Quickline broadband?

[Doug71]

About a month ago Quickline appeared in our village and started causing chaos by cutting up the pavements and roads and adding big green metal boxes to what were nice little grassed areas so we can have high speed fibre broadband.

As I understand it's heavily funded by the government as part of a policy to provide high speed internet connections to rural areas.

Now the chaos is nearly over they are knocking on doors trying to get people to sign up. The price seems cheap, £14.50 a month for 200Mbps which is half the price and about 6x faster than what I get now. If you are already in a contract with someone else they are even offering the use of theirs for free until your other contract is up just to get you to sign with them.

I don't like the way they have gone about things but the prices do seem good, reviews online look mixed.

Anybody use them or had good/bad experiences with them?

 

[Blackswanwood]

We’ve had the same Doug. I was tempted to give them a try but our cable would need to come in underground (our phone line comes off a pole that is shared with Northern Powergrid and they can only use the BT ones) but given the mess they made elsewhere I decided it could be more hassle than it’s worth.

It does seem a bit like it’s too good to be true but a couple of houses have gone with them and I’ve not heard of any problems. I’ll probably see a neighbour who has tomorrow night and will let you know if they have had any problems.

 

[Sideways]

In our neighborhood it's Nexfibre (owned by essentially the same shareholders who own Virgin Media) who dug up our streets and did exactly the same. I took their 300 odd Mbit/s deal as it offered 10x the bandwidth for the same money as I was paying for broadband over the phone line.

The three things to watch out for from my experience are
1. At the end of the 18mth or whatever contract, ours has a brutal automatic price hike from £27 to £60+ a month, so scrawl the end date in red all over your calendars and remember to cancel. They'll no doubt offer a new deal to keep you.
2. Newly dug fibre meant they had to dig it across the garden, and through the wall in a new position.
Unless you tell them otherwise, they only dig it a few inches deep. You'll put a fork through the fibre if not careful. They only poke the fibre between the paving slabs too, don't bother to lift them or dig down, so think if you intend to have your paving done in future.
Lastly, they didn't leave a protective tube through the wall when they drilled for the fibre. A detail point if you ever intend to have cavity insulation. Tell the installer before they start and this is easily done.
3. The new position for the router wrecked wifi coverage around the house. The router is no worse than the old one really but there are three extra brick walls in the line of sight to the back of the house and garden and that kills it. Unusable in half the property !
I thought I had the package where they include the wifi boosters. Wrong. Fixing it is my problem and will cost £200-300 of mesh wifi boosters to be able to exploit all the extra bandwidth. VM don't care and I was an inch away from using the 14 day cooling off period to cancel the contract before I figured out a workaround.
Get everything sorted up front. The moment the installer walks away, customer service walks away with them.

But it's fast, should be more reliable, and should be much better for enabling work from home if you need that.

 

[XTiffy]

We had fibre installed a year ago, by a new company (since bought out by Community Fibre, a London outfit). this is installed overhead from the telegraph pole to our house just like the previous BT copper cables. This was a goverment subsd. rural installation.The phone is VoiP (and sometimes plays up(?). We pay for a 300Mb connection at £30/month (includes phone calls), which is less than our pevious copper cable suppliers for a 60Mb connection, with a standard landline phone.

We have just finished building a house on part of our garden for Daughter & SiL. The Building Inspector insisted on a Giga Bit connection to this house quoting Building Regs. , fortunately we had laid ducting to the base of the pole, so were able to get the fibre company to pull it through underground, so no green cabinets thankfully. As we are in a rural location there is only the one fibre supplier, so we are at their mercy for future pricing.

 

[Doug71]

One of the issues of my property is getting the cable to the right point and I'm not happy with any of the solutions that they have suggested so far. I found it quite amusing that when the chap I have been dealing with realised I was a bit particular about things he said he would make sure I got one of the engineers in the white jackets as they are employed by them and will do what I request, apparently the ones in green jackets are sub contractors who just do things as quickly as possible.......

Future price hikes is another worry as they are the only provider.

Thank you all for the feedback, I shall keep thinking about it.

 

[artie]

Future price hikes is another worry as they are the only provider.

I don't think that will be a problem, as after a certain time the cables and exchanges have to be shared

In this locality it was Fibrus doing the work but I was able to get EE and later Vodafone.

 

[MintSauce]

@Doug71 - appreciate you live in a village/rural location but have you considered using a 4G/(5G?) SIM modem as a potential option?

I use a 4G SIM Modem (admittedly in a city) and it costs £20/month and no contract.

Don’t shoot the messenger guys (and gals) - just thinking while not knowing the coverage and the speed required.

 

[eezageeza]

@Doug71 - appreciate you live in a village/rural location but have you considered using a 4G/(5G?) SIM modem as a potential option?

I use a 4G SIM Modem (admittedly in a city) and it costs £20/month and no contract.

Don’t shoot the messenger guys (and gals) - just thinking while not knowing the coverage and the speed required.

Same here - we live out in the sticks and have no prospect of a fibre connection anytime soon, but get decent speeds (good enough for us anyway, typically 30 - 50 mbps) on 4G+. Costs £17 per month (but had to buy a suitable router, about £100 i think).

Obviously thats only going to work for you if you can get a decent 4G+ signal !