Migrating from UPP

[JG10]

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. 

[Roger_Gooner]

Are you saying that you were forced to move to VM as Upp cannot do that. What happens as I understand is that you are given 30 days' notice to leave Upp and either move to VM or another ISP.

Upp's network is now owned by nextfibre and work is being done to enable it to connect to VM's. What subscribers like you will get will be VM's service, and if this is not suitable you can get out of it without penalty within 14 days. Having said that I fail to see how switching to another ISP will enable you to reuse your Velop mesh nodes.

[JG10]

Everything you say is correct re the switch over . However the fact that Upp's Linksys Velop system will not work with the virgin Hub 5 is disappointing and a huge waste of money considering that most setup are less than a year old . The Upp velop nodes have a a different firmware to the retail versions of these nodes which would be universally compatible with all ISPs. It is possible to flash the Upp nodes with the retail software from the Linksys site but there is no guarantee that they will work . The retail versions of mesh routers such as Linksys Velop and Orbi from netgear are meant to work with all ISP routers in modem mode or in router mode with wifi turned off to prevent the double NAT issue.