Hi, any customers like to share their experience and possibly a referral.

Stuart

Hi Stuart,
I have been a Community Fibre customer now for 6 months and have found it very good. I previously had BT Broadband and Virgin. BT I found very reliable but relatively slow, Virgin less reliable but fast and Community Fibre has been both reliable and fast. I did a comparison which is available for the next week on a local forum complete with graphics, just search on my username which is the same on both forums.

Here is my referral link https://communityfibre.co.uk/friends?ref...tsviiwyseC

Feel free to PM me with any specific questions

I am in Perry Hill.

Early adopter of BT Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) which followed from BT's decision to alter the design architecture of the pilot scheme roll-out of fibre at Forest Hill Exchange from Fibre to the Hub (FTTH) to FTTP.

I believe it is still the case that some BT customers served by Forest Hill exchange are only offered FTTH connections in certain areas with the last few hundred metres of connection from the hubs being made over existing copper and aluminium wire.

Engaged in test programme with extra kit in home to enable BT to fine tune and test fibre install.

Reliability and available up-time have been consistently good.

Throughput speeds, however, have not matched published figures. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that BT has re-adopted the once banned "up to xxx Mbps" terminology in their lead commentaries but contracts in which BT are mandated to state what the actual delivery speed will be are often set at circa 50% of the headline speed.

For example, I am currently on what appears to be a competitive offer for 900Mbps service. My contract stipulates the minimum performance threshold to be set at 450Mbps. I rarely see measured performance at over 550 Mbps.

Having said that, the throughput delivers a service that meets my requirements for about 85% of the time with rare periods where I am delayed by the dreaded buffering cycle.

Weirdly in the run up to the latest upgrade, occasional testing sometimes showed results between 2 and 5 Gbps being available for short periods. That level of delivery went unexplained and was not maintained.

Thinking that I may take up the issue of BT's misuse of the "up to xxx Mbps" terminology with the regulator. I recall that Ofcom had expressly banned its use in advertising and contracts and it escapes me how and why BT are using it once more.

Apologies Stuart.

Only after having spotted borderpauls's response did I realise you meant the brand "Community Fibre" and not general commentary on community experience of fibre generally.

Hey ho.

One extra issue worth noting.

BT resolutely decline to offer its retail customers a fixed IP address - at any price.

Whilst a couple of friends have taken up Community Fibre offers out of Forest Hill - not sure what Community Fibre's position is on IP addresses.

This post was last modified: 02-05-2022 12:15 PM by jgdoherty.

Thank you BorderPaul for the link and your observations.

It's for my daughter who is terminating Virgin as, with you, though it was fast it was unreliable (in Sydenham Hill). Moreover expensive and getting more expensive.

JGD - I doubt any of the 'value' ISPs will offer you a fixed IPv4 nowadays. They are getting expensive to aquire particulary for large ranges. You have to consider going to A&A or Zen who will charge you business rates but ae very reliable and can squeeze more out of a Openreach line than BT can ...

Perhaps BP can correct me but I think Community Fibre have got round the problem by not offering IPv4 at all but proxying everything via IPv6. Or do they do SLAAC IPv6 which basically fixed the IPv6 to your device's MAC?

If so you can possibly have many devices using Cloudflare or similar to deliver via IPv4 to folks who have yet to enter the IPv6 world. This works from my Zen /64 allocation.

Stuart (from part of Sydenham currently beyond the reach of CF or 5G).

Does anyone know of the rollout schedule for this?

I'm on Devonshire Road and my cabinet isn't even FTTC enabled, we're stuck with plain old ADSL which is terrible especially for WFH...

I'm currently relying on 5G which is great when it works but it's not reliable enough for a long term solution.