[Closed] Vodafone Broadband - Any Good?

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-broadband-deal/

Might get some advice.

We tried it and were regularly getting half the speed of plusnet. They couldn’t fix it and said it must be a problem with the wires between the exchange and home even though it worked fine the day before migrating. In the end I gave up trying to get any sense out of them and went back to Plusnet.

My experience of Vodafones customer service is utterly wretched and for that reason I wouldn't use them

My experience of Vodafones customer service is utterly wretched and for that reason I wouldn’t use them

This is my major concern

Just moved to them after moving house. Speeds good for the price and near the quoted max speed (45mps typically on max 55mps contract). Router isn’t brilliant and leaves a dead spot. Customer service is non existent. But at £22 a month it’s cheap

We were on Plusnet. It worked OK, reliable enough and never struggled with speed, never had any need to call customer service.
The fixed price period ended earlier in the year. Vodafone were cheaper. We now have Vodafone. It works OK, reliable enough and never struggles with speed, have not had any need to call customer service. Don't even recall speaking to them to set it up.
We pay £20pcm for 'Unlimited Superfast Fibre' internet, also got a £50 Amazon voucher for signing up. Don't think that we have any minutes included, but don't have a phone so I'm not sure.

I got a sonos play1 free for taking it out for a year, left as soon as I could, customer service is dreadful. It's taken a few years, but I'm in the process of also getting away from voldefone mobile too.

Never again.

We were with them, they were fine to start with, then had multiple dropouts and speed started dropping with upload in particular very laggy. Customer service? Very poor
Moved to Plusnet and so far, no problems at all, and speed has doubled for less money.

we were with them, lots of drop outs as above. crap router.
replaced the router with something half decent and got half decent wifi signal. However the connection did tend to need to reconnect a few times a day.

moved to plusnet.
service consistant, but the router is rubbish. Picked up a BT homehub second hand off ebay and now can get wifi in the garden!

wouldn't go back to VF, regardless of how cheap they seem.

Works well for me, and has done over a year. Good value for money as well. Current uptime 95 days 2 hours. Always within 1% of guaranteed speed.

I did not like this very much: https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Pay-monthly/Website-security-certificate-coming-from-vodafone-content/td-p/2454980

You can work around by using a different DNS, but it does not give you a good feeling

Vodafone employee here (soon to leave). Was one of the trial customers of VF-BB too.
Big USP was UK-based (Glasgow mostly) support. This was good until they 'made all the Scottish team redundant' (actually moved the roles to Egypt), earlier this year*, and now customer satisfaction has taken a nosedive. Fault-fixing is now slow.

At the end of the day its BT wholesale derived infrastructure, and customer service is all- so for that reason, despite my massive staff discount, I would leave and will be doing so when I can.

That https inspection thing is all too common these days.

*shafted them pretty hard on their redundancy too.

That https inspection thing is all too common these days

Reminds me of the BT Phorm debacle (anyone remember that?). I get how it might be requirement for inline anti-malware detection as is common (and IMO justified) on corporate networks but wouldn't touch an ISP with a barge pole who tried to enforce it for general service. The tragic thing is that the 'fix' for the 'error' that is the browser / site owner telling you an intercept is going on is to install the middle-box cert....

I use OpenDNS for web filtering and redirects from blocked sites throw cert errors for sites that use HSTS/pinning (geeks only). It doesn't touch traffic from sites that aren't redirected.

I use Vodafone FTTC broadband. It's worked absolutely fine, although I'm not using their router (still have an ancient Openreach modem).

Not experienced the issues related to MITM attacks linked to above, but I have a vague recollection of setting the router's DNS to Cloudflare when I set it up.

I consider it excellent value for money. I think they also give a much better router when you take it out now as well.

Just as an FYI- they aren't MITM 'attacks' as such, its VF doing some content filtering for the parental lock thing. As you say, DNS changes will help.

Picked up a BT homehub second hand off ebay and now can get wifi in the garden!

Is it quite easy to set up a BT router to use on PlusNet? Is it plug and play or do you need to get techie?

To slightly over simplify things, with ISPs in the UK unless you're using Virgin or something slightly more exotic the only difference between suppliers is their call centre and which crappy router they brand up as their own. OpenReach actually provide the service and people's experiences will likely be as good or bad as their luck in nothing going wrong with the network.

Is it quite easy to set up a BT router to use on PlusNet? Is it plug and play or do you need to get techie?

Pretty easy - plenty of guides on the internet but definitely not techie - only typing in 'standard stuff' into the BT router GUI, namely your Plusnet ISP username and password. There are different types of BT Hub 6 / Smart Hub though; a business version and a home version (use either unless you know you have a requirement for a feature in the business like custom DNS settings or guest Wifi) and an FTTP or FTTC one (you'll need to know which you are for the latter based on whether you have fibre or copper to your house).

Just as an FYI- they aren’t MITM ‘attacks’ as such, its VF doing some content filtering for the parental lock thing. As you say, DNS changes will help.

My understanding is that VF are re-signing secure content. That's a MITM attack, surely?