Moving to new house - internet issues

[Felicity28]

Hey,

Possibly moving to a large village but just looking at internet and it may be an issue.

I've been with Virgin Media super fast fibre for years where I am and it's brilliant. I'm a heavy user, stream a lot and have in the past run a plex server within the house.

VM is not available where I may be moving to. All other providers - BT, Sky, Zen, Plusnet only offer Standard Broadband. Mostly around 8-16mbps.

We rarely watch TV these days - usually Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and sometimes iPlayer or catch-up. I'm concerned that with this slower internet we'll be faced with waiting several minutes just to start watching something.

Any thoughts?
Thanks

[Troubleatmill]

You need to read this thread.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...


Plenty of us running on EE or 3 in the sticks with just a data sim that costs < £30.
I have most streaming providers - all good here. ( Getting 50Mb down, 18 Mb up )

Edited by Troubleatmill on Tuesday 27th October 08:33

[SS2.]

You might struggle with UHD or 4K, but 8 Mb/s to 16 Mb/s should be fine for streaming HD on Prime, Netflix or similar.

[SweptVolume]

If you love the house and want to be in that area then I'd suggest buying a Freeview+ HDD recorder and getting familiar with the schedules again.

Our village has recently been brought into the 21st century with full fibre to the house, which is about as fast as internet gets. Other villages are slowly being connected by various companies, so you may get an upgrade at some point and then you'd have faster broadband than most city dwellers (<1gbps).

Last thought; how is the 4G around there. We had a "3" 4G router, rather than rely on BT's crumby service, and got around 20 mbps, which was enough for Zoom and Netflix. The main downside was contention at busy times, which meant buffering in the evenings.

[Felicity28]

Troubleatmill said:

You need to read this thread.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Thanks - even Three is not available so can't even use a 4G router and SIM :-(

[Felicity28]

Just checked Vodafone and they say:

We estimate your broadband service will deliver download speeds ranging between 27.4 Mbps - 41.4 Mbps. Openreach confirms a minimum download speed of 22.4 Mbps.

[Alucidnation]

Surely, considering your internet usage, a reliable and fast connection would have been somewhere near the top of your 'must haves' list?

All of our holiday homes where purchased with this, but if we found somewhere we just had to have and speeds were less than 100, i investigated and funded a fibre connection.


And why is this in GG?

[Felicity28]

Alucidnation said:

Surely, considering your internet usage, a reliable and fast connection would have been somewhere near the top of your 'must haves' list?

All of our holiday homes where purchased with this, but if we found somewhