HeyBroadband seen in High Wycombe

Hi,
I was hoping that there would be some sort of press release about this. I have seen few cars from "HeyBroadband". I looked up their website and it looks like they are a FTTP provider.

I was keen to understand their plan for High Wycombe, I saw them pulling "Cables" via ducting, so was wondering if deployment is imminent.

Thanx

A casual google reveals they are rolling out in HW. See ISPreview article from February.

There is a comment from their spokesperson at the end which confirms. Think that’s as close to a press release as you’ll get 😀

Last comment (an hour ago) from a punter (not yours is it?) see them working in Hatters Lane…

No harm in enquiring with them directly.

Some more threads here about them:

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4666256-hey-...

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/f/4683275-he...

In reply to a post by Feejus:

I saw them pulling "Cables" via ducting, so was wondering if deployment is imminent.

If they are anything like the installer round these parts, probably very imminent. Ours took slightly less than a month from pulling cables in to going live.

As for finding out exactly when things will happen, I found phoning the company up to be a very worthwhile exercise - you might find the same. i.e they want your business!

Thanx for all of your quick response to my post. I reached out and spoke to them, the deployment plan is between now and November so I can only assume they connect every few 100 customers at time.

I also found out that all street around where i live will get Fiberoptic beside my street! I reached out to them and asked them why or if there is second stage for our street.

Again thank you all.

They've been pulling cables here (Wycombe) for a few months now. I've seen them installing the fibre up poles ready, although mine isn't connected yet. They are grey boxes with a four digit number on them.

You can see their activity on one.network (previously roadworks.org), look for F&W Networks, which is the parent company.

Yep, they have been doing a bit in Cressex and Booker, and appear to be in Totteridge and Bowerdean at the moment - nothing in Micklefield, Wycombe Marsh towards Loudwater side of things as yet as yet so I renewed my G.Fast contract earlier in the year and will worry about it in the future.
BT are installing FTTP in Penn and Tylers Green as well so hopefully may well have a bit more choice at the start of 2023.

BT are building in Penn, but Wycombe isn't in their plans which currently run up to 2026.

Cityfibre is coming though, hopefully by 2025!

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

BT are building in Penn, but Wycombe isn't in their plans which currently run up to 2026.

The areas so far announced aren't a complete list of everywhere that will be done by 2026.
What's announced so far doesn't come close to the targets they have set.

There will be many many more areas announced and completed by 2026.

Update to this. I have just moved into the area and been chasing Hey. After finding out there is no capacity on the cab and Openreach have told me there are "no plans to upgrade that cab for several months at least" I was getting very upset having left a solid 72-74/20 FTTC in my old house in west London.

Hey were very interested to hear about the Openreach issues about a week ago, and on a follow-up phone call from Hey I was told the implementations team were looking to move forward the activation timeline for my area.

Today a team were out pulling fibre to my road and said they are also activating the main hub at the top of Totteridge Lane and after pulling fibre to my street will start working on the surrounding streets with the aim to go live for us by the end of this month or early next month.


On a side note, the fibre team were all Spanish/south American which was interesting (my wife and her family are Spanish, we have a family holiday home on the south coast of Spain where we have had fibre 600/600 for 24 euros a month for over three years now!) and the chap from this crew explained that there are very few fibre trained staff in the UK, but in Europe, most comms engineers are very well trained in fibre installs, hence them being here.

Honestly, seems like Openreach have missed a trick...they had customers waiting for their service and now another company has swooped in and taken them away because OR is dragging its feet

I've had HB's symmetrical gigabit service since March. After living in an underserved area with a very flakey FTTC service, its been a drastic improvement in internet connectivity.

HB's network is run over Fibre & Wireless' infrastructure. Looking them up on Companies House, they look like the same company to me and a bit of a dig on LinkedIn show they operate a service under the same name in Spain and their founder and CEO are Spanish so it all makes sense. The few times I've spoken to their Technical team, they do sound Spanish....not that it matters.

In my area, OpenReach had no plans to deploy FTTP at all when I asked them at the beginning of the year. Then Hey!Broadband and Swish Fibre turned up and started actively deploying. Then all of a sudden OpenReach's vans were all over my area and their service is now live. You decide whether that was coincidence or not.

Now I have 3 separate FTTP providers to choose from

Edited by nofappingway (Mon 26-Jul-21 13:33:56)

HB's network is run over Fibre & Wireless' infrastructure

‘Cable and Wireless’ surely ?

