Shifting to vodafone full fibre - gotchas?

I have been a long-term Sky 80/20 FTTC (short line, sync speed and throughputs have been pretty good) contract and as I'm now out-of-contract with them, I'm considering a shift to one of vodafone's full fibre (fttp) packages as it is available in my area (north west England, believe it'll be BT, not CityFibre, as BT has been fibre-enabling lots of telegraph poles) - maybe the 73/18 or the 100/18.

I'm aware that the POTS line will no longer work and that to have an operational phone, I need to use the vodafone provided router. However, I don't plan on using their kit.

As I understand it, I would end up with an ONT, which the fibre would terminate into. I'd look to take than into WAN2 on my Draytek Vigor 2860. Is there some standard, proven config around to assist with this?

In due course, I might replace the Vigor model with a VoIP capable unit. Has anyone had success in getting phones to work away from the vf-supplied kit?

Where are vodafone with their IPv6 roll-out?

How seamless is the switch from FTTC to FTTP?

Any other gotchas or things that I should be aware of before jumping skip? (Historically the Sky service has been rock solid - it's just not overly competive on pricing now).

Many thanks in advance,
Darran

Edited by dbames (Fri 03-Mar-23 17:25:34)

For VOIP I use a Gigaset N300 Dect base station and some Gigaset Dect phones.
The N300 has a cable connection to my router so that it can access the Internet.

Sometime ago I ported my number to Voipfone who are a VOIP Isp. I also use A&A Voip.

Porting the number killed the landline.

So what you could do is just order the new Vodafone FTTP service, buy the Dect hardware, and subscribe to a VOIP Isp. When you have got it all working to your satisfaction port your landline number to the VOIP Isp and that will kill your FTTC service.

You might need to check that your Voip can get a number from Sky.

The N300 just needs an Internet connection, it does not matter who the ISP is so changing ISP should mot impact the phone service.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

For VOIP I use a Gigaset N300 Dect base station and some Gigaset Dect phones.
The N300 has a cable connection to my router so that it can access the Internet.

Sometime ago I ported my number to Voipfone who are a VOIP Isp. I also use A&A Voip.

Porting the number killed the landline.

So what you could do is just order the new Vodafone FTTP service, buy the Dect hardware, and subscribe to a VOIP Isp. When you have got it all working to your satisfaction port your landline number to the VOIP Isp and that will kill your FTTC service.
[...]

From my reading of things, it's not entirely clear from the OP whether they want to keep their landline number.

However if they do, your course of action above makes sense - but there is a potential gotcha...

I think a lot of FTTP providers (using the Openreach FTTP network) default to assuming that you want to switch your active Openreach copper line (used for broadband) to fibre - regardless of whether the copper line actually has a PSTN (voice) service, or indeed whether the new FTTP service comes with a voice facility or not.

So my understanding is it's really important when you are placing the FTTP order to ensure that you are explicit it is to be a completely new install and not a 'takeover' / replacement of the existing copper line service.

Edited by binary (Fri 03-Mar-23 22:39:41)

For setting up the Draytek it's just a case of getting your Vodafone PPPoE username and password.

Quickest way to get this is using the Vodafone live chat, username will be something like [email protected]

As an update: the openreach engineer arrived this morning (8am) and was all done in well under two hours with minimal mess. A new anchor point and different routing for the fibre from the pole compared to the existing copper line was done without any issue.

I found that having pre-configured the vf router with a different subnet and setting up mac reservations, etc, when it first connected, everything on it got reset. D'oh.

For now I'm double-natting into wan2 on my Vigor. Once I get the user credentials from vf support, I will hopefully ditch it all together.

Outbound calls from the digital landland work with the correct caller id. Inbound calls are still going to the old copper line (which still has an activer service on - though I expect that should terminate soon).

Seem to be getting approx 110/19 on a 100/18 service, so happy so far. Time will tell on reliability and consistency.