What is the best all round ISP for Full Fibre?

Price, reliability and customer service are the key things that I am looking for. I'm currently signed up to Virgin Media which is merely 'OK'. It's fast, but occasionally the router plays up and brings the internet down for the entire house.

Openreach have installed FTTP to my house but I have also received a letter from the post that I can access CityFibre too.

I was mulling over BT's 900mbit package for £41 a month but I have seen other alternatives from CityFibre:
Zen £40
No One Internet £40
TalkTalk £36 (reviews seem bad)
Giganet £40
IDNET £40

Which ISP should I go for?

On a site note, will the CityFibre ISP have to run seperate fibre cable to my house or can they piggyback from the Openreach connection? Openreach provided us with ducting, told us to build a Stakkbox and have ducting to the edge of the property. They subsequently fed fibre cable from the terminal in our road, to our junction box, and installed a CBT, and then fed cable to our property.
Is the process of hooking up with a CityFibre ISP as involved?

The Cityfibre services are likely to have symmetric speeds rather than the low upload speeds of the BT Wholesale offerings if that's important to you?

In reply to a post by RAY21:

Price, reliability and customer service are the key things that I am looking for. I'm currently signed up to Virgin Media which is merely 'OK'. It's fast, but occasionally the router plays up and brings the internet down for the entire house.

Openreach have installed FTTP to my house but I have also received a letter from the post that I can access CityFibre too.

I was mulling over BT's 900mbit package for £41 a month but I have seen other alternatives from CityFibre:
Zen £40
No One Internet £40
TalkTalk £36 (reviews seem bad)
Giganet £40
IDNET £40

Which ISP should I go for?

On a site note, will the CityFibre ISP have to run seperate fibre cable to my house or can they piggyback from the Openreach connection? Openreach provided us with ducting, told us to build a Stakkbox and have ducting to the edge of the property. They subsequently fed fibre cable from the terminal in our road, to our junction box, and installed a CBT, and then fed cable to our property.
Is the process of hooking up with a CityFibre ISP as involved?

Please consider Cloudscape as well. £43.50 for 230/30 on a twelve month contact. Unlikely to find better support elsewhere.

How or why did you get Openreach to provide you with duct , the instructions to build a joint box box , and get a CBT installed , presumably at your property, rather than more commonly the CBT in a public area like the footpath or a pole in a public road/street ,basically why have you got a CBT on your property presumably without any commitment from you to take service, when normally the network is extended to a customer property once an order is received ?.


If this duct , jointbox etc , were installed specifically to get the CBT sited on your private property but can also actually be used to service more than your individual dwelling ( so that’s another dwelling that is not owned by you ) then the CBT is the considered same as one in the public street hence no commitment from you to take an OR based product, but obviously you granted permission for the CBT to be sited where it is on private property.

If CF were to use this new duct and box , ( it’s not clear if this would be part of PIA ) they would not use the OR CBT , but would have to provide their own CBT on your wall , and then a lead in from this CBT to their CSP , then a cable to the location of the service , or use a much longer drop cable from a CBT located somewhere else , through the duct , box etc , but CF may not be aware that this duct exists, and because it was provided by OR to you on a bespoke arrangement, it may not be usable by CF under PIA anyway, especially if you were paid a wayleave for having this OR duct provided and for having the CBT placed on your property.

Your situation is uncommon, is your property some distance from the public road , or only accessible via a private road, their presumably is a reason why this non standard method were employed.
As far as who to use , obviously some commentary is nothing more than ‘personal’ or even pejorative, like saying OR upload is ‘slow’ , when for most over 100Mb upload is more than sufficient , if you need a symmetric service CF may be the better choice, but most domestic users simply don’t need that, as far as reliability etc, CF response to network failures may be good , may be bad , but for some ( especially on forums such as this ) the credo is ‘anyone but BT/OR’ and should be viewed as not necessarily impartial

Edited by Iniltous (Fri 26-May-23 12:48:44)

CityFibre run a separate fibre cable from Openreach so it can't be piggybacked from Openreach. You'll be having 2 separate Fibre cables one for Openreach and one from CityFibre with 2 separate ONT's.

I'd suggest you go with CityFibre due to symmetrical upload speeds while also costing £1 less than the same packages on the Openreach network.

Of-course the choice is yours depending of-course on what offers you get like vouchers or discounts.

You can compare the same packages from Openreach and CityFibre and see for yourself. If upload speeds aren't that important for you and you find a deal slightly cheaper via Openreach then it may be worth considering Openreach.

