Leaving Virgin Media, can't decide between EE or Vodafone

hi all,

Been with VM for a few years and in the last year, I upgraded to the 1GB package.

Pros
- Fast download speed

cons
- constant connection issues
- inconsistent latency
- Customer service requires 2 asprins (before & after the call)


I am out of contract so can jump ship wherever I feel like.

I suspect both EE and Vodafone should give me a better / more dependable connection that VM but if anyone can share their feedback that would be great.

VM pros = Static IP and the supplied 6e router has good reviews (im currently using my own AX82u router with VM)

EE pros = They provide a Wifi7 router.


I was a previous ZEN customer from the DSL days and had great experience with ZEN but right now they can't offer anything faster than 900mb for my area.

Anyone have any feedback / comments on EE VS Vodafone (both on the 1.6gb package).

thank you

Me, I’d say EE. Based more on customer service than anything else.

I have had the EE service for about three months and it's been perfect

Interesting, i went to trustpilot and for EE looks really bad !

Edited by uknewbie (Tue 24-Dec-24 17:00:19)

In reply to a post by jpm:

I have had the EE service for about three months and it's been perfect

They don't offer static IP do they ? if not, they I guess they use CGNAT ?

In reply to a post by uknewbie:

... pros = They provide a Wifi7 router.

...

If there is a single factor least likely to influence my choice of ISP, it is the router they provide. Everything my side of the ONT or the NTE5 is mine and nothing to do with the ISP.

One year with EE on their 1.6Gb package and couldn't be happier.

No static IP, no CGNAT, and IPv6.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by uknewbie:

... pros = They provide a Wifi7 router.

...

If there is a single factor least likely to influence my choice of ISP, it is the router they provide. Everything my side of the ONT or the NTE5 is mine and nothing to do with the ISP.

fair enough.

Also with Vodafone, the minimum contract length seems to be 24month whereas with EE, i can sign up for 12

I’ve had EE for a year with 1gbit.

The broadband has been flawless. But EE’s billing platform is a mess. There was a problem with my order, which needed manual intervention. That meant my DD wasn’t setup on the right account. I signed up for an EE sim, but when I cancelled they didn’t cancel the watch service. Managing the EE add-on like Netflix was a mess.

You can’t actually order their TV service online if an existing customer. You have to call their customer services like it’s the 1990’s.

Also they’re expensive compared to other openreach providers.

When my 2 years are up I’ll be looking for somewhere cheaper.

Vodafone have the worst technical support of any company I've ever dealt with, full stop. Truly, astonishingly, laughably bad. The actual technical service provision was very good though, so I rarely had to contact them, but every time I did, I was on the verge of leaving after each phone call.

Virgin Media are notoriously bad, but I can't see Vodafone being that much better in this regard. I can't see EE being worse than either.

On the pro side, Voda used to offer static IPv4 addresses upon request at no extra charge, which is worth something assuming they still do. My current altnet ISP (as, indeed do most of them) charges a fiver per month for this!

I've had Vodafone at a couple of places and for the price they were fine. Absolutely solid and reliable connections with good ping times (on FTTC). Tech support was OK for what little I needed to contact them for (eg requesting static IP and connection credentials for my own routers). Otherwise I never needed to contact support - it just worked. I only left them because I wanted FTTP and at the time they couldn't offer it at the locations. They've also now rolled out IPv6 which was another nice-to-have reason I was looking around.

Despite a couple of small problems along the way I'm quite happy with my Vodafone broadband, as are most of their customers.
However, if you do have problems and have to deal with their call centre in Egypt, things can rapidly fall apart.
When it's good it's good, when it's bad it's terrible.

In reply to a post by Ripshod:

Despite a couple of small problems along the way I'm quite happy with my Vodafone broadband, as are most of their customers.
However, if you do have problems and have to deal with their call centre in Egypt, things can rapidly fall apart.
When it's good it's good, when it's bad it's terrible.

Did you use their supplied router or you used your own ?

Since both packages EE and Vodafone are available to you at 1.6Gb, being Full Fibre it is naturally supposed to be more reliable than Virgin Media DOCSIS 3.1.

It is quite difficult to comment on reliability because it really depends via what connection you are being supplied.

For example, one could have Virgin Media via nexfibre, which is FTTP and the experience and reliability of this service is supposed to be just as good as EE/Vodafone under FTTP and may even be better than FTTC.

I have so far great experience with BT FTTC last 2 years since being a customer with them.

Network uptime: 159 Days, 17 Hours 16 Minutes

No single connection drop-outs for 159 days! But the same cannot be said when I was with TalkTalk. I was quite unhappy with TalkTalk even though it was supposed to be FTTC as well and I am sceptical how much better it is even in FTTP as it is about the core network that goes down even if connection shows as connected.

Also I had disconnection issues with the TalkTalk router every 30 days by design and it would be impossible to achieve this network uptime that I am getting with BT. But I don't know if I had my own router with TalkTalk whether my experience would've been better.

Nevertheless, with BT I never ever had any of these problems.

Virgin Media Gig2 via Nexfibre just went live in my area on the 18th of December. But being a new service there will be very few customer feedback to tell us how good of a service this really is. For some people it might be better than EE/Vodafone or BT.

I think EE and BT will be better choices than Vodafone or TalkTalk under both FTTC and FTTP. They share an exclusive partnership and have better customer service.

Post deleted by Ripshod

In reply to a post by uknewbie:

In reply to a post by Ripshod:

Despite a couple of small problems along the way I'm quite happy with my Vodafone broadband, as are most of their customers.
However, if you do have problems and have to deal with their call centre in Egypt, things can rapidly fall apart.
When it's good it's good, when it's bad it's terrible.

Did you use their supplied router or you used your own ?

I tried the vodafone offering but the settings were so locked down I could literally do nothing with it. I use an Asus now.

Thanks all,

I placed an order with EE last night for the 1.6GB package.

Did it all only an the earliest install date was around 20th Jan - is that lead time normal ?

Here you can see my current issue with VM:

My Broadband Ping

Its been like that for a few weeks. Tried all the usual restarting modem/router. I can't bring myself to speak to VM support 😅

I think you have made the right call, especially given there is no real difference in monthly cost at the 1.6Gbps tier for either provider. So really then it’s who has superior customer service and core network performance, both of which, quite frankly, should be in EEs favour over VF.

They’ve been decent here in Suffolk, once the initial install/regrade issues (down to Openreach provisioning issues) were ironed out. To their credit EE did what they could to resolve. Ultimately the apology was a few months of full service credit. Over and above what they had to pay out “statutorily”.

Hope the install etc goes smoothly 👍