r/CityFibre

I recently purchased an older home with solid brick walls and a cavity (with insulation of some kind), and want the ONT in a specific place in the house.

My plan was to drill a hole through the walls and come into the house under the floor (the house is raised compared to the ground outside), where I can then install a smooth bore pipe/duct myself from the external wall to where I want the ONT, with the pipe going through the crawl space under the house where an engineer clearly wouldn't enter and couldn't fit a fibre through there themselves anyway.

There are a few reasons why I want to do things my way: 1) I don't want the ONT or other network equipment in the living room or bedroom, I want it in the hall in the centre of the house; 2) it doesn't matter where the hole is drilled on the front wall, as the power sockets are not near external walls so the fibre or power cable would have to go 10ft+ to be near a power socket anyway; 3) the living room has a large and heavy cabinet in the only corner that a hole could be drilled in, as the radiator goes the rest of the way to the opposite wall under the living room window, and I have no means of moving it quickly; 4) I want to make the engineer's job as easy as possible while still having control of where I want everything.

Is this internal ducting something an Engineer will be happy to use? And if so, can someone give me an idea of what size of box they would install on the outside of the property, and where the hole would be within that box for the smaller fibre to come though so I can just have them fit the box over the hole and pipe? And also how large I would need to make the bend radius of the pipe to not exceed the bend radius of the fibre?

If an engineer wouldn't install fibre in the ducting, would they hook up to my own fibre if I installed it myself, and also put the ONT where I want it inside the house?

If I installed external ducting to hide the fibre underground and protect it from damage from plants and digging, would the engineer be able to use that or do they again have to manually dig a channel themselves to partially bury a fibre cable which is then easily damaged if I want to dig up that section of the garden later?

Been offline for about an hour so far, anyone else?

We’ve made a few updates to the Exascale order journey today, including more flexibility around installation dates and a new discount for customers who prefer to use their own router.

You can now select an available appointment from 7 days away, right through to 90 days in advance, making it easier to choose an installation date that works for you.

We’ve also introduced a £3/month discount on any package if you bring your own VLAN and DHCP-capable router instead of taking one of ours.

That makes our current August offer even better. Until the end of August, our 2.5Gbps package is £40/month, or just £37/month if you bring your own router.

After August, the standard price of the 2.5Gbps package will return to £45/month, or £42/month with the bring-your-own-router discount.

So, if you already have suitable networking kit and don’t need another ISP router gathering dust in a cupboard, you can save £3 every month.

Order or check availability here: https://order.exascale.co.uk

Toob was down for me yesterday 15:37 to 20:55, and now it’s gone down again today since 13:42.

I never had these outages before I switched from Lit (very briefly via Zen) to Toob earlier this year, and now it seems to drop out every couple of weeks.

Is anyone having some issues with accessing Netflix and or paramount plus?

For some reason, both TVs(one with cat6 and one with with wireless) are having issues netflix and paramount plus. I have tried to reboot the route TVs re install the apps no luck. If I do a hot spot with my phone everything is working fine but not through my ISP. Even with vpn is working but not through my cuckoo IP...

Hi,
I am currently with IDNet on their Home Fibre 2300 (FTTH 2500/2500) package.

I am trying to understand what I should be expecting in terms of connectivity speeds on a day to day basis?

I can see from their portal they have the following information:
Guaranteed Download Speed: 900 Mbit/s
Typical Download Speed:1700-2200 Mbit/s

However on average I get around 500-700Mbps on a speed test. These tests are done on my Unifi Router, so there’s not much interference between the ONT and Router.
At most my DNS passes through a Pi-Hole DNS filter but even with that disabled the tests have similar results.

Is it worth taking this up with their support team or am I just wasting time, what more could IDNet / CityFibre do to see if the connection speeds can be improved?

I’ve tried restarting the ONT and Router from my side but not seen any change.

Hi,

When using static IP rather than CGNAT, does that mean that PPPoE needs to be used and not DHCP?

On City Fibre is DHCP with a static ip an option?

Had an engineer come out to install the ONT around noon today which had a green light. Flashing Red light (Internet) from the router whose status is PPT connecting. I have a text from CityFibre saying my broadband connection is live. It is not. Gateway settings are correct for the modem / router. The engineer initially got a flashing red light, then reset the router (had to get the details from my provider) then left and asked me to contact my provider, home telecom, who said to wait or contact them tomorrow.