TalkTalk customer service is pretty bad, but service wise especially if it is on FTTP may be no worse than the other providers. But if something goes wrong and you need to contact them then you may be screwed.

The reviews may be bad overall, but for their FTTP service I am assuming it will be a much better service.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

How or why did you get Openreach to provide you with duct , the instructions to build a joint box box , and get a CBT installed

Lots of people have a CBT sited on their land for their sole use including me. I also have ducting and several JF4 and JF6 boxes that are privately owned and installed and are used to deliver my Openreach fibre connection.

Edited by deleted (Fri 26-May-23 09:20:56)

In reply to a post by RAY21:

I was mulling over BT's 900mbit package for £41 a month

Remember BT's pricing increases over the term of the contract: from next April you could easily be paying £45 per month or more, but still locked in for another year. At the end of the term, the price will jump up much higher unless you switch provider or sign up for another 2 years.

In reply to a post by RAY21:

On a site note, will the CityFibre ISP have to run seperate fibre cable to my house

Yes. Completely separate fibre all the way back to their cabinet.

How they do this varies from area to area; they *can* use existing OR ducts and poles, or they can dig their own micro-trenches. If you don't already have a Cityfibre "Toby box" at the edge of your property, then most likely they'll use the OR ducts.

However, they might send out a surveyor and decide it's not economically viable, and mark your property as LOC ("limit of construction").

If duct etc is provided on private property solely for the use of that individual then no wayleave payment is due , it’s a nonsense if someone could order service and then insist on a payment because the required network is ‘on their land ‘ , with third parties it’s obviously different, why should someone necessarily allow access to their property for the benefit of others , the ‘grey area’ can be where something like a CBT is provided that will benefit both the owner of property where it’s sited and third parties as well.
OR do have an odd commitment when it comes to a cluster of dwellings, that are not serviceable from network contained within the public space , they have a service obligation that no other network provider has ( basically they cannot simply say No we are not serving you ) and that could mean a CBT on someone’s property that would potentially serve others as well as themselves. In these cases a wayleave is potentially paid.
, I’m not disputing that there are probably thousands of instances of Openreach network on private property, but CBT located on an individual property ( rather than a CSP ) is unusual, why provide a multi port device for a single property , the network is dimensioned on a single port per dwelling basis , why preemptively provide the network to a remote single dwelling with no guarantee of it ever being used, why hasn’t the network been left at the curtilage, to be extended only if service is requested ( that’s the default position) if it’s a single dwelling with no order for service.
The OP situation is undeniably different to the vast majority, so a little more detail may be helpful

Edited by Iniltous (Fri 26-May-23 09:42:42)

You're getting your knickers in a twist, who is talking about wayleaves and payments other than you??

All I said was I have an Openreach CBT located on my land for my sole use and I have joint boxes and ducting that I privately installed, I made no reference to payments or wayleaves so not sure why you gave me an essay on it.


Edit: you seem to be incensed that the OP was given ducting and Stakkabox's but these may have been provided initially for a new build property for a copper service and Openreach have come along and added fibre at a later date which means the OP wouldn't have had to commit to having a fibre service.

Edited by deleted (Fri 26-May-23 11:12:33)

My knickers remain untwisted thank-you for enquiring , and I am far from incensed .
If you have a CBT on your property, and it suits your purpose , then good for you , that doesn’t mean it’s planning policy , because it isn’t .

Frankly I don’t care about your situation, my questions were clearly aimed at the OP and not you, wayleaves are a reasonable subject to raise if a single dwelling has had a CBT installed when that isn’t policy , the exception if another dwelling may also benefit from the installation of the CBT , in which case wayleaves can be pertinent , irrespective of your opinion.
Your comments about ducts etc provided for new builds etc is based on what exactly?, there isn’t the slightest suggestion that this is the case , but if the duct were provided on that basis the CBT would be in a publicly sited location ( or what will become publicly sited ) not at the customer address.
I’m sorry if my somewhat lengthy post was difficult for you to follow , perhaps you could ask someone with basic comprehension skills to simplify it for you

Edited by Iniltous (Fri 26-May-23 12:50:36)

All the OP wanted to know was what ISP to use via the Openreach infrastructure and what happens if they choose to go down the Cityfibre route, everything else is irrelevant. You could have answered the question in a few sentences.

Your sideshow about wayleaves for others to use the CBT allocated to the OP is not what the OP asked about but rather than answer that question you created your own.

