Looking at properties in Wiltshire on Rightmove, we're ruling out some because the estimated broadband speed might be as low as 2Mbs:
www.rightmove.co.uk/broadband-speed-in-my-area.html#SN10_4NZ
(just as an example)
We don't want our lives to be ruled by the internet, but we do like to watch the odd thing on iPlayer/youtube, and speeds like that might be a PITA when working from home.
Is there anything you can do to improve the speed in places like this?
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I live in an isolated moorland position and, when I was with Minusnet (PlusNet) for a few years, I could never get much more than 2Mbps download and, watching the train spotters vids would usually result in the whirly whirly thing so, I dumped Minusnet, bought my own cheapo TP-Link modem/router, and went wivva TalkTalk reseller.
I now get 5.5Mbps down the same copper wire.
Fibre is also available here, but I don't want or need tit.
I live 2.14km from the exchange and if I do an availability check using www.samknows.com/broadband/index.php it says I'll only achieve around 2Mbps download.
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Mmm... thanks Dog, but do you think that's true in general? Don't think we could assume we'd get the same result.
I guess if we really wanted a place we'd have to get in touch with the current owners, who might already be getting a higher speed.
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>>do you think that's true in general? Don't think we could assume we'd get the same result.
I can only speak of my personal experience in this particular location of course Focus.
>> if we really wanted a place we'd have to get in touch with the current owners,
Yep, I was going to suggest that actually.
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I get about 1.5Mbps in rural village, about 3km from the exchange . Others here get 2Mbps or a bit more but that is down to the individual line I think.
Obviously this is becoming increasingly inconvenient as more devices are connected and consumption of streamed content becomes more popular.
There is a new microwave/wifi service coming about now, provided by a private business, that will give speeds of up to 10Mbps. It will be relatively expensive at £220 initial fee, and £30 a month for 10Mbps down, 0.5Mbps up, and 60GB per month.
I would have signed up for that but I am holding off as the latest news is that our BT cabinet has now been promoted from "under review" to being planned for FTTC.
If you want to know the outlook for an address you can look it up here:
www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
A slow broadband speed at a property might give you a bit of leverage and if you know that an upgrade is on the way you might not be too worried. Not a lot of people seem to know about the above checker.
Our exchange has been fibre-enabled for ages, but our cabinet isn't. It has now reached, according to the above checker, "Field Survey" status and that means we should get fibre sometime this year or maybe next.
I hope that helps.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sun 13 Mar 16 at 19:00
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>> I hope that helps.
It does, thanks.
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Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, with no houses around you for 5 miles, fast broadband will arrive. The "will" can be 6 months to two years away tho. If however, you can not muster 50 houses to connect within a 5 to 6 mile radius, it aint coming - ever.
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Every time these threads come up, it seems Virgin have just upped the fibre speed again. The disparity is ludicrous. They've just offered me 150mb for no more money, , if I can be bothered. I did eventually click the button to get it, but then it said I'd need a new bit of kit which was free, but £5.99 postage, and I thought blow that.
So it sits at 100mb, which is vastly more than anything I ever get near to using. Seems madness. Just back from in-laws where they still have to make do with 1.5mb max.
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Ours is about that 1-2 mb, it's not bad but it struggles with some websites it struggles with and can be annoying trying to watch stuff online. Where abouts are you to get 150mb?
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Two turds of a Meg here. You'll get this post by mid July 😉
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Near Cambridge, Sooty, but the 150(and more) is widely available across the Virgin network nationwide, I believe.
My iPad maxes out at 30 so it's pointless having more anyway.
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Don't think that we can get virgin broadband here. I don't think I'd want silly high speed just enough to watch stuff online, we don't download anything.
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"My iPad maxes out at 30 so it's pointless having more anyway"
True statement undoubtedly, but that is likely a limitation of your wireless rather than your ISP speed.
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>> "My iPad maxes out at 30 so it's pointless having more anyway"
>>
>> True statement undoubtedly, but that is likely a limitation of your wireless rather than your
>> ISP speed.
The link is only as fast as its slowest bottleneck.
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...." and I thought blow that."
For £5.99? The mind boggles.
50Mb for £5.99....:-)
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The ipad itself (ipad 2) maxes out at 30 - at least my internet poking lead me to think that. Perhaps a major overhaul of the wifi would make it a tad quicker, but bitter experience tells me it wouldn't go smoothly, and need hours of frustrating prodding about to get it to work. No thanks, it's faster than I need already, delivering 30 over the 100 link.
As to the £5.99 for yet another 50mb, yeah, but that would be six quid spent on a new superhub entirely useless to me, so I'll keep the money. Especially since bitter experience tells me it wouldn't go smoothly and need hours of frustrating prodding about to get it to work. No thanks.
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Have you looked at the cost for satellite Broadband?
eg www.europasat.com/lp/tooway-satellite-broadband-provides-fast-internet/
I have installed a couple in South of France and it gives a download speed of upto 20Mbits/s.
Not the cheapest service around, but compared to the price of a house and moving it is loose change.
Proven very reliable, and surprisingly the latency when used with Skype is hardly noticeable. Facetime seems to throw up more problems, I guess that is because a France UK link appears to go via the USA and possibly introduces furthe satellite hop(s).
