to work.