Edited by deleted (Fri 26-May-23 18:17:50)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

Your comments about ducts etc provided for new builds etc is based on what exactly?, there isn’t the slightest suggestion that this is the case

I'll leave the OP to tell you about how they moved into a new build property last year.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

Your comments about ducts etc provided for new builds etc is based on what exactly?, there isn’t the slightest suggestion that this is the case

I'll leave the OP to tell you about how they moved into a new build property last year.

To clarify for the other poster, we demolished a rather old building and built two properties on the site. I will be moving into one of those. At the time, the maximum internet speed offered was 67 mbit.

After some digging, I found out Openreach were able to guarantee a FTTP connection for free, as long as we did the 'hard part' of laying down ducts and building a box between the property to facilitate easy installation for them.

Funnily, as soon as Openreach finished installation of their gear, I received a letter from CityFibre detailing their packages. In truth, I had not heard of CityFibre until now!

I ultimately settled on TalkTalk Fibre 900. Primarily because they have the highest number of peering points. £36 a month seemed too good a deal to pass. Talking with their customer service was frustrating to be honest, and probably explains their bad reviews, but they assured me I can cancel within 30 days if I am unhappy with the service.

Edited by RAY21 (Sat 27-May-23 06:59:21)

Hi, just wanted to add a quick 2p here.

I'm in a similar boat to the OP, I'm with Virgin but sick of the up and down nature. I would have gone with CityFibre but they are not ready yet and can't tell me when I can get their services as it would have been a no-brainer.

So I opted for BT 900/110 for the 2 year term as hopefully by then CF will be enabled. I did get £100 cashback and a year's Game Pass worth about £130 ish, my BQM is looking better than it's ever been, and my ping time has more than halved while upload has been doubled. All for nearly £30 less than what Virgin were charging.

My main comment is to do with the price rises. I got an email stating that my price would remain at £40.99 for two years, giving my exact going live date plus 2 years, and then it would rise by £5 a month.

I've saved that and screenshotted it so any nonsense and I'll hit them with it.

That's my 2p spent

Thanks for confirming and glad you've decided on a provider.

This is a very silly question but how will Cityfibre feed the fibre cable into the property? Will they have to dig into the front garden, put a duct, all the way to the front property? Their small box is a couple of metres away from the entrance of my driveway. We have no special ducting for Cityfibre on our property.

In reply to a post by Cheule:

Hi, just wanted to add a quick 2p here.

I'm in a similar boat to the OP, I'm with Virgin but sick of the up and down nature. I would have gone with CityFibre but they are not ready yet and can't tell me when I can get their services as it would have been a no-brainer.

So I opted for BT 900/110 for the 2 year term as hopefully by then CF will be enabled. I did get £100 cashback and a year's Game Pass worth about £130 ish, my BQM is looking better than it's ever been, and my ping time has more than halved while upload has been doubled. All for nearly £30 less than what Virgin were charging.

My main comment is to do with the price rises. I got an email stating that my price would remain at £40.99 for two years, giving my exact going live date plus 2 years, and then it would rise by £5 a month.

I've saved that and screenshotted it so any nonsense and I'll hit them with it.

That's my 2p spent

Virgin are crooks. We are currently paying £50 per month for 350mbit broadband. Unfortunately we don't have much leeway in the price as I wanted to keep a rolling contract (as opposed to committing myself to an 18 month deal) until the new house is ready for a move (which I anticipate will take a good few months)...

Edited by RAY21 (Sat 27-May-23 17:32:48)

I was faced with BT offering ridiculous prices to continue with GFast & not wanting to install FTTP or waiting until contract expired and going with Openreach FTTP via cable and pole solution (despite the fact that would have preferred via my conduit 18" from BT ground box). I opted for Zen Internet 500mbps service with no phone provision and although not the cheapest available despite 3 of us using for various demands (streaming/gaming and office work) have not been disappointed.

Since this time CityFibre have dug up the road an installed an individual connection points in the pavement. So yes to have CityFibre you need (like Virgin) to be directly connected to their network, although unsure if they would connect via my conduit 2m away or not (from position of connection point looks like they would want to come along my neighbours front garden wall), although our area has yet to go live.

If you're still deciding on an ISP and have the option of CityFibre I can unequivocally recommend Giganet from our experience. Connected for 9 months now, always better than the advertised speed (we're on the £32 150Mbps package and actually get 530Mbps upload thrown in, which they didn't advertise) and so far 100% rock solid. And our broadband quality monitor results are exceptional

https://rgneighbours.elementfx.com/david/misc/Gigane...