CityFibre Ethernet Flex - Anybody using it?

I have been patiently waiting for CityFibre to light up the network they built to us over a year ago, and since that time I've had a chance to re-assess things. The business in question has a leased line service that currently costs £400/month plus VAT, so anything from CityFibre is a cost saving, though it's still a good opportunity to have a rethink rather than just signing an order for whatever happens to be a saving.

I was sure that I was going to take up a service based on the CityFibre Ethernet Flex product, this is a managed service that the ISP provides a router for, comes with a 5 hour SLA, guaranteed bandwidth of 200Mbps and it bursts to 1Gbps if there's capacity in the network to do so. Since I first started looking though, CityFibre's broadband products have been upgraded to 2.5Gbps symmetric and their Ethernet offering looks really outdated.

As far as I can tell, the advantage of going with ethernet over broadband would be:
- Much better SLA, though this is never a guaranteed fix time. Presumably the support is better as well
- Presentation of the connection without PPPoE
- ISP can choose to only offer certain features (e.g. additional routed IPv4 block) to customers taking the higher priced product
- Guaranteed 200Mbps of bandwidth through the CityFibre network and ISP core

This would all be quite appealing stuff 3-4 years ago, but the discussion now makes it a choice between £250/month for ethernet and £50/month for 2.5Gbps broadband - you can buy quite a lot of resilience with the cost difference that would make the SLA redundant, a lot of extra router if handling PPPoE is likely to cause slowdowns, and all that's really left is any features the ISP chooses to lock away behind the ethernet service.

The site in question is due to get Openreach FTTP in the first half of next year, so for £100/month I could have two connections on separate physical networks and £150 each month to allocate to VPN overlays, AAISP L2TP for additional subnets, router upgrades etc. before it would start to cost more than Ethernet Flex.

Am I missing something here? It would be an easier decision if the flex was maybe 500Mbps guaranteed and 2.5Gbps flex, but the product feels a bit old now and isn't the amazing deal compared to an Openreach EAD that it was when it launched.

Sounds like a nice problem to have 😉! Especially from the point of view of (soon anyway) having several discrete networks available to the premises for resilience and commercial choice.

I think you've covered your arguments for and against quite well. Doesn't ease the decision though.

Ultimately the low cost alternative you have mentioned *IS* 'classic' broadband and is hence priced accordingly. If your client is happy to accept those (worst or even case) traditional cost / performance trade-offs (contention/possibility of periods of heavy congestion, consumer level repair/fix times) in a business setting (and every business is different as you're all too well aware) for bandwidth bang-for-buck, then happy days.

I don't have first hand experience of CityFibre, especially in a directly contracted scenario. Sounds like from your description the Flex product is delivered like a traditional DIA Ethernet service over dedicated glass, directly into their FeX, rather than a (XGS)PON-based product derivative?

If it was me, I would want to know about CF's service wrap (as making up part of that price premium):
- what CityFibre are actually like to deal with as a business end customer?
- how responsive are they when you call up at 11pm to report a fault for example? Will the engineer definitely be there first thing in the morning?
- commercially do they fix the cost of the agreement for the term or are there (as is now increasingly common with Ethernet/DIA) built-in annual CPI% ++ uplifts?
- are you locked in for 2, 3 or 5 years?

There is definitely more blur between Ethernet (or Ethernet-like) service and high-end symmetric broadband products for sure. With some cost differentials it IS becoming difficult to justify the price premium, especially if you can, as you say, get two lowered priced (but physically network separate) products with excess bandwidth for a lot less.

Ultimately how much is the super duper SLA, bells and whistles and the extra reliability/stability of performance worth?

I think the decision is likely to go the way of not paying £250 for something that contractually only needs to deliver 200Mbps and being on a 36-month contract for it - I'm sure I could get closer to £300 for a guaranteed gigabit on an EAD if I wanted to re-contract or move provider and it's a known quantity.

AFAIK the CityFibre Ethernet product is still PON

Is this "ethernet flex" being offered directly by Cityfibre, or through a B2B reseller?

Either way, I *think* this is a separate service from the residential service, which is wholesale only. At least, it certainly used to be the case that CF would sell business "leased-line" type services in an area, as an anchor service, before deploying residential FTTP.

The Flex product sounds like it's a PON with 200M CDR up and down. But if it's a business service, it might only be at a 4:1 or 8:1 split ratio. If so, you'll be sharing with other businesses, but not with people downloading Fortnite updates

I'm sure that your supplier will be happy to explain the details of what you're buying. And if you don't like the theoretical 200/200 limit, ask them how much extra it would be for a 1G/1G leased line.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Is this "ethernet flex" being offered directly by Cityfibre, or through a B2B reseller?

Either way, I *think* this is a separate service from the residential service, which is wholesale only. At least, it certainly used to be the case that CF would sell business "leased-line" type services in an area, as an anchor service, before deploying residential FTTP.

The Flex product sounds like it's a PON with 200M CDR up and down. But if it's a business service, it might only be at a 4:1 or 8:1 split ratio. If so, you'll be sharing with other businesses, but not with people downloading Fortnite updates

I'm sure that your supplier will be happy to explain the details of what you're buying. And if you don't like the theoretical 200/200 limit, ask them how much extra it would be for a 1G/1G leased line.

Just had a quick googly via their website and reads as though it's available via either reseller/channel partners *and* directly. The wording throughout is a bit loose.

Anyhow if PON-derived, this service looks pretty similar to the business service I was looking at recently with Community Fibre. Essentially a separate PON, rather than a dedicated piece of glass back to the FeX - which is doubtless, uses less cores in the spine / distro network and uses cheaper 'consumer' grade NTE - ie a fifty quid XGS ONT rather than any Ethernet NTE at the B end and probably saves them a ton at the A end as they can just terminate it all on their regular OLT (perhaps a dedicated line card / uplink if you're lucky!).

Anyways it would hopefully be a lightly business contended service. The usual Caveat Emptor stuff. This is DIA/Ethernet "lite" but still comes with a premium, just not as bad.

I'd like to know if they're adopting the consumer pricing approach and building an annual CPI% + ratchet mechanism into their (long) terms. I've come across it several times this week from big players I didn't expect it from

Very sneaky!!