Vodafone Explains Why Some FTTP Areas Only Offered 200Mbps

Some of Vodafone’s potential UK broadband ISP customers, specifically those trying to order one of their Openreach powered Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) plans, have run into an unusual problem that limits their choice of package to a top speed of 200Mbps (instead of 900Mbps+). But don’t worry, it’s only a temporary measure.

Historically, there can be a number of reasons why service or speed availability may differ between ISPs on the same physical network, which often causes confusion for consumers. Some of the most common causes tend to flow from issues related to local capacity, as well as the use of older ECI hardware (some areas on Openreach’s full fibre network are still hobbled by this) or the unbundled (or not) status of a local exchange etc.

In this case, a small number of Vodafone’s potential customers were finding that the operator could only offer them top download speeds of up to 200Mbps (they usually go up to 900Mbps+), which is despite other ISPs (e.g. BT, Zen Internet etc.) on the same network being able to offer the full gigabit-speed tiers.

Vodafone has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that there are a few “small pockets” of their network where this may be occurring, but it should only be temporary. In these locations, the provider informed us that there had been a delay to their planned capacity upgrade to help support the top speeds.

Issues like this normally tend to result in providers withdrawing the associated products from sale to new customers, until resolved. But in this case, Vodafone chose to deliver a smaller cable link to ensure that customers are able to get FTTP (albeit up to just 200Mbps) rather than only offer the slow hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) tiers. Once the main upgrade is delivered then the top speeds should become available again.