Nope, Fibre & Wireless

https://fwnetworks.co.uk

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

‘Cable and Wireless’ surely ?

Which bit? I assume the part you mean has been Vodafone since 2012:

The company split in March 2010, with its international division demerging to form Cable & Wireless Communications, acquired by Liberty Global in 2015.[1], and since spun-off in 2018 from Liberty Global to Liberty Latin America[2], while the remainder of the Cable & Wireless business became Cable & Wireless Worldwide and was acquired by Vodafone in 2012.

In reply to a post by nofappingway:

Now I have 3 separate FTTP providers to choose from

No fapping way!! 😎
I expect you can eventually give us a review of all three in the years to come.

Ah, ya live, ya learn …….. sometimes

The past couple of weeks they have installed their fibre to poles in & around the New Road & Chapel Lane area. You can tell if the pole that serves your house is done by the grey box installed at the top of the pole.

I called them earlier this week to get an ETA & was told I should be able to order in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Apparently if you have "pre-ordered" on their site you should get an email when the service is ready to be installed from your particular pole.

In reply to a post by nofappingway:

You decide whether that was coincidence or not.

It almost certainly isn't. Our business park had no connectivity aside from ADSL with a maximum speed of around 1.5Mbps. Openreach would always reject any requests for FTTP, unsurprisingly offering their much more expensive leased lines as an alternative instead.

Then a local altnet came along and installed FTTP to the business park and what do you know, Openreach did an entire FTTP build a couple of months later.

I've seen enough cases of Openreach overbuilding on top of an altnet despite no previous plans to think it isn't a coincidence at this point.

The last engineer suggested it would be live in two weeks, Hey have confirmed on the phone I should be able to order it by the third week in September

One thing to be aware of is the Router they provide. Its a very locked down GPON TP-Link Archer router. Perfectly fine for the basic family usage profile but if you plan to do anything more advanced it might be too restrictive for you. On request they will open it up and/or put it in Bridge mode for you to use your own kit.

Yes, I've seen that mentioned in a few places. I have a PFSense setup with two connections & will be keeping one of those connections active as a backup. With 3 of us working from home for the forseeable future, I'd rather keep paying for a backup then not have anything at all. Not for the bandwidth obviously... I considered using a 4G backup but we just don't get good enough signal here and it would be unlikely to be good enough to support all of us working with Zoom calls etc.

I'm the same - I have the cheapest Plusnet package hooked up to my multi-wan router in the unlikely event I lose my HeyB connection. £20/month on top of the HeyB £40/month is a small price to pay for us.

Update from Hey,

There has been an issue and they are working with the local council to resolve it. I am expecting an update from Hey on the 17th (the date given by the network team) so another week and we should have some news on install dates.

Which part of Wycombe are you? I have seen some sporadic activity in Micklefield but nothing for a few weeks, and there are a number of poles with rolls of fibre hanging from them. Not in any rush at current time due to being in contract but appreciate the local updates and will be good to hear how the service is once people are live.

Edited by NGDragon (Mon 13-Sep-21 07:37:33)

Did you call them to get that update, or was it posted somewhere?

I've found the call center people pleasant enough to talk to when I've called them for updates, but not very consistent in their responses. At the beginning of August I was told i could likely submit a proper order (not a "pre-order") in a couple of weeks, but when I called again this month I was told it may not be before the end of the year.

*Sigh*

Still not installed (totally surprised lol) and not have a clue as to when. I have been chasing every few weeks and for a long time, I kept getting the same story, it's with the local council for planning permissions.

Speaking to them again this week, I was given the news the planning department aim to have us connected before Christmas.

Not holding my breath....

*double sigh*

Had a webchat with Hey today....even tho I gave my actual postcode, I was given several copy and paste replies, which honestly annoyed me. I did say I want an update for my actual address and the reply was along the lines of

"We aim to have High Wycombe online by March 2022 blah blah"

Frankly losing a lot of faith in this company. Been told many many times a couple of weeks, end of the month, the start of next month, by December, by the end of the year and now into Q2 of next year!

I actually asked for an honest reply, given I am now out of contract with BT and paying more each month because I have been waiting for Hey otherwise I could have renewed my contract at a lower rate, not that I would prefer that service, but feel like Hey have lied to me.

I have been told it a problem with planning at the council, surely they would have cleared planning before installing on the telegraph poles, then I was told the ducts to my property were blocked, this was several weeks after the fibre had been installed via said ducts already....it just feels like lie after lie with them and its utterly unprofessional. Just say from the start "We are a year away" and we can make an informed choice.

