Rural Broadband

[ARH]

Rural Shropshire 2mb here, used to have virgin 100mb. So big drop in speed. I live 3 miles from the exchange which is upgrading now to fibre, so we may get it. The worst bit is the old infrastructure, it often fails. trees pulling lines down or just very old connections. It took 2 weeks to sort out my last problem with the line. Our cabinet serves about 20 houses and there is an engineer in it at least once a week. As for streaming forget it at any kind of resolution you would want to watch. You can download stuff if you plan though. To be honest day day internet use is ok though and I manage most stuff I need to do.

[croyde]

I'm in SW London and get 10 on old school copper so no need for more expensive fibre but when I found a lovely cottage on a farm near Dorking, still within the M25, I was about to hand over the rental deposit when I checked my phone. No signal.

At that point the landlord and the agent's faces fell.

No signal on any network they told me. I asked about broadband. Didn't have that either.

I'm freelance and most of my work comes by text first then paperwork and big attachments by email. Had to give up on the cottage.

Still want to move out that way but it has to be the first thing to check. Right move has a broadband checker but it says 76 wherever you look. Yeah right!

Living on my own with no Netflix or on demand via You view plus all the consoles don't seem to work these days without an online connection.

I'd go mad.

Edited by croyde on Wednesday 28th January 09:05

[E36GUY]

I don't know of any providers names as such so Google probably best but you can get Satellite Broadband in the sticks. It's more expensive but if you want fast speeds then that's your choice. Before our village was connected to fibre we had 1/2 meg and my neighbour got a satellite system installed and went to over 70. Think it cost him about £50/month. I'd pay that frankly were I to move somewhere with bad speeds having got used to BT infinity.

[BertB]

E36GUY said:

I don't know of any providers names as such so Google probably best but you can get Satellite Broadband in the sticks. It's more expensive but if you want fast speeds then that's your choice. Before our village was connected to fibre we had 1/2 meg and my neighbour got a satellite system installed and went to over 70. Think it cost him about £50/month. I'd pay that frankly were I to move somewhere with bad speeds having got used to BT infinity.

I'm with these guys http://www.broadbandwherever.net/home it's expensive for the download allowances.

[boyse7en]

Some of the answers on here seem a bit odd.

I live in rural Devon, and get about 3-4mb connection speed.

But that is fine for me to watch iPlayer (in the better quality setting) on my TV while the missus surfs Facebook/does emails/does shopping on her tablet or laptop.
It is also fine for streaming radio and every day surfing/youtube etc.

[bogie]

Some people call "rural" in a village 3 miles from town ...where you get 5Mbps (like where we are)

others are in the Scottish Highlands and can barely get a phone line ...so 2Mbps at best

there are a number of websites where you can put in the postcode of proposed new home and see exactly what broadband you can get. Im surprised this is not on the house selling websites too

Usually if its that rural the phone is poor, you also have poor 3G coverage ....you are lucky if you are in an either or situation. 4G is really good where you can actually get it

[Sheepshanks]

Cheib said:

....we're moving out to the sticks this summer.

Which county are you moving to? There's usually a "Connecting (insert your county)" website which gives you options available and tells you what they're pushing for and what's planned.

[shtu]

Cheib said:

Just been doing a bit of research on a village we have seen a house in that we like....it's got 2MB Broadband

Your best bet is to get hold of the phone number of the house you are looking at and feed it into https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm

That will give you the most accurate info available, and if they already have service on the line should be based upon the actual numbers they get.

Failing that, cheeky speedtest in their house while viewing?

[Cheib]

Sheepshanks said:

Cheib said:

....we're moving out to the sticks this summer.

Which county are you moving to? There's usually a "Connecting (insert your county)" website which gives you options available and tells you what they're pushing for and what's planned.

Buckinghamshire....still in house hunting phase. Potential house is in a village called Chartridge which is quite close to a town called Chesham.

So not properly rural but still apparently has ste broadband.

[Luke.]

Cheib said:

Hmmm. I think you've all confirmed what I thought....going to be tough having tasted the forbidden fruit of 60 MPS. At least it seems to have 4G coverage!

Will check with BT on upgrade plans. Can't buy a house based on this (well I could but the Mrs has other priorities!)

I've been living with around 1.4mb or so for the last 3 years. Can stream Netflix, stream music on Spotify, use iPlayer, surf the web fine. Though if you do too much at once it will slow down. And things can only get better. Certainly wouldn't give up a house because of it.

[Luke.]

Troubleatmill said:

To the OP - You will go mad.
Having spent 10 years in not-spots...

Budget heavily for Satellite download.

Rather have a steady 1mbps connection with a low ping than satellite and all the frustrations that brings.

