Alternatives to BT for broadband in a rural area.
Discussion
theboss said:
I'm already on FTTC but am about 2 miles from the cabinet on presumably very old copper. I had a wireless service providing 30/30Mbps until about 6 months ago when line of sight became obstructed.
Hi what area do you live in? and what speeds are you currently getting with FTTC (openreach engineer)is this what you have tried to order?
https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/products-...
what do you get from BT's wholesale checker?
anything like this?
https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/products-...
what do you get from BT's wholesale checker?
anything like this?
Edited by Scuffers on Tuesday 2nd February 18:38
bimsb6 said:
Scuffers said:
if the FTTC cab is that close then so is a fibre distribution node?
2 miles of fibre costs bugger all (relatively), sounds more like you have the issue of BT stupidity on running any service into a new building.
Even if no duct exists ? 2 miles of fibre costs bugger all (relatively), sounds more like you have the issue of BT stupidity on running any service into a new building.
Scuffers said:
bimsb6 said:
Scuffers said:
if the FTTC cab is that close then so is a fibre distribution node?
2 miles of fibre costs bugger all (relatively), sounds more like you have the issue of BT stupidity on running any service into a new building.
Even if no duct exists ? 2 miles of fibre costs bugger all (relatively), sounds more like you have the issue of BT stupidity on running any service into a new building.
dotty said:
Hi what area do you live in? and what speeds are you currently getting with FTTC (openreach engineer)
Hi, I'm getting about 11mbps down / 1mbps up. Could order another potentially but I hoped getting a 100Mbps bearer via my business would be viable. I knew there would be some cost but £112k is a little eye watering to say the least!I'd been waiting for years tracking the FTTC rollout by BT across the county as part of a large government-backed scheme. My local exchange was a year late upgrading, and i'd already tracked down the local cabinet and worked out the line length, which should have taken my broadband speed from about 4mbps after lots of tweaks (connecting directly to the master socket, decent filter, disconnecting redundant phone wires in the house, tweaking SNR ratio on the router) up to around 15mbps with the cabinet about 2.5km away.
The day the cabinet was FTTC enabled i was on the phone to have my line switched over, which happened pretty quickly with Zen, but instead of revelling in the extra speed my line reduced from 4mbps to 1.5mbps :| :| :|
After a few weeks of f
king about they sent a BT engineer out to take a look, and he confirmed the cables back to the cabinet were all aluminium and there was no choice but to head back to ADSL2 
Most of my neighbours in the village are still on 2mbps, and what's even more frustrating is that every village in the immediate area has FTTC enabled with decent speeds and fibre seemingly running past me a couple of miles in every direction. A local FTTH project backed by the local council is just 2 miles down the road, and some of the local competition has complained to the EU about it!
Unfortunately though the little hamlet where i live is in the middle of all of these villages, so the fibre will continue to run near us but with no reason for anybody to run anything past us, and not enough houses for either BT to install their own cabinet or to attract any FTTH suppliers.
I have spoken to the 2 local wireless companies (that complained to the EU about the FTTH project), but neither have a mast with line of sight to me.
The day the cabinet was FTTC enabled i was on the phone to have my line switched over, which happened pretty quickly with Zen, but instead of revelling in the extra speed my line reduced from 4mbps to 1.5mbps :| :| :|
After a few weeks of f
king about they sent a BT engineer out to take a look, and he confirmed the cables back to the cabinet were all aluminium and there was no choice but to head back to ADSL2 Most of my neighbours in the village are still on 2mbps, and what's even more frustrating is that every village in the immediate area has FTTC enabled with decent speeds and fibre seemingly running past me a couple of miles in every direction. A local FTTH project backed by the local council is just 2 miles down the road, and some of the local competition has complained to the EU about it!
Unfortunately though the little hamlet where i live is in the middle of all of these villages, so the fibre will continue to run near us but with no reason for anybody to run anything past us, and not enough houses for either BT to install their own cabinet or to attract any FTTH suppliers.
I have spoken to the 2 local wireless companies (that complained to the EU about the FTTH project), but neither have a mast with line of sight to me.
Sonic said:
Most of my neighbours in the village are still on 2mbps, and what's even more frustrating is that every village in the immediate area has FTTC enabled with decent speeds and fibre seemingly running past me a couple of miles in every direction. A local FTTH project backed by the local council is just 2 miles down the road, and some of the local competition has complained to the EU about it!
that's exactly what was about to happen to us here, Gigaclear scuppered the BDUK (Government scheme for rural BB) so they could shoe in their super expensive maybe prommis of FTTP (and some 18 months later, they are now making a right mess of the villages around us but still no service).you have probably seen this graph before:
shows VDSL speed vs. distance, once you're at 1Km, ADSL2 is likely to be faster.
Scuffers said:
you have probably seen this graph before:
shows VDSL speed vs. distance, once you're at 1Km, ADSL2 is likely to be faster.
Indeed shows VDSL speed vs. distance, once you're at 1Km, ADSL2 is likely to be faster.
You have to factor in exchange distance vs cabinet distance though, as the cab distance is likely closer than the exchange. I'm 3.5km from the exchange and 2.5km from the cab, so the difference should have been noticeable, if it wasn't for the bloody wires!! I'm not sure about the 1km figure though, as at 2km on VDSL you can still get near equal speeds to being next to the exchange with ADSL2, but yes, i fully appreciate VDSL drops off quicker than ADSL2.
The very frustrating thing is i used to live next to the exchange (where i got 19mbps after they finally upgraded it to ADSL2
) 
I've discovered a cab nearer my house than the one I'm connected to, which serves a bunch of properties I have line of sight to a mile away. Line checkers reckon they are good for 76Mbps... so I could go door knocking and see if somebody wants to host some kit and a directional wifi radio for £x/month. There's a farm with a bunch of outbuildings which may make a likely partner site.
Having a complete nightmare trying to find a house in the countryside here in NI which has decent broadband. As soon as you go about a mile or two outside of any town you can say goodbye to anything over a couple of MB.
We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
FartKong said:
Having a complete nightmare trying to find a house in the countryside here in NI which has decent broadband. As soon as you go about a mile or two outside of any town you can say goodbye to anything over a couple of MB.
We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
Surely if a house purchase pivots upon the availability of broadband satellite would be a consideration?We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
FartKong said:
Having a complete nightmare trying to find a house in the countryside here in NI which has decent broadband. As soon as you go about a mile or two outside of any town you can say goodbye to anything over a couple of MB.
We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
with respect, what do you expect?We've had to turn down about 10 houses we wanted to buy simply because they have no broadband!
4G broadband looks like the only option but as mentioned the data charges are insane and with me needing a decent connection for working from home I may not be able to do it anyway.
if you live 1+ miles away from any reasonable collection of houses, what do you expect?
Running single line services is insanely expensive, think yourself lucky that BT have to provide a phone line.
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