Unknown broad band plan; slow wifi; Am I on fibre or copper?

[Matej]

Hello, 

 I am with NOW for over a year now, and I have always had slow wifi, especially at certain times, but whenever I use the NOW technical check, it shows that my speed looks good. The odd thing is that my actual wifi speed is often 10 times lower and is fluctuating a lot. I initially wanted to contact NOW support, but I let it be as it wasn't too much of a problem and I wasn't sure if the speeds are lower than advertised, but now someone from Cityconnect came knocking on my doors and said they just connected our block to fibre because the speeds in our block vere extremely poor. He said that I am on realy old copper cables and not fibre (which seems correct as apparently our block was not connected to fibre until now), and if I don't switch, my speed will only get worse as copper is a low priority compared to fibre. He also said that NOW does not provide fibre, but then I checked my broadband plan, and I am on Super Fiber!

How is it possible that I am on a super fibre broadband plan for this whole year when there was no fibre in the entire building until now, and yet the NOW technical check keeps telling me that all looks good? Can NOW connect me to the fibre they promised and should I apply for a refund? Whom should I contact for support? I don't like solving things over the phone and I couldn't find a single email address.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thak you,

Matej

[gavs82008 · Accepted solution]

@Matej 

If your a NOW broadband customer then you’ll be on fibre. 

What NOW offer is fibre to the cabinet aka FTTC, which from the cabinet is copper to your property. 
Most providers like BT and Sky also offer is fibre to the premise aka FTTP. Where there is no copper. 

So what is being meant is that NOW don’t provide the FTTP which can provide speeds up to 900mb. Whereas FTTC can max at about 75mb if I’m not mistaken.

[Matej]

Thank you! That makes much more sense now. They should really explain more what the each plan means, but maybe I just didn't read through the T&Cs. 

[RoyB]

@Matej 

You are on copper to the local cabinet, from where you are on fibre all the way to Now’s servers.

Controversially and confusingly, broadband companies are allowed to call such services ‘fibre’ services because part of the journey (and actually the majority of the journey) is over fibre. 

Such a service these days is called FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) to distinguish it from full fibre all the way - FTTP (Fibre To The Property) - which is what Cityconnect are offering, and is up to 12 times faster and 5 times more reliable,

Now do not offer FTTP 😢

If you are attracted to Cityconnect’s service, then ask them about getting you out of your Now contract, if you are in one, without penalty to you.

This will be much easier if Now are not providing your guaranteed speeds; though you must give them a chance to do that, and have then fail at it, before they will let you leave without penalty. Given the vagaries of WiFi, though, it would be useful if you could measure the actual speed you are getting on a wired device, such as a laptop with its WiFi turned off, on an Ethernet cable to the router.

Do that measurement, and if you are getting speeds significantly lower than Now have guaranteed you, invite them either to rectify matters or to let you go without penalty.

Start the ball rolling by talking to the Now Broadband team on 0330 041 2518, 0330 041 2462 or 0800 759 1213.

[Matej]

Thank you! I am not really all that keen to switch to CityFibre (Sorry, it's not Cityconnect, that was a mistake), because their full fibre plan is (understandably) 9 pounds more expensive. I didn't know how to access my Now tv Hub until now, so I will try to monitor my ethernet speeds and and try to play with the wireless settings, perhaps that could solve the issue.

[Jayach]

The only Cityconnect broadband supplier I can find is based in India, I doubt that is who came knocking on your door.

Was it possibly Openreach or CityFibre?

Your slow speeds are probably Wi-Fi related not the actual broadband.

You need to log in to your router, and check the sync speed to find out how fast you are actually connected. See here:

Broadband download and upload speeds explained (nowtv.com)

[RoyB]

@Jayach @Matej 

Or UK Connect?

https://ukconnect.com/services/broadband/

[Matej]

Yeah, sorry, it was CityFibre. Thanks a lot for the link, it may sound silly, but I didn't know I could access my router until now, that's really helpful. If my wifi is at fault, how would that explain the extreme fluctuations? My speedtest.net results range from 1.83 to 73Mbps download speeds and 19 to 178 ping. Sometimes it changes rapidly, and other times it just stays low for hours. There were some outages even. 

[chilli2]

Your speed wont get any worse, it will either stay as is, or even slightly improve depending upon what yo do.

 There are lots of things that can affect wifi performance , and as far as diagnosing internet conneciton issues you will neeed to connect via ethernet to rule out issues with wifi.

 The slow wifi at certain time points towards the possibility of congestion, you could download an app ( android) called wifi anylyzer which will show what wifi networks are around and in turn you can put your router/acccess point onto a less congested wifi channel.

 you can also go into the  router settings and split the bands, if you rename the 5ghz wifi network the  it will be easy to see what band you are connecting to and in turn pick the best one.

You said this

"He said that I am on realy old copper cables and not fibre (which seems correct as apparently our block was not connected to fibre until now), and if I don't switch, my speed will only get worse as copper is a low priority compared to fibre. He also said that NOW does not provide fibre, but then I checked my broadband plan, and I am on Super Fiber!"

Which as with all sales reps is only partially correct, the copper service wont get any worse, unless something happens. However Now is just a copper based service.

 As stated above Nows Fibre plans use a fibre optic cable to a street cabinet, and from there its copper ( or if you are unlucky aluinium) technically as it relys on copper to the premises this is not fibre, however the Advertising standards agency ruled a few years back that as fbre is invovled somewhere then it could be sold as fibre.

You could use the same logic to say dial up is fibre if fibre is somewhere in the system - ie point  of prescence.

Things may change on this soon however   as Ofcom are about to rule that only fibre to the premises can be sold as fibre, meaning terms such as full fibre/fab fibre, superfibre, superfast etc can not be used to describe FTTC products see here : https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/03/ofcom-uk-clamps-down-on-misleading-fibre-broadband-adv...

[Matej]

Thank you, that was really helpful!

• "As stated above Nows Fibre plans use a fibre optic cable to a street cabinet, and from there its copper ( or if you are unlucky aluinium) technically as it relys on copper to the premises this is not fibre, however the Advertising standards agency ruled a few years back that as fbre is invovled somewhere then it could be sold as fibre."

I am wondering if CityFibre could have replaced part of the copper lines leading to our block with fibre? So it would only be the last bit of pipeline from the main entrance to my flat that's copper now and my speeds should be faster? I am not sure if that's how it works.