I just joined Vodafone broadband as they have had some great deals lately. I have been getting almost exactly the same speed test results and sync speeds as with my previous provider EE. However it seems clear to me that they are throttling speed for certain activities.
I use xcloud/game pass streaming a lot on my phone, and with my previous provider it has worked great. However now I am with Vodafone it is totally unusable, just a blurry mess, I have attached a screenshot.
This was strange, I checked my speed and they were good and I have had a good experience with lower speeds in the past. I then decided to try it with a VPN turned on. The quality was much better and it was somewhat usable again, however not great because of course a VPN will cause your speed to slow down considerably. The fact that I was getting a better experience via a VPN meant that I must have been getting better speeds through the VPN while using Xcloud.
This is clearly because Vodafone can see that I am using xcloud and start throttling my speed, but when I use a VPN they don't know what I'm doing, so don't realise I'm using xcloud and therefore don't throttle my speed.
Having done some research, there seems to be many posts, including on HUKD, of people experiencing the same throttling on Netflix with Vodafone broadband.
I contacted their support, and they kept insisting that they don't throttle speeds no matter how much I explained to them that they clearly are. It also says in their terms that they don't throttle, but they clearly are.
They have a 14 day cooling off period so I'll be leaving them asap. I'd suggest anyone who took out a contract with them recently to check to make sure all their streaming services are working well, especially if you use Netflix or xcloud, before your cooling off period is up, so you don't have to spend 24 months with a throttled connection.
Also if you plan on using any of the services they are known to throttle in the next 24 months, you might want to leave while you can or consider another provider if you're planning on starting a contract with them.
Just because you have a good speed test result doesn't mean that's what you're experiencing in real world applications. Of course they don't seem to be throttling traffic from speedtest.net. I wonder why?
I use xcloud/game pass streaming a lot on my phone, and with my previous provider it has worked great. However now I am with Vodafone it is totally unusable, just a blurry mess, I have attached a screenshot.
This was strange, I checked my speed and they were good and I have had a good experience with lower speeds in the past. I then decided to try it with a VPN turned on. The quality was much better and it was somewhat usable again, however not great because of course a VPN will cause your speed to slow down considerably. The fact that I was getting a better experience via a VPN meant that I must have been getting better speeds through the VPN while using Xcloud.
This is clearly because Vodafone can see that I am using xcloud and start throttling my speed, but when I use a VPN they don't know what I'm doing, so don't realise I'm using xcloud and therefore don't throttle my speed.
Having done some research, there seems to be many posts, including on HUKD, of people experiencing the same throttling on Netflix with Vodafone broadband.
I contacted their support, and they kept insisting that they don't throttle speeds no matter how much I explained to them that they clearly are. It also says in their terms that they don't throttle, but they clearly are.
They have a 14 day cooling off period so I'll be leaving them asap. I'd suggest anyone who took out a contract with them recently to check to make sure all their streaming services are working well, especially if you use Netflix or xcloud, before your cooling off period is up, so you don't have to spend 24 months with a throttled connection.
Also if you plan on using any of the services they are known to throttle in the next 24 months, you might want to leave while you can or consider another provider if you're planning on starting a contract with them.
Just because you have a good speed test result doesn't mean that's what you're experiencing in real world applications. Of course they don't seem to be throttling traffic from speedtest.net. I wonder why?
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