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How long did Vodafone take for you to offer Gigabit speeds when they became available?

RedMeadBarrel
3: Seeker
3: Seeker

Hi everyone,

 

Recently our area had undergone upgrades where we were getting 30-40mbps speeds in our area and we were upgraded to Gigabit speeds (1gbps) and BT and EE both are now offering Gigabit speeds while Vodafone has taken 3 weeks to do nothing. I've asked them when they plan on offering the same speeds, but they can't give me a time and the customer support has nothing to say.

 

We've struggled with poor internet for over 2 years. We were with EE who we were overpaying a bit, changed to vodafone a few months back and then the upgrade happened and now we're stuck in an 18 month contract which gives us speeds of 26mbps which is not enough for a 4 person household.

 

In the experience of others how long did Vodafone take to upgrade their lines or offer gigabit speeds when Openreach did their thing and upgraded the lines in their area.

 

We're getting a bit fed up that it's taking them this long when EE and BT offered Gigabit speeds the day after they finished setting up the gigabit lines, but I think what bothers me most is the fact that Vodafone can't give us a straight answer as to when or even an approximate. Feel like we might end up waiting for months or even a year.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

If you are no longer in contract with Vodafone go with one of the other providers who can be bothered to give customer support. 

Edit, sorry I just realised you said you are still in contract.

I would try raising a complaint, and if they are adamant they can't provide the same service as others you may have a case for being allowed to leave early.

Vodafone complaints

 

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9 REPLIES 9

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

If you are no longer in contract with Vodafone go with one of the other providers who can be bothered to give customer support. 

Edit, sorry I just realised you said you are still in contract.

I would try raising a complaint, and if they are adamant they can't provide the same service as others you may have a case for being allowed to leave early.

Vodafone complaints

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I wasn't sure if you could complain about something like that, as in them not providing the same or similar service.

 

Seen the link and will go through it probably tomorrow or so. Have you ever complained to them? How did it go?

 

Thank you for your help and time.

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

Personally I have not used the complaints procedure, but I did come close to doing so when I first joined and they seemed unable to provide suitable support for a fault I had.

If you read the Vodafone Complaints Code of Practice it says "Every day, in every way, we strive to make your connected life simpler and easier. So, if you ever feel like we haven’t succeeded, we want to hear from you."

That would seem to cover your problem if they can't give an answer as to why they are unable to provide the same services as other providers, or even give a timescale till they can.

It also highlights to higher management levels the problems we, as paying customers, suffer because of the lack of adequate support.

 

Alright, well thank you very much for the concise explanation and help, I really appreciate it. It can be very frustrating trying to share 20 odd mbps per 4 people, when there's online learning and everyone is on the internet and no one can do anything because everyone's trying to do something.

 

We'll probably go through with forming a complaint today or so if they can't give us a straight answer, it's not that we want to complain if they gave us a date and time that would be great, but because of the fact that they have no clue is what makes us think they are doing nothing.

 

You've been a great help, thank you.

Got through to them today and from what I gathered and what they told me I can paraphrase it like this.

 

"We have no plans at the moment or have any availability in that area and can only provide to you the offer or speeds which you already have"

 

They also told me there is no timeframe which they can give me as they are not actively working on it or anything like that as mentioned from above they don't have whatever they need to get it sorted. I left it at that as I was on the phone for an hour and I was just tired of it, alongside our broadband being slow which got sorted as well a bit there.

 

So it looks like in the next few days or so we'll make a proper complaint through the form or end up calling them again (which I'm not too thrilled on, was on hold for close to a solid 30 minutes in that whole thing).

 

We just want Gigabit speeds or something along those lines so we have enough bandwith for the entire house so everyone can do everything they want to do.

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

@RedMeadBarrel wrote:

We've struggled with poor internet for over 2 years. We were with EE who we were overpaying a bit, changed to vodafone a few months back and then the upgrade happened and now we're stuck in an 18 month contract which gives us speeds of 26mbps which is not enough for a 4 person household.

Have you done everything you can to optimise your connection?

The first thing is to find out what the line is capable of, and you can check that here:

BT Broadband (btwholesale.com)

Next see what your modem is synced at, you will see that when you first log into the modem.

If you can try and post your stats like this:

Line Quality

                                                                             Downstream                                       Upstream
Current Rate78687 kbps20000 kbps
Maximum Rate80383 kbps28819 kbps
Signal-to-Noise Ratio6.1 dB11.5 dB
AttenuationDS1 8.8 dB, DS2 21.2 dB, DS3 33.0 dBUS0 1.9 dB, US1 14.6 dB, US2 23.4 dB
Power12.7 dBm3.3 dBm
CRC Errors in last 19978 minute(s)05210
K (number of bytes in DMT frame)00
R (number of bytes in RS code word)100
S (RS code word size in DMT frame)0.09870.3819
D (interleaver depth)81
Delay0 ms0 ms

 and we can see if they, along with the speeds discovered above, suggest any improvements can be made.

They solved an issue we were having today where we were getting those speeds of 26mbps and they had us remove the panel off the master socket and put it into the test panel which gave us a boost to 36mbps but as the evening's went on it's dropped down to 32mbps as of right now.

The router says it's peaking at 37mbps but it was always off, even when we had the 26mbps or around there it said we were hiting the mid 30's which was not true at the time.

 

  Downstream Upstream

Current Rate37070 kbps7030 kbps
Maximum Rate40528 kbps7341 kbps
Signal-to-Noise Ratio4.5 dB7.7 dB
AttenuationDS1 20.1 dB, DS2 55.1 dB, DS3 82.9 dBUS0 9.7 dB, US1 45.4 dB, US2 N/A
Power11.6 dBm2.8 dBm
CRC Errors in last 52 minute(s)171241
K (number of bytes in DMT frame)00
R (number of bytes in RS code word)104
S (RS code word size in DMT frame)0.19560.9396
D (interleaver depth)41
Delay0 ms0 ms

 

On the BT broadband checker I'll show what it says here, it does say we can get 1gbps and so on. I posted the image alongside this reply.

 

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

Excellent news so far, trying in the test socket was the next thing I would have suggested.

You have for a fairly long copper line so the speed will never very high. The fact it is faster in the test socket means your home wiring is degrading the signal. The best way to resolve it would be a prefiltered socket, although just cutting the ring wire in the master socket may be all that is required. Here is some info on the socket wiring. It says it's for ADSL, but VDSL has the same concepts. https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

The sync speed shown in your stats is the "raw" connection speed. Overheads will always reduce that by up to 10% for actual download speeds.

The fact the BT checker says that 1Ghz (FTTP) speed are available to you is because it is a BT/Openreach document and Openreach do not have to offer their FTTP infrastructure to competitors (unlike VDSL). That's why only BT/EE are offering it. (They are both BT companies)

 

Thank you for the very clear explanation, I didn't realise that EE was owned by BT. It makes sense then that they too get the better offers. It's a shame really and I'm honestly quite disappointed that we switched over to Vodafone 2 months back. There was no news of anything being done and now we get to suffer slow speeds here. I strongly doubt Vodafone is going to get anything done here because we live in quite a remote place in the countryside.

 

I've taken a peek at the CEDR website for the Communication & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme and I'm not sure if complaining will even bring anything but feel so bummed about it. This contract lasts 18 or 24 months so it'll just be slow internet till then. The speed has already dropped down to 29mbps as I've been testing it frequently enough.

 

Do really appreciate your help with the more technical parts of the set up. Will probably look into what you were recommending for the master socket and what not.

 

Edit: There might be room to complain and we might still try I guess, but it is definitely quite disappointing.