*ggrrrrrrrrr*

Has ANYONE near northeast Wycombe been connected? (I am not far from the Tesco petrol station on the Hazlemere road area.)

I think the problem is they've been too forthcoming with deployment info in the past and expectations have been incorrectly set leading to how you feel today. My advise is to assume it'll be 6 months from the date you see their vans down your street to the service going live as there is a lot more to deploying the service than just deploying fibre nodes on your street.

If your area is served by Poles, a quick drive through will likely show connected properties with the HB nodes on the poles and 2 wires going to connected properties.

FWIW, a different AltNet laid down my street Dec 2022 and told me the service would be available to consume May 2021. As of Dec 2021 its still not available to order....but they have been quite forthcoming with service updates and driving my street forward. Sheet happens, at least its coming for you.

It must be seriously frustrating, we had another altnet enter Beaconsfield and I cancelled my Sky FFTC connection back in August hoping for an September live date, again no where near as bad I got connected in mid-November.

Thankfully I used mobile broadband and I was literally sitting on top of a Vodafone mast and used a VOXI deal to get me through 2-3 months without broadband (not ideal as couldn't use my Pi-Hole and occasionally I would get drop outs but better than nothing)

The altnet I'm using right now, phoned and kept me up-to-date, I know they aren't rolling out to High Wycombe, Hey! have done a leaflet drop in Beaconsfield but then everything went quiet and their still not here - so Swish took their business and I'm sticking with them.

Just keep messaging or calling, I know my go live date was delayed due to some issues.

You can get an idea (though probably out of date) of where they're live in Wycombe here: https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=...

Down my road all the poles have the white boxes at the top. Some have conduit running down the pole and underground, others (like mine), just have the conduit coiled up at the top, and an "X" with "BT" written next to it nearby, so probably ground works needed.

Hey seems to come and go in spurts. Yesterday they were definitely running the main fibre down the road, as I went out and asked them, but they're not very talkative.

In July I was told "a couple of weeks" until service would be available, so clearly there is a massive delay which is frustrating, but they are rolling it out, which is better that Openreach's nothing. Also Cityfibre have Wycombe planned at some point, so we might see cheaper prices as well when that comes.

I think the general rule to apply is: "it's not available until it's available". Don't plan around predicted dates, because they're often wrong.

Openreach have given up on this. They found out the hard way that any availability prediction only makes people unhappy when it's not met, so they've now reduced it to just three bands:
- by April 2024
- by April 2025
- by December 2026

Where my dad lives is in the "December 2026" band, but a few weeks ago the CBTs appeared on the poles. Internally I expect they are planning for that area to go live in 2022, but publicly they're not saying so. The OR postcode checker even says there are no plans for FTTP at that address!

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

Down my road all the poles have the white boxes at the top. Some have conduit running down the pole and underground, others (like mine), just have the conduit coiled up at the top, and an "X" with "BT" written next to it nearby, so probably ground works needed.

Hey seems to come and go in spurts. Yesterday they were definitely running the main fibre down the road, as I went out and asked them, but they're not very talkative.

They installed the boxes on the poles here early in the year, in fact it was an OR engineer trying to fix my dsl who suggesting calling Hey. In July this year they ran fibre from the pole down the duct along my street to my house and said "a couple of weeks" and then it started lol

In July I was told "a couple of weeks" until service would be available, so clearly there is a massive delay which is frustrating, but they are rolling it out, which is better that Openreach's nothing. Also Cityfibre have Wycombe planned at some point, so we might see cheaper prices as well when that comes.

In reply to a post by Hardwire:

...it just feels like lie after lie with them and its utterly unprofessional.

I don't think they are intentionally lying, just that the rollout information is being poorly managed. At the beginning of this year I was told "soon", the middle of the year it was "in the next 6 weeks", now I'm being told they just don't know & can't give me a date.

At least the map posted by AndyPandy shows they are switching on some roads, finally. It's probably easier to keep an eye on that occasionally for expansion than to keep calling them!

I have been told by them that I will get an email when it's possible to place an order. I wonder if those who have been connected in Wycombe actually got one of those, or were just repeatedly checking/calling.

You are right, its not intentional, but as a potential customer having been told many times over several months while having to deal with a really poor OR connection, it kinda pee's you off.

So the positive sign, looking at the one.network site it appears Hey/F&W are going to be very active around totteridge during December so perhaps, just maybe we may be closer to a go-live

In reply to a post by Kans:

In reply to a post by Hardwire:

...it just feels like lie after lie with them and its utterly unprofessional.

