BeFibre

[RichardM]

I am going to go to fibre - yes I know long overdue but I've only just bought my first smart phone!

BeFibre is available where we live and has good reviews on Trustpilot, elsewhere and is cheaper than others. It won't be used for anything fancy just 2 people, laptops, bit of TV sort of thing. Is anyone with them who can let me know if they have problems / been fine?

Thanks

 

[Turbo]

Got full fibre last year & all positive apart from one thing. If you have a power cut you have no landline. I knew this when we switched over but it was highlighted last week when we had a power cut due to the storm. I had to go outside to get a mobile signal so that I could report the fault (mobile signal is poor here). I'm looking in to installing a ups to keep the fibre equipment running long enough so my elderly parents can call the outside world if I'm not at home.

Plus anything that uses a copper phone line will not work at any time eg lifeline, alarm, cctv, etc. & might have to be swapped out for something that will work on a voip line.

 

[RichardM]

Thanks @Turbo, I know about the voip limitations. Open Reach want to switch off the analogue network by the end of 2025, fortunately the mobile signal is good where I live.

For my home or business

Openreach is building a faster more reliable full fibre network across the UK and will be retiring the copper network over the coming years. Find out what this means for you and what you need to do to upgrade.

www.openreach.com

 

[Mikes]

Just had EE fibre fitted. Not impressed as now have telephones that don't work - can't get more than one to ring although can pick a call up on it and dial out. EE tech expert visiting today. EE didn't make clear the needs for power supplies etc before hand and sub-contractor to Openreach would not put incoming fibre in same location as existing copper and wouldn't remove redundant copper service. Not impressed at all. Seems to be another mad rush just like the digital roll-out and we all know what happened with that.

 

[ajlelectronics]

Just had EE fibre fitted. Not impressed as now have telephones that don't work - can't get more than one to ring although can pick a call up on it and dial out. EE tech expert visiting today. EE didn't make clear the needs for power supplies etc before hand and sub-contractor to Openreach would not put incoming fibre in same location as existing copper and wouldn't remove redundant copper service. Not impressed at all. Seems to be another mad rush just like the digital roll-out and we all know what happened with that.

Try a microfilter in line. Older telephones require a ringing capacitor which the router doesn't provide. A microfilter adds it inline, just ignore the network socket on it.

 

[Bravheart]

Got full fibre last year & all positive apart from one thing. If you have a power cut you have no landline. I knew this when we switched over but it was highlighted last week when we had a power cut due to the storm. I had to go outside to get a mobile signal so that I could report the fault (mobile signal is poor here). I'm looking in to installing a ups to keep the fibre equipment running long enough so my elderly parents can call the outside world if I'm not at home.

Plus anything that uses a copper phone line will not work at any time eg lifeline, alarm, cctv, etc. & might have to be swapped out for something that will work on a voip line.

Tell them about elderly vulnerable parents in the property. They should then make you a priority for repairs

 

[pedrobedro]

Try a microfilter in line. Older telephones require a ringing capacitor which the router doesn't provide. A microfilter adds it inline, just ignore the network socket on it.

We had to do this with the Virgin fibre. We don't really use the landline but it stays plugged in for the occasional spam call.

 

[julianf]

I am going to go to fibre - yes I know long overdue but I've only just bought my first smart phone!

BeFibre is available where we live and has good reviews on Trustpilot, elsewhere and is cheaper than others. It won't be used for anything fancy just 2 people, laptops, bit of TV sort of thing. Is anyone with them who can let me know if they have problems / been fine?

Thanks

I don't know where you live but put your phone number into a website that checks for "local loop unbundled"

If you live somewhere slightly rural you may find that your exchange has not been unbundled, and, if this is the case, ALL fibre deals will be running off the same hardware in the exchange and it will basically make no difference who you choose (outside of price and how quickly they answer their phones)


Also a non unbundled exchange will not give you the pricing deals shown on the supplier websites. It will all be more expensive.

 

[fizzy]

I can't have fibre - so annoying. The line passes within 4 feet of my house and yet we have been left off the plans and BT database. Tried everyone and everything but no joy. All the hard work was done. Laying fibre to a remote area was a huge job. And then they bypass many properties

 

[Morrisman]

Just had EE fibre fitted. Not impressed as now have telephones that don't work - can't get more than one to ring although can pick a call up on it and dial out. EE tech expert visiting today. EE didn't make clear the needs for power supplies etc before hand and sub-contractor to Openreach would not put incoming fibre in same location as existing copper and wouldn't remove redundant copper service. Not impressed at all. Seems to be another mad rush just like the digital roll-out and we all know what happened with that.