Last edited by: sherlock47 on Sun 13 Mar 16 at 22:41
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>> the estimated broadband
>> speed might be as low as 2Mbs:
>>
"As low as " !!!
That would be megasonic by our standards. In theory we can get speeds of "up to" 0.5 Mbs, but in practice 0.25 Mbs is more usual.
On some days it it is so slow it won't even load the Speedtest website to measure it, and we just have to give up and try a few hours later.
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>> >> speed might be as low as 2Mbs:
>>
>> "As low as " !!!
Sorry Cliff :)
Thanks for the info chaps. The satellite option is definitely one we'd consider if the need arose.
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I used Sat. Broadband for my CAB work, mainly Skype and data. We struggled to get 2mb despite the promised 10mb, due, I was told to "congestion" during office hours.
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>> Thanks for the info chaps. The satellite option is definitely one we'd consider if the
>> need arose.
I wouldn't, latency IS an issue, its expensive, and as you dont get a UK IP address, Location based services (Like Iplayer) dont work.
Its fine commercially, for a UK home? not good.
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How much would 5 miles of personal optic fibre cost?
Perhaps I could give the Openreach man a backhander to string it from the poles for me.
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IIRC about £1 per metre.
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>> How much would 5 miles of personal optic fibre cost?
>> Perhaps I could give the Openreach man a backhander to string it from the
>> poles for me.
you can't string fibre optic from poles, so for you sir that will be about £150k
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I know nobody is interested, and I know it's off thread, and I know it might feel like it's a bit of nose rubbing, but I've just been looking online and all my puffery about 150mb speeds upthread are old hat. Turns out that 200 has already been launched and is in homes, and 300 is due "very soon". Sigh.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Mon 14 Mar 16 at 15:14
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Yeah I've had 200mb for a few months. Speedtest often reports d/l speeds up to 10% higher. Right now it's 211.78 Mbps, 12.28 upload speed. I don't often use anywhere near that bandwidth, and certainly not sustained, but some things are ridiculously quick. Although I notice more when I am at a mate's where things seem ridiculously slow!!
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>>and 300 is due "very soon".
5 meg is ample for my needs. 300 could possibly cause this 18th century cottage to collapse with me innit.
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>> you can't string fibre optic from poles, so for you sir that will be about
>> £150k
>>
Which is why it's never going to reach us, as you said.
But, found this quote:
If your area is getting FTTP (fibre to the premises), then fibre runs from the exchange to the house. Two pilot programmes have been run, parts of the Highams Park exchange in London where the fibre is largely taken along telephone poles and parts of the Bradwell Abbey exchange in Milton Keynes where the fibre is largely laid in the existing ducting
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Mon 14 Mar 16 at 15:20
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>>Bradwell Abbey exchange in Milton Keynes: goo.gl/maps/43C9fiwgchx
That brings back memories. I used to be involved with that place, should see the security on it as it's not in the most salubrious of locations.
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Just got BT Infinity installed. Now getting around 36 meg, instead of the 2½ to 3 meg that I was getting previously.
Changed over from Talk Talk, who I was paying £20.31 a month for the paltry speed of up to 3 meg. Now paying BT £10 a month for broadband 10 times the speed that I was previously getting.
Off to find a torrent site that still works ;)
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>> Just got BT Infinity installed. Now getting around 36 meg, instead of the 2½ to
>> 3 meg that I was getting previously.
>>
>>>>
I had the same leap when I went from copper to fibre.
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>>>Now paying BT £10 a month for broadband 10 times the speed that I was previously getting<<<
When it's actually working!
Now ait back and wait for the price to increase......and don't bother reading the small print, it says they can:)
Pat
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That's a pretty good deal. I think we'll have a look at BB deals when we move off this current one, it's a 2 year job so doesn't run out until December. i think we've just got the really fast/ fibre optic Internet just plumbed in recently, hopefully it'll be at a reasonable price then. We get about 2 mb now i think, more and more stuff online now need high speeds. and I think we'll get one of those plug in sticks either amazons or now TV so i decent bb speed is a must with them.
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>> That's a pretty good deal.
I forgot to mention that doesn't include line rental which is currently £17.99 a month, but someone else is paying that. The £10 is just for Infinity.
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> I forgot to mention that doesn't include line rental which is currently £17.99 a month,
>> but someone else is paying that. The £10 is just for Infinity.
>>
I think that is pretty good, ours is a tenner for 2mb bb.
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>>
>> Off to find a torrent site that still works>>
The Pirate Bay and eztv are both still about, although you may have to dig about to find their latest domains.
You will probably have to change your DNS server settings, as most UK ISSPs block access.
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>>
>> >>
>> >> Off to find a torrent site that still works>>
>>
>>
>> The Pirate Bay and eztv are both still about, although you may have to dig
>> about to find their latest domains.
>> You will probably have to change your DNS server settings, as most UK ISSPs block
>> access.
Just find the newest domain names that are not blocked. No need to fiddle with DNS servers.
Hint UKpirate.click
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 26 Mar 16 at 08:56
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kat dot cr
>> >> >> Off to find a torrent site that still works>>
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try
romeo lima sierra echo romeo india echo sierra dot com
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My pleasure.
Take the open load link option - I find it works quickest.
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broadband speed in rural areas - Dog