I don't think they are intentionally lying, just that the rollout information is being poorly managed. At the beginning of this year I was told "soon", the middle of the year it was "in the next 6 weeks", now I'm being told they just don't know & can't give me a date.

At least the map posted by AndyPandy shows they are switching on some roads, finally. It's probably easier to keep an eye on that occasionally for expansion than to keep calling them!

I have been told by them that I will get an email when it's possible to place an order. I wonder if those who have been connected in Wycombe actually got one of those, or were just repeatedly checking/calling.

I have been told by them that I will get an email when it's possible to place an order

Yeah, that's exactly what I got when my road was enabled. I signed up same day and was connected within 2 days.

After what is roughly 6 - 8 months of no activity from the initial sightings in my area (east side of town), they have re-appeared and are going to start running fibre in my street. Given the coils of fibre that have been hanging on poles on the main road I suspect that it will be a good while yet before it becomes available.

What is frustrating is that Penn and Tylers Green (approx 1/4 mile) have BT, Swish, Hey all being deployed (BT been up and running for a while)... :good news is that i'm not in a rush to change supplier due to contract

I would say a few months from your description, but it could be shorter or longer, depending on how other parts of the build go, supply of fibre, etc.

I'm struggling to find much sympathy for you 'only' getting one FTTP network

Same here... We have Openreach FTTP, but Jurassic Fibre are rolling out in the area... The issue is JF are causing loads of traffic chaos by digging up the roads, unlike Openreach who went overhead!

The one.network site showed F&W doing works on loads of streets up to the 25th of Jan, so I again reached out to Hey and they have said the deployment team said I should be connected mid-Feb.

I was also able to lock in the current deal which will expire before I can be connected giving 1000mb up/down (ok bound to be cloers to 900 I am sure) for £35 a month so a good deal I think.

In reply to a post by Hardwire:

The one.network site showed F&W doing works on loads of streets up to the 25th of Jan, so I again reached out to Hey and they have said the deployment team said I should be connected mid-Feb.

I was also able to lock in the current deal which will expire before I can be connected giving 1000mb up/down (ok bound to be cloers to 900 I am sure) for £35 a month so a good deal I think.

I would hope they would honour the deal for pre-orders that's been on the site since 2020 of 3 months free and £35 per month. I signed up in November 2020 for that.

Hopefully good news they will be rolling out more access soon. Which side of town are you (I'm in Sands)? I'll give it a couple of weeks & call them myself for an update.

Update!

I have an installation date of a week tomorrow. So it seems that the north part of HW is finally going live.

In terms of pre orders, I asked about this as I preordered with three months free, but the current offer of £35 for 1000/1000 is cheaper...I asked about this and they were happy to move me onto this offer.

Updated after install next week.

Sounds good!

I actually got a reply just after my previous post to a DM Tweet I sent them back in August... Apparently I should be able to order by mid-March.

Does anyone know how limited their supplied router is? Can you change admin username/password, set up port forwarding, change SSID name and password etc?

I've heard they're very locked down, or at least used to be.

Otherwise I've heard people are having them put it into bridge mode and using their own router...

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

Otherwise I've heard people are having them put it into bridge mode and using their own router...

This is what I plan to do when I get Hey installed. I've not checked recently but when I was doing some research last year I found quite a few people were having issues with home networking though the Hey router.

I have a pfsense firewall that does all the routing I need. I also have a second internet connection as a backup as there are 3 of us working from home permanently now & can't afford to have any lengthy downtime. The pfsense system does a good job of managing the routing on two WAN connections & seamlessly switching from one to the other if there's an outage.

I've given up with Hey! BB... It seems they'll connect people who are already on poles which, I guess is easy... but if you're served by an underground cable, then they won't consider it, even if a HeyBB pole is close by. I am not sure if they will (ever?) cable up the underground ducts?

Currently served by Virgin Media for Cable and Phone.
Old (unused for 20 years) BT lines are in underground ducts.
Hey BB put their fibre on a pole that serves adjacent houses with their BT lines on overhead cables. The pole is on the footpath and adjoins my property and is 7m from the roof/corner.
Because the old unused BT line is underground on the database, Hey BB won't even consider me as a customer.
There doesn't seem to be any way to get beyond "computer says no"

On the plus side - people seem to be leaving Virgin Media Cable, so their network is becoming less congested and quite reliable and usable in recent times.

