Could we possibly get dedicated forums for some ALT nets?

Any chance we could get sub forums in the ISP section for ALT Nets like:

CityFibre (to include other brands using their network)
Lightspeed
Gigaclear
Hyperoptic
OFNL

I'm pretty sure the customer bases for some of these Alt Nets are bigger than the Post Office userbase.

Thanks.

Edited by Bryer (Tue 22-Nov-22 14:36:57)

If a provider doesn't have a forum then people post here. Looking through the posts here there seems little justification for separate forums for those providers as there are very few posts. I suspect there will be some more clearout of other lesser used forums at some point.

Seems to be like the Zen, Vodafone and Talktalk sub forums are doing fine catering for both Openreach and Cityfibre services.
The other providers just aren't big enough to warrant their own sub forum.

I wouldn't be a fan of a Cityfibre sub forum. It's the ISP itself that the forum is for and not the wholesaler. There isn't an Openreach forum.

Hyperoptic sub forum already exists, which you seem to have missed it out! https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/hyperoptic.html
But as you can see it has only 1300+ posts since 2012. So not much activity even though it's one of the largest Altnets in London.

The others are even smaller. I wanted for example a Community Fibre sub forum but I guess it's fine to discuss in the "without dedicated forums" section.

Perhaps some sub forums like the Post Office should be archived as it no longer exists as an ISP (they've been sold out to Shell) and should be replaced with something else for future or maybe Shell Energy.

But of-course that's up to the Site Admin to decide.

Some of the sub forums such as Gigaclear exists in ISPreview. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/gigaclear.625/
Unfortunately, they don't have that much coverage yet. Because usually with a smaller number of users, the likelihood of having participants in one of these forums will be even smaller!

Some sub forums in ISPreview are completely empty like for example G.Network https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/g-network.626/
You can see how pointless it is to have sub forums for such Altnets that are so niche in size.

Some sub forums in ISPreview are completely empty like for example G.Network https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/g-network.626/
You can see how pointless it is to have sub forums for such Altnets that are so niche in size.

Hardly surprising given that they only have around 9,000 actual connections. A drop in the ocean!

Agreed, we have separation mostly for retail outlets. It would then lead also to discussions getting split e.g. some zen on zen forum and other zen on CF forum.

Think the point I was trying to make is that the list is outdated and needs refreshing to include some of the bigger Alt Nets.

However there used to be a very busy "ISP" forum for Entanet, which provided business internet services plus a wholesale service via BTW for SOHO/Retail with a dozen or so small ISPs. Some of which still exist.

CityFibre bought Entanet in 2017.

So there is a direct precedent.

The others are even smaller. I wanted for example a Community Fibre sub forum but I guess it's fine to discuss in the "without dedicated forums" section.

I second that request too.
Community Fibre 1Gbps customer also.

Community Fibre already has 675,000 ready for service homes in London and the South East. It is committed to having 1 million homes in the capital customer ready with its 100% full fibre multi-gigabit capable broadband by 2023.

I too feel the forums need updating, maybe even a new makeover considering TB forums are one of the UK's longest serving loyal broadband forums, I'd welcome something like this, gets my vote in advance 🔥👍

Edited by VastGsm (Thu 24-Nov-22 06:32:27)

In reply to a post by Bryer:

Think the point I was trying to make is that the list is outdated and needs refreshing to include some of the bigger Alt Nets.

What bigger Alt-Nets though?

As already mentioned Cityfibre do not sell direct to retail customers.
Their largest retail providers (Talktalk, Vodafone, Zen) already have their own forums.

There are currently over 100 Alt-Nets deploying FTTP in the UK.

Hyperoptic are the largest provider you mention in your OP.
The Hyperoptic sub forum only has 7 threads in the past 12 months.

OFNL and Lightspeed have relatively small coverage and a tiny userbase.
G.Network have decent coverage but a somewhat embarrassingly low 8k userbase.

