Moving to FACTCO

I am looking forward to my move, on Friday, from Vodafone/CityFibre to FACTCO. (1Gb symmetrical FTTP) My move is prompted by the wish to escape Vodafone's constant change of maximum latency as they struggle to manage load balance across their national network. I have lost count of the number of times my Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) has been changed from my nearest to more distant ones. At times my latency has been nearly 40ms. My gaming sons bring laggy game play to my attention more often than I would like. VF is not keeping its promise of low latency for gamers.

FACTCO use CityFibre's local network and CF's 'purpose-built' and 'future-proofed' national network. They expect my typical latency to be 7ms. We shall see. At least my monthly bill will fall from £48 to £29.99, but without a landline or VF's mobile broadband backup dongle.

Is anyone in these forums with FACTCO? Their overall review score is 4.3 star, but it would be good to get some anecdotal viewpoints - pros and cons etc.

Edited by KilgoreTrout (Wed 15-Nov-23 21:09:07)

What a terrible start!

I awoke this morning at 6.00 am. Vodafone had already disconnected me. No problem I thought. All I need is my new username and password. Meanwhile I tethered my phone to the router so I had some internet, albeit slow.

Two phone calls and emails later- no username or password available yet. Another series of emails produces my network credentials, which I copy and paste into my router. Did I connect to FACTCO? Of course not. Another email reveals that my credentials haven't been added to the FACTCO server yet. I'm asked to give it an hour, which I do.

One hour later, no connection. A phone call reveals that I have been added to the server, but sometimes previous ISPs take a long time to properly disconnect and this sometimes takes a while because it is an automated process.

The time is now 3.50 pm, with no FACTCO connection in sight.

I let customer services know that I was not best pleased and suggested that if they had warned me that the migration might take a whole day, I might have planned my day differently and not cancelled my gym class.

EDIT. It's now 5.20 pm. Still not connected to FACTCO.

Edited by KilgoreTrout (Fri 17-Nov-23 17:20:06)

Never heard of facto, are they on a different network than what Vodafone is on? when i changed from Plusnet FTTC using Openreach network to ZZoomm FTTP using their own network, I made sure ZZoomm was installed, up and running before I cancelled Plusnet.

Hopefully things will get sorted for you soon.

Did you get this resolved?

I was under the impression there was a little more work required when moving between CityFibre ISPs than just changing the Login Credentials...

I thought it required a physical/virtual cable move by the ISPs to get you onto their hand-off hardware?

I seem to remember theres no agreed migration route between CF ISPs currently (unless that's changed recently).

I'd get back onto FACTCO and ask them to sort ASAP (if its not done already).

CityFibre do now have their systems setup for ISP to ISP migration, so that is a lot smoother moving now.

In terms of the migration think like moving between different Openreach ISPs rather than BTWholesale. The customer has to be reconfigured to the new ISPs connection with CityFibre from the old. This is the same as moving between two Openreach ISPs where you are reconfigured to the new ISPs cable link.

Do FACTCO have a connection in Coventry with CityFibre or are they using CF's national network?

Thank you for your responses. I am sure that CityFibre have a proper system for migration from one ISP to another, but in my case it has not worked. I am still not connected after the weekend. I have used up all my mobile data through tethering my mobile to my router and have had to buy more data just to get some connectivity!

FACTCO customer services have been as helpful as they can, but, would you believe it, FACTCO do not assign technical department staff to residential customers out of office hours or over the weekends?!

This morning, a priority request to connect me has gone out to CityFibre. Initially they said I would have to wait until the next migration day Friday 23rd November. My explosive response has led them to assure me that I will be prioritised. They noted that some essential data for my connection was missing, so CityFibre have got onto their own IT department to resolve it.

I don't know why my connection is causing such difficulty for them. Vodafone/CityFibre disconnected me properly. CityFibre's automated migration should have done the job.

Given my experience with ISPs, insurance companies etcI will be calling FACTO every two hours throughout the day. I feel that I will be forgotten if I don't.

It isn't until you have no internet, that you realise how important it is. ISPs and network providers should recognise that!

FACTCO popped up on a CityFibre postcode search along with some well-known providers such as EE and PlusNet. Some offered 2.5Gb connections. After lots of research and phone calls, I opted for FACTCO. The offer of £29.99, monthly, for two years helped my decision.

Edited by KilgoreTrout (Mon 20-Nov-23 11:14:08)

Finally, I am connected via FACTCO.

Customer services gave up on chasing my migration from Vodafone. They scrubbed that contract. Instead, they treated me as a fresh customer with no City Fibre history. It took only 45 minutes from initiating the request to get me connected.

I obviously have a lot to complain about, but I am certainly not complaining about the operatives in customer services. They really did try hard for me.

My main criticism of FACTCO is they don't have techies available at weekends or after 5.30pm in the week. After I voiced that criticism it was acknowledged as a weakness and that there had been management discussion about having technical support 24/7, not just CS. FACTCO is a new company, rapidly expanding, so I expect they will sort this out soon.

The quality of my connection seems to be as expected. Just now, early evening peak, I got speeds of >920Mb up and downstream. Ping is 7ms. Jitter <1ms. Traceroutes to Cloudflare and BBC.co.uk get me an average of 6ms. Happy days!

One puzzle is that the Thinkbroadband monitor isn't reading my connection properly. despite me having allowed ICMP echo.

Is it a residential or business connection?

Whilst failed migration / new provision is not really the same as a fault, the underlying provider (e.g. Openreach or CityFibre) SLA for residential services typically upto two business days, i.e. no weekend working. ISPs are unlikely to employ technical staff at times when they are not going to be able to escalate issues.

The integration between ISPs and their wholesalers systems often seem somewhat brittle, the slightest error results in failure with no or unhelpful feedback to the ISP making it difficult for their customer services to progress things without escalation to second-line support. Maybe this will improve with the requirements for one-touch switch processes.

In reply to a post by Ad_G:

Do FACTCO have a connection in Coventry with CityFibre or are they using CF's national network?

FACTO are using CF's national network. Their server is somewhere in the NW Midlands I think.
My best Ookla test server is 20i Ltd Nottingham.