Discussed here

Well....my line was just installed...in a duct.

They had issues with the installation as there was a block in the duct and said a civil works team may need to come back....however they stuck at it and managed to get installed.

Speed tests are all over the place depending on which site is used.

HB have their own Speedtest.net node. Try forcing the test against that. I consistently max out my connection (930Mb/s up and down).

Edited by nofappingway (Wed 02-Feb-22 19:28:15)

Which test site is that from?

We also discussed the router, its not as locked down as I thought....but they said they are now shipping the router without their customer firmware so maybe that's why.

It is an Adtran model if that helps.

Speedtest.net

Sounds like they’ve made some changes to the router they offer. Makes sense as mine is a year old now.

Thought I would give an update on my experience thus far with Hey.

I was installed on Wednesday 2nd. The next day it went offline around lunch time. This was when the fun trying to reach tech support started. Calling continuously for two hours but never had anyone pick up the phone. I eventually called customer service and they said there is a problem with their phone lines, but she would pass on my message.

Sadly I could not fall back to my BT line as during the installation, the Hey team broke the copper connection coming into my house. *sigh*

Later that evening an engineer came out to look at the junction box and gave some story about it not being connected to the right port and he could not work out where the original cable pulling team had connected my line etc etc.

The following morning, two Hey engineers turned up (the rest to the point had been outsourced) and said the fault was found a big meeting was held to ensure this did not happen again. The fixed my line and also repaired the BT line and I was back online around lunch time Thursday. Four hours later it went offline again for a couple of hours. Again problems trying to reach tech so a message was sent via customer service. Thursday night it was back on and this lasted until some point mid morning on Saturday. Service down again and no one works in Hey at the weekend.

Now on their website they claim 24/7 network monitoring.

Can't speak to anyone until Monday, where I call and again can't reach tech, so customer service forward a message. I later receive an email from Tech saying "We do apologise for the inconvenience that this may have caused.

There was an issue at the High Wycombe Radius.

This has since been resolve and I can assure you that now that it has been resolved it will not happen again."

Given this was the third and significate outage in 5 days, I felt that reply a little underwhelming to be honest and if it was not for my personal background in IT I would have no idea what an issue with a radius (I am still assuming he is talking about a radius server that appears to only serve customers in HW which is strange). Since the service came back online, it has been stable, but an ISP line should not be considered a stable success in such a short time given the amount of downtime in the first week alone.

I had a follow up call from the lovely Yolanda in customer support a few days later, but no offer to waive the first month fees or anything considering I made it clear that I will delay issuing notice on my BT line because of a lack of confidence in my Hey connection.

Thoughts?

Not a great start for sure. I think HB are going through growing pains. The human touch they offer for Customer Service is great and all but the 9-6 Mon-Fri support, no Web Portal and on the last time I checked, they only peer with one other network and that network had routing issues for a couple of days last year.

It is for this reason why I still have my £21/month Plusnet connection as a backup. Having said that, I haven't had to use it and my HB connection has been mostly flawless so my lack of faith maybe mis-placed.

Hopefully just a sequence of poor timing for you.

I wanted to give it a couple of weeks before updating on this.

So....a few more visits and it has been expressed that the external contractors who did my install are no longer working with Hey as mine was not the only one they messed up.

Secondly, there has been an investigation as it was discovered several nodes were getting lower power readings, and part of the network was installed with trunk fibre and not the distribution fibre where it was required and they have been replacing this.

All in all, its been rock solid ever since the initial problems with speeds consistently (when tested) over 850+ u/d.

Growing pains indeed, but I am currently happy with the connection.

Glad to hear they got it sorted out. Hoping I don't have as many issues!

For anyone still waiting for connections to become available, I was finally able to order the service today in the Sands area. Worth checking the website.

I was told installation is likely to be the first week of June, but waiting for a call from the installs team in the next day or so to confirm a date.

I had Hey! installed in Booker Hill a couple of weeks ago. Reasonably efficient install from the post outside my neighbours.
I'm on the 100/100 service and have been getting 100/50 consistently.
Not a fan of the router though. My favourite bit is the SFP port and fibre module! 😁 It's an Adtran 854-v6. I've been using a Draytek 2860 and 2862 for years.

Just had my Adtran router replaced with an Adtran SDX 611 GPON ONT (fibre modem). Very quick after requesting a bridged connection yesterday. I did also advise them to maybe update their website info on routers supplied and needing to ask for a bridge connection in advance.