In January 2023, I decided to apply to have LilaConnect installed in my home after my local council had embarked on a project to bring high-speed broadband to my neighbourhood. This was, on the face of it, a welcome move as the internet in my area was only available on the older copper cable system and never exceeded 25mbps.
Having visited the LilaConnect website, the prices seemed extremely competitive compare to the alternative (Virgin Media) and I quickly signed up for the service. This would be the start of a total of 4 months of my time completely wasted by this inept and disorganised company.
Long Delays/Repetitive installation date emails
The first problem encountered was actually receiving an installation date: I couldn’t. Every month after applying for the service, I received an email saying “you can soon schedule your LilaConnect Full Fibre installation!”, but no date would be offered. This despite the infrastructure having been in place for many months prior to my request to join. This continued for a few months until I decided to call LilaConnect and ask what the delay was.
On telephoning the company, I was put through to a customer services operative who couldn’t have sounded less interested in my issue. In fact, I got to succinct impression that he regularly encountered people like me every day: frustrated with the delay in installation.
I was told that the reason for the delay in activating the broadband was because a site survey of my property was required to commence the installation process, and that someone would be in touch soon. I’d waited this long: a few more weeks could’t hurt.
Installation cancelled!
I few days later I received an email from LilaConnect to inform me that they would be unable to service my property:
“We hope that this message finds you well.”
“Our installation team have been investigating the connection for your home to ensure that everything is in place for the installation before we book a date. The team have discovered a problem with a part of the connection that will necessitate some roadworks to be completed before we can sign everything off as ready.”
“At present, we do not have an active roadworks team in Colchester and it may be some time before our roadworks in the area recommence. As such, at this time we are left with no alternative but to designate your property as not serviceable at this time.”
“This means that we will need to cancel your order with Lila Connect in this case. You will need to seek service with an alternative provider until such a time that Lila Connect can be in a position to provide you with an imminent connection.”
So after months of waiting, and previous weeks of the company digging up the roads and pathways in my area to install the VX Fibre infrastructure, LilaConnect had decided it wasn’t worth the effort of digging up the final path to my house to install their service. What a waste of time and money!
What’s the point of LilaConnect/VX Fiber?
The complete lack of ability for LilaConnect to make the effort to connect my home to their infrastructure makes the entire project between Colchester City Council and VX Fibre a farce, and I am left wondering if this was some sort of box-ticking exercise carried out by a Civil Servant somewhere in the Colchester Amphora Trading Ltd office.
When Colchester City Council announced VX Fiber would ‘kick starts build of Colchester’s Open Access Gigabit Network‘, the public were led to believe that neighbourhoods such as mine would finally be able to have access to the internet speeds that most of Europe have been enjoying for years. Alas, this wasn’t going to be the case.
So the question is this: what’s the point in spending a small fortune in installing fibre broadband infrastructure, if connection fails at the final hurdle?
Businessman, camping enthusiast, Formula One fan and Real Ale drinker.
We’ve had lila in Stoke-on-Trent now for around 5 months. 1Gbps symetrical, and its blinding. Fast, and i got slow speeds once and they sorted it same day within 2 hours of us reporting issue. Lila get a lot of hate for no reason, people need to remember the infrastructure needs to be put in place first. The fairy’s don’t do it. I’d suggest just be patient as it’s worth the wait.
You clearly didn’t read the article properly. Had you of done you would have seen that the infrastructure was in place many month prior to me requesting to join the network.