Vodafone Broadband (2022) review: Affordable, high-speed broadband with a few rough edges

A relative latecomer to the home broadband game, Vodafone has made a place for itself by offering high-speed services at very temptingly low prices. It’s scored another Highly Commended for Value for Money in this year’s Expert Reviews Best Broadband Awards, while posting good results for speed and reliability.

What’s more, there are signs of improvement in other areas since last year’s slightly worrying results. While Vodafone still has some serious work to do on its customer service and satisfaction, it’s pulling ahead of Virgin Media and TalkTalk in our latest awards survey figures. In fact, two-thirds (67%) of Vodafone customers now say they would be likely to recommend their service to someone else. That puts it ahead of Virgin Media and TalkTalk, not to mention Sky and EE.

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Vodafone Broadband review: Vodafone Superfast 1, Superfast 2 and Superfast 100

Vodafone has pulled out of the ADSL broadband market to concentrate entirely on fast fibre services. These start with its Superfast 1 fibre package, which gives you average download speeds of 38Mbits/sec and upload speeds of 10Mbits/sec for a reasonable £22 per month. There are no upfront costs for new users, but you do have to sign up for a 24-month minimum term.

Superfast 2 takes the speeds up to 67 and 20Mbits/sec for just £3 extra, while Vodafone’s entry-level FTTP service, Superfast 100, boosts the download speed to 100Mbits/sec, with a 30Mbits/sec upload speed.

Vodafone supplies its own WiFi Hub router with its fibre services, with support for dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi with 4x4 MIMO and beamforming plus four Gigabit Ethernet ports. It can also act as a DECT hub for your home phone.

For an extra £8 a month you can sign up to Vodafone’s Superfast Pro packages, adding an automatic 4G backup connection for your broadband, dedicated support engineers and SuperWiFi Plus – a Wi-Fi extender and Alexa speaker within one unit. Meanwhile an extra £8 on top of that nets you the Pro Xtra package, with any-time landline and mobile calls, an Apple TV 4K box and an Apple TV+ subscription, though (rather disappointingly) the latter only runs for the first three months.

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Vodafone Broadband review: Vodafone Pro Ultrafast 200 and Ultrafast 500

If you like in an area supported by OpenReach or CityFibre FTTP services, you can move up to Vodafone’s Pro Ultrafast 200 or 500 plans. These include the Pro extras and come at a higher cost, but give you average download speeds of 200Mbits/sec and 500Mbits/sec. Vodafone doesn’t state an average upload speed.

These are fast services and their pricing compares well with alternatives from BT and Virgin Media. However, Sky and EE are coming in with even lower prices at the 500Mbits/sec level, so don’t assume that Vodafone is the cheapest ISP in town.

Vodafone Broadband review: Vodafone Pro Gigafast 900

Vodafone’s high-end package is an ultra-fast 900Mbits/sec service, though it’s dubbed ‘Gigafast’. This pushes average download speeds to a whacking 910Mbits/sec, in line with rival services from BT and EE.

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Vodafone Broadband Packages and Prices

Vodafone Broadband review: Coverage

Vodafone runs most of its services over Openreach’s UK network, so if you can get a BT fibre connection, you should be able to get one of the equivalent speed from Vodafone. That should mean a Superfast connection for 93% of the UK population, with around six million homes in reach of Ultrafast FTTP. However, Vodafone also has a deal with CityFibre, which puts Ultrafast and GIgafast services within reach of eight million homes, with plans to expand coverage to a total 285 towns, villages and cities by the end of 2025. Theoretically, this could help Vodafone reach more households and businesses than its Openreach or Virgin-based competitors.

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Vodafone Broadband review: Performance and customer satisfaction

Vodafone didn’t do badly for customer satisfaction in this year’s Expert Reviews Best Broadband Awards survey. With 67% of customers saying that they would be likely to recommend it, it came out behind Plusnet but ahead of Sky, BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and EE. 73% of customers feel satisfied with the speeds they’re getting, while 74% are happy with reliability. The one big issue is customer service. Only just over half (54%) are satisfied on this count, while 9% said they were quite or very dissatisfied.

Ofcom’s most recent research, published last year, isn’t quite so complementary. Vodafone didn’t reach the statistical threshold for a full set of results, but 32% of customers had a reason to complain – the highest percentage of any major ISP covered – whole Vodafone also scored the highest number of Ofcom complaints per 100,000 subscribers: 103. That’s twice as many as BT and four or five times as many as Sky and EE.

Vodafone Broadband review: Verdict

Our customer service and satisfaction scores leave us hoping that Vodafone is improving on its weak points, and it may be that Ofcom’s next wave of research will bear that out. Vodafone also has some great packages at very competitive prices, though it's under pressure from Sky and EE. With a push on customer service, it could be a contender when next year’s awards roll around. As it is it’s one of the better options, with a few rough edges that need sorting out.

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