Anyone experienced waiting around for the connection to be live in spite of everything else seeming fine?

I have a shared drive and my neighbours had a trench dug without any permission, it blocks mine and my neighbours access when they carry out work on it (so poorly done the wires keep getting exposed). I raised a complaint, I sent the land registry as city fibre said they had no evidence the land was ours. They closed the case and said they have responded, no idea where the response is as I've not had an explanation. They obviously don't know what to do and hope I go away

I was using EE home broadband and now I think I need more upload as I have multiple connections to my NAS. I was thinking to move to symmetrical speed. CityFibre is available at my new address in Harrogate (HG1 area), and I’m looking at getting a 2.5Gbps symmetrical connection.
There seem to be quite a few ISPs available, so I’m interested in recommendations based on the actual quality of the service rather than just price.

I already have a TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 mesh system, so I don’t really need the ISP supplied router or Wi-Fi.

Things I’m particularly interested in:
• Quality of backhaul/peering and performance at peak times
• Whether they use CGNAT
• Static/public IPv4 availability and cost
• Native IPv6 support
• Whether I can connect my own router directly to the ONT
• DHCP/IPoE vs PPPoE and whether VLAN configuration is required
• Whether the ONT has 2.5GbE or 10GbE Ethernet
• Customer service and how quickly faults actually get resolved
• How easy it is to leave/switch if the service isn’t good
I also have a Synology NAS and use Tailscale/Cloudflare Tunnel/self-hosted services, so networking flexibility is more important to me than the ISP’s bundled router.
For those who have tried different CityFibre ISPs, which provider would you choose today for a 2.5Gbps connection, and which would you avoid?
I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone using CityFibre in Harrogate/North Yorkshire, as I assume routing/backhaul performance may differ by area.

Thanks for all the help. With EE I am struggling with double NAT issues

CF vans came and dug up roads all around the village, installed multiple new cabinets, new hardware on some of the telephone poles, seemingly fibre cables pulled all over the place including on the poles down my road.. but that was all 6+ months ago, since then nothing. No plans on BIDB. Online checker just says 'building' as it has done for over a year.

There seems to be no way whatsoever of getting any updates or timeline. Does anyone know a way?

I should add, I don't think it's gone live anywhere in the village.

As far as I know we are part of the Project Gigabit scheme funded my the Govt, so they get an extra payment of £thousands per house they connect, so it seems strange they have seemingly done so much of the work (they were here for a few months) but then never finished the job and made the money.

I only get 25 down and 3 up on my current FTTC connection so I'm desperate for an upgrade as this internet is borderline unusable. Unifi router, AP's, slowly been getting ethernet to all my rooms, switches in my attic, in my garage... everything is in place other than the FTTP! May have to look at Starlink at this rate!

Thanks for reading my vent :)

Everyone values different things when choosing an ISP. If you could only pick one, what matters most to you? If your top priority isn’t listed, mention it in the comments!

Comment with the one thing that’s most important to you.

- Cheapest Price
- Highest Speeds
- Best Free Router
- No CGNAT (Public IPv4)
- IPv6 Support
- UK Customer Service via Phone
- Shortest Contract Length
- Trustpilot Rating

Hi, live in Portsmouth. currently with virgin and looking to switch. The speeds tend to be good however do struggle in primetime and there have been cases of outages. Most recent being yesterday and apparently won't be fixed for a week. Looking at cityfibre options and see lots of similar names floating. Toob, aquiss, zen, id net, olio? (I forgot the spelling typing this). With posts about them I see lots of things I don't understand (what is it like CNAT, DCHP, something with a lot of C's in?. again forgot while typing). I just want to know what is good and what is bad about them without the jargon (explain like I'm an idiot) In terms of needs it is a family of 5 with multiple devices, Main demands being gaming and streaming services. Hopefully replies will be able to help me understand the options and potentially info from reps like I have seen on other posts. Many thanks

Hi,

Why is this company so bad?

From the migration from Octaplus to TheOne it has been awful.

Now let me be clear once the service was working and till now there is little to no issues I have experienced.

But there support and every other aspect of the way they communicate with their customers is shocking.

It still remins to be hard work.

I just do not understand how it can be this bad.

Because I am still in contract I decided to upgrade (as I have already said the actual service is fine) but it has reinstalled my thoughts on just how bad this company remains to be.

Has anyone had any good experience or is everyone just raging at this company ?

Trust pilot is not the best.