Netomnia (Youfibre) and Community Fibre are the only 2 Alt-Nets making decent progress and achieving relatively decent uptake but as yet they are still very small providers.

When this "other providers" sub forum starts filling up with a decent number of posts from a particular Alt-Net would be the time to give them their own sub forum.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by Bryer:

Think the point I was trying to make is that the list is outdated and needs refreshing to include some of the bigger Alt Nets.

What bigger Alt-Nets though?

As already mentioned Cityfibre do not sell direct to retail customers.
Their largest retail providers (Talktalk, Vodafone, Zen) already have their own forums.

There are currently over 100 Alt-Nets deploying FTTP in the UK.

Hyperoptic are the largest provider you mention in your OP.
The Hyperoptic sub forum only has 7 threads in the past 12 months.

OFNL and Lightspeed have relatively small coverage and a tiny userbase.
G.Network have decent coverage but a somewhat embarrassingly low 8k userbase.

Netomnia (Youfibre) and Community Fibre are the only 2 Alt-Nets making decent progress and achieving relatively decent uptake but as yet they are still very small providers.

When this "other providers" sub forum starts filling up with a decent number of posts from a particular Alt-Net would be the time to give them their own sub forum.

Gigalcear - Is on the "warpath" in rural locations, I don't want to have to trawl through hundreds of posts trying to find a post about Gigaclear, when they have one of the biggest footprints of the Alt-nets. Yes I've used the search item, but it then pulls anything with the two words in the the results.

There definately needs to be an update of this forums software so that threads are condensed a little to make browsing easier, as someone said these are the go to forums in the UK for finding out about speeds, install processes, trouble shooting etc.

Quite hard to promote and encourage users in the local community to sign up if they can't find a good place to see results and answers that aren't monitored and altered by the ISP's.

Yes there might be 100's of alt nets currently building, but we only need the dedicated ones for the few that are actually making an effort to cover large parts of an already unrepresented part of the user base.

Not a fan of altnets but off the top of my head maybe they could give the following a try

Altnets A - F
Altnets G - L
Altnets M - R
Altnets S - Z

or spliced and diced another way.

Edited by deleted (Thu 24-Nov-22 21:04:44)

In reply to a post by VastGsm:

The others are even smaller. I wanted for example a Community Fibre sub forum but I guess it's fine to discuss in the "without dedicated forums" section.

I second that request too.
Community Fibre 1Gbps customer also.

Community Fibre already has 675,000 ready for service homes in London and the South East. It is committed to having 1 million homes in the capital customer ready with its 100% full fibre multi-gigabit capable broadband by 2023.

I too feel the forums need updating, maybe even a new makeover considering TB forums are one of the UK's longest serving loyal broadband forums, I'd welcome something like this, gets my vote in advance 🔥👍

Yes, I suspect that the reason Community Fibre wasn't added to these forums was because at that time 10 years ago Hyperoptic was more popular and had a larger base and Community Fibre was a lot smaller back then.

Another reason could be that Hyperoptic has an existing Customer Support representative Hyperoptic_CS on their sub forum already he/she is from 2015! I found another head of marketing representative named Hyperoptic registered on 2011 as Sunita Sharma https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/showprofile.php?Us...

That might be the reason why they opened the Hyperoptic sub forum here in 2012 so that these support users can answer their questions.

Community Fibre does not have a Customer Support representative on these forums like with Hyperoptic.

Also I forgot to mention that around 5-6 years ago if I can recall Community Fibre had their official forums as part of their website! There was a forum button to the right side of their website next to the Blog button. For some reason Community Fibre have decided to shut down their forums from their site and they no longer exist. I suspect maybe it required a moderator of some sort and they probably decided to remove it so that they don't have to hire moderators as that requires paying them a salary to moderate their forums. Or maybe they don't want to be bombarded with complaints or questions as they are probably already overloaded using social media platforms.