Openreach ran my fibre a couple of weeks ago. It was slipped in through the same conduit the BT copper came through, from the street. The copper was left in, but snipped off at the house end. I doubt it will ever be used again, but you never know.

My Vodaphone router and wifi box came through the post and then the internal fibre was run and it all hooked up, by Openreach again, not Vodaphone, on another day.
Openreach seem to be the general gofers for everything fibre nowadays.

Eta: I moved from BT/EE as their price was going up to £42 for basic broadband, no phone or tv, but a new customer with them could get it for £26, so I told them to get stuff. Vodaphone is £32

 

[ajlelectronics]

I can't have fibre - so annoying. The line passes within 4 feet of my house and yet we have been left off the plans and BT database. Tried everyone and everything but no joy. All the hard work was done. Laying fibre to a remote area was a huge job. And then they bypass many properties

Sweet talk one of your neighbours into a cost share point to point link?

 

[fizzy]

Sweet talk one of your neighbours into a cost share point to point link?

Which point to which point? Deep in a valley and only 4 houses on my postcode - nearest about 1/2 a mil away.
I am using EE 4g unlimited with an external aerial - not too bad but has its bad days.

 

[addjunkie]

Which point to which point? Deep in a valley and only 4 houses on my postcode - nearest about 1/2 a mil away.
I am using EE 4g unlimited with an external aerial - not too bad but has its bad days.

Which ariel are you using, I have a couple of amplifying directional ones with built in routers, we no longer use, now we have gone Starlink.

 

[Mikes]

Openreach ran my fibre a couple of weeks ago. It was slipped in through the same conduit the BT copper came through, from the street. The copper was left in, but snipped off at the house end. I doubt it will ever be used again, but you never know.

My Vodaphone router and wifi box came through the post and then the internal fibre was run and it all hooked up, by Openreach again, not Vodaphone, on another day.
Openreach seem to be the general gofers for everything fibre nowadays.

Eta: I moved from BT/EE as their price was going up to £42 for basic broadband, no phone or tv, but a new customer with them could get it for £26, so I told them to get stuff. Vodaphone is £32

Mine comes in overhead from the pole in the street so now have two physical lines to the house. can't understand why they don't get the guy to cut off the redundant copper when he is up the pole. Asked the guy doing it and was told that they aren't allowed to!

 

[ajlelectronics]

Which point to which point? Deep in a valley and only 4 houses on my postcode - nearest about 1/2 a mil away.
I am using EE 4g unlimited with an external aerial - not too bad but has its bad days.

Whoever is in line of sight. I have a pair of aerials here that claim 25 miles range, so not a problem for you? In fact they are not any good to me due to obstructed line of sight, so if it looks like an option, we could maybe come to an arrangement.

 

[julianf]

Sweet talk one of your neighbours into a cost share point to point link?

In the early days of adsl, I had a connection, but a friend in a flat one up and two across didn't.

This was back at the time of Pringles can antenna...


I was away for a weekend and my friend said later that he has been having a load of connection problems.

My girlfriend of the time said that he was sucking up all the bandwidth, but that she had "foiled" him.


Turns out a kit Kat wrapper around the transmitter degrades the signal sufficiently that it appears as a technical fault but is actually human introduced.


Note - I did not charge my friend or anything. I also never saw there was any point in telling him of the cause - ultimately we were all friends, but, my suspicion (without packet sniffing) was that he was probably swamping the connection with "gentleman's art" when he knew I was away and wouldn't otherwise be bothered!

 

[fizzy]

Whoever is in line of sight. I have a pair of aerials here that claim 25 miles range, so not a problem for you? In fact they are not any good to me due to obstructed line of sight, so if it looks like an option, we could maybe come to an arrangement.

Thanks but sadly there is only one other property in line of sight from me and they don't have fibre either.
We had a similar system at our warehouse in Swansea. A microwave link across Swansea Bay to a repeater. Pretty good 40mb connection both ways. Sadly it doesn't do well in heavy rain. This is Swansea! We ended up investing in a leased 100mb fibre line. All because nobody would bother connecting our industrial estate even though fibre ran right past it.

 

[ajlelectronics]

Sadly it doesn't do well in heavy rain.

2.4GHz doesn't, but the professional standard links are in the 5GHz band.

 

[RichardM]

Thanks Guys. All signed up with BE for installment end of Feb. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[RichardM]

Well the installers came today, they couldn't put it in the same way as the BT line as they couldn't go over the garage roof and put it through the loft space, even though I had discussed this with the sales people. I wasn't happy with their proposed routes along the guttering down over the fascia, soffits and wall then through, and about 10 ft above the drive!
Disappointingly no fibre yet.