Voipfone broadband support & FAQ

If you are experiencing problems with your Voipfone broadband, please either call or email our Technical Support team, who will be more than happy to help you resolve any issues you may have. Below you will find answers to some of out most common questions.

What is full fibre broadband?

Full fibre, is often referred to as FTTP (fibre to the premises). Using light and fibre optics, full fibre connects straight to your property. You don't need an analogue/copper phone line. The 'full' bit in full fibre means your connection fully uses fibre optic cables direct to your property. This is a broadband only service using the most reliable broadband technology. Being a newer technology, it’s not available everywhere across the UK, although Openreach continue to work on the rollout.

What is part fibre broadband?

Part fibre is where the first part of the journey from the telephone exchange to your property, uses fibre optic cables run to your street cabinet. The rest of the journey is then made with copper cable to your property. This is a broadband only service, meaning you won't hear a dial tone on the line, although the router plugs into your (telephone) master socket.

Why don't you provide email or web hosting?

This is a specialised access product designed specifically for voice - although it will work for all other internet purposes too of course. By not providing the usual 'total' internet package including 'free' routers and short term deals, we can keep the price of the service that you are really using it for as low as possible.

Voipfone Broadband for Voice is often used on a second line with normal internet usage on a separate connection to prevent interference.

We may provide additional services as separate products at some point if we find customers asking us for them.

How many simultaneous calls can I have over this service?

The number of simultaneous calls you can achieve is a function of the bandwidth available to you and the quality of the voice codec in your telephone.

Bandwidth

First check the bandwidth that you are likely to achieve using our line test. In practice your upstream bandwidth is the limiting factor but luckily this will almost always be close to 800kbs.

Voice codec

For high quality calls (much better than normal telephony) we recommend the use of the g711a codec. This codec uses about 100kbs which will allow 8 simultaneous calls on a 800kbs connection.

For call quality equivalent to a good mobile phone call (normally indistinguishable from a normal landline) we recommend using the GSM codec which uses about 35kbs giving around 23 or more simultaneous conversations.

Codecs are readily switched in most telephones so you can easily test which works best for you.

Will there be any downtime if I move to Voipfone broadband?

When changing broadband suppliers, where the technology stays the same, (e.g. from FTTP to FTTP) there should be no downtime - you either swap over your modem/router, or you can update your internet connection details on the transfer day, from those of your previous ISP to the new voipfone connection details we send you (you can also view these in your Control Panel).

Although they are becoming less common nowadays, for TalkTalk or one of the other landline (LLU) providers there could be some downtime if a copper telephone line has to be un-wired from their exchange equipment. We wouldn't expect a break of more than 15 minutes in this scenario.

What does privately peered & Voice Prioritised Network Mean?

With our broadband service you are connected directly to our telephone equipment over a privately owned and managed network - a little like your own office LAN - no general purpose internet transit routers in the way to slow things down.

Voice prioritised means that we look at the traffic being sent across our network to make sure that voice services get to where they want to go without restriction - if other internet traffic suddenly spikes - we prevent it interfering with you telephone call.