Hey!Broadband (closed thread; see new one)

Usually not one to majorly complain,

but these guys have been an absolutely horrendous company thus far,
1 peer, terrible routing, horrible "tech support".

Been in touch with their "support" for over 3 months(nearly 4), where I initially mentioned their lack of peers/bad routing etc, maybe even hoping they'd address it.

it took months to get to this point:
https://i.imgur.com/xOGeTXj.png

And i've still heard nothing back.

"Your case", or "My case" in this regard is not unique to me: it was me generally complaining about their routing and random ping fluctuations(Even if not overly major) that seemingly affects all Hey!Broadband connections.



Looking at a few graphs here
The last 2 evenings have been terrible in terms of packet loss.
The latency spikes? they're always there,
not to mention most days at 2AM and 2PM there's increased latency and packet loss(on all their graphs) - i can share live graphs if anyone ever wants to check this out for themselves!

My Broadband Ping

My Broadband Ping

My Broadband Ping

My Broadband Ping



Tracerts via the Traceroute tool provided on this site, and 1 test via CMD.
Wild results to bbc.co.uk considering I live fairly near London:

https://i.imgur.com/wvzEIt5.png

https://i.imgur.com/6BZ1mjb.png

Genuinely displeased with the connection as a whole,
Luckily it looks like i can get FTTP from Openreach based ISPs now.

Just have to figure a way out of this damn contract.
Wish I wasn't so quick to sign up with these guys when they came to my town,
tread carefully!

Edit: if wanted I would be more than happy to show full emails with the terrible support, going round in circles, weeks of wait times. etc

Edited by seb (Tue 16-Jan-24 18:16:48)

I'm a Hey! customer and you're right on all points.

My traceroute to bt.co.uk goes vis Milan! And the 2am, 2pm increase in latency is bizarre.

With that said, they're offering 1Gb up/down for £27 a month. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

Apparently there's "some exciting news" coming soon, but no clue what that is: https://twitter.com/HeyBroadband/status/164366858527...

More interesting is the they are no longer the only ISP using F&W networks fibre. It seems F&W is no selling access to their service to independent ISPs: https://fwnetworks.co.uk/partner-with-us/current-par...

I haven't heard of those ISPs, however it would only take a decent ISP like Zen to partner with them (as they do with Cityfibre) and we'd be set.

For now I'm just accepting that for the little I'm paying, what I get is about acceptable.

I wonder if they are taking over Lightning Fibre's Haywards Heath build.

Lightning have pretty much stopped building and Hey Broadband are active. Making Hey the 5th player rolling out in town.

Lightning are 100% owned and Hey 50% owned by the same venture capitalists so it is strange.

Cityfibre fibre seem to be overbuilding Hey! where I am.

I imagine in the future a lot of these Altnets are going to be bought out just like cable companies were by Virgin.

Amusingly, it would seem since yesterday's (early) morning maintenance, the WAN DHCP lease is about 3 minutes! lol

It's a real shame that valuable PIA duct, chamber and pole space is being taken up with garbage-tier providers.

Another HB customer here. Been with them since 2021. I don't see any of the problems listed above (have my own 2nd site monitoring my connection) except one which is the weird routes traffic takes to a small number of sites.

I'm told they are building a new platform and migrating customers over to it. I also understand that that will use DHCP and not PPP too. Time will tell if that will resolve the issues some customers are reporting. Hopefully that means additional peers and upgraded bandwidth......not that I see any performance issues when looking at my automated testing reports.

Edited by nofappingway (Sat 15-Apr-23 15:12:54)

Post deleted by nofappingway

Edited by nofappingway (Fri 21-Apr-23 17:47:54)

So, the "new platform" seems to be a migration from the Hey! network (AS212426) to the F&W network (AS207645).

At least, that's what I can ascertain from an email they sent me saying that on the 27th April they will be "upgrading the network server", and telling me my static IP will change to an F&W one.

The F&W network has 2 peers, so that's a 100% improvement! (sarcasm intended)

I was told the same. It comes with a major network capacity uplift too apparently.

I've never had a performance problem (always get 915/915) but I do see weird routing to some sites so I hope an extra peer improves matters.

Edited by nofappingway (Mon 24-Apr-23 11:10:03)