Migrating from UPP
As an Upp broadband customer I have been underwhelmed by the support offered from Virgin after their take over. Upp FTTP was installed at my premises last year and within 4 months my contract was ripped up and I was asked to sign up with Virgin. No price freeze as offered by Upp and little information about the hardware although the promise was like for like . Upp provided a set of Linksys Velop mesh nodes which suit my home and give great wifi coverage although I did eventually need 6 nodes to achieve this. Subsequently I learned that Virgin would want to install their Hub 5 which would not be compatible with the Upp Velop nodes and these bits of hardware ,which sell on Amazon for £130, were to go to landfill! Surely not I thought as it should be possible to switch the Hub 5 to modem only and use the nice Linksys Velop system to distribute the wifi. However it appears that the Nodes are locked to Upp via their firmware and this cannot be flashed to the retail version of the firmware. Virgin offer their own nodes at a cost so for me with a difficult home this will not be an affordable option. It took a lot of digging with Upp helpline to get this information and I tried to get help from Virgin helpline chat line which simply told me that Virgin FTTP was not available in my area and I should register an interest! I know that this is not the case as Virgin have taken over the Upp infrastructure. This issue is a real deal breaker for me and I suspect the same will go for other Upp customers. So sadly I will be going back to copper broadband from an ISP such as BT or Talk talk as it is the strength of the wifi throughout the house and not the speed of FTTP that is important.