[Sheepshanks]

Cheib said:

Buckinghamshire....still in house hunting phase. Potential house is in a village called Chartridge which is quite close to a town called Chesham.

So not properly rural but still apparently has ste broadband.

One of my colleagues lives in a tiny hamlet in NW Bucks and he has some kind of community fixed radio broadband. Think he gets about 6Mb.

[croyde]

As the other poster said, surely around 5mps is more than enough for most things. The house with my ex and kids gets 5mps on Plus Net and I'm round the corner on the same provider in my flat and I get 10 mps. This is SW London.

The house with 5 mps has my 3 children using xBox, PS3, numerous smart phones, laptops and tablets and it only really suffers if they are all trying to watch video at the same time.

I suppose the most important thing for me, being freelance, is a decent mobile signal, and there are plenty of places in London where it disappears all together.

[onlynik]

Luke. said:

Cheib said:

Hmmm. I think you've all confirmed what I thought....going to be tough having tasted the forbidden fruit of 60 MPS. At least it seems to have 4G coverage!

Will check with BT on upgrade plans. Can't buy a house based on this (well I could but the Mrs has other priorities!)

I've been living with around 1.4mb or so for the last 3 years. Can stream Netflix, stream music on Spotify, use iPlayer, surf the web fine. Though if you do too much at once it will slow down. And things can only get better. Certainly wouldn't give up a house because of it.

But I would. I suffered with 4 meg in the centre of a city, due to BT providing false information. I certainly wouldn't buy a house that didn't have fast internet. It is the future, why do you think Sky has been buying ISPs? The next gen TV delivery will be on demand HD or even UHD through your internet connection.

If there is no fibre, look at satellite and the costs, because for a dream house, I'd happily pay £85 a month for high speed internet access. There's a whole thread here about it.

[Jordan210]

Cotswolds for me

BT internet we had was shocking. Could not even use iplayer for radio. We currently have Satellite internet what is a bit quicker but not great.

Hopefully BT will let us have broadband soon as they have installed the cabinets.

[Luke.]

onlynik said:

Luke. said:

Cheib said:

Hmmm. I think you've all confirmed what I thought....going to be tough having tasted the forbidden fruit of 60 MPS. At least it seems to have 4G coverage!

Will check with BT on upgrade plans. Can't buy a house based on this (well I could but the Mrs has other priorities!)

I've been living with around 1.4mb or so for the last 3 years. Can stream Netflix, stream music on Spotify, use iPlayer, surf the web fine. Though if you do too much at once it will slow down. And things can only get better. Certainly wouldn't give up a house because of it.

But I would. I suffered with 4 meg in the centre of a city, due to BT providing false information. I certainly wouldn't buy a house that didn't have fast internet. It is the future, why do you think Sky has been buying ISPs? The next gen TV delivery will be on demand HD or even UHD through your internet connection.

If there is no fibre, look at satellite and the costs, because for a dream house, I'd happily pay £85 a month for high speed internet access. There's a whole thread here about it.

I posted on that thread a few times. Satellite gets nothing but shi t reviews.

[PeterTTT]

I live in rural part of Essex and am exactly between 3 different BT exchanges so any workable broadband via phone is out.
Quite a few parts round here are covered by a Radio broadband service. For me its been pretty reliable and can get around a speed of around 8Mb.

http://www.fibrewifi.com/

Maybe there is something similar available where you are?

[W12GT]

Cheib said:

Hmmm. I think you've all confirmed what I thought....going to be tough having tasted the forbidden fruit of 60 MPS. At least it seems to have 4G coverage!

Will check with BT on upgrade plans. Can't buy a house based on this (well I could but the Mrs has other priorities!)

I wouldn't pin your hopes on 4G. I am moving to a little village in a couple of weeks and have even told that only Orange works. So I've changed to EE which runs orange tmobile etc. I went to there this weekend and guess what - no reception at all - not on the phone, not on 4G or 3G. The only way to know is to go and try for yourself.

Oh and the broadband is believed to be about 2Mb/s. I can't wait to move but I am dreading how out of touch I will feel living there.

[TheJelley]

Have a look here:

http://www.connectedcounties.org/home

I just got upgraded to FTTC through the Berkshire equivalent. It is government funded but how well the roll out is managed depends on the mob organising, Berks were very good.

I am less than 5 miles from the HQ of one of the biggest telcos in the world, and received <1mb. Now cooking on 78mb, it is awesome, I can watch iPlayer again!

[CheesyFootballs]

Rural Notts here, but only about 8 miles from the city.

Best I get is 0.5 - 0.75mb, no 4G, no 3G and only really Vodafone has any decent reception.

I've been told it's highly unlikely we'll get any decent broadband to the village (fibre optic?) as not enough people to warrant the cost.
I have to avoid the pages on here where people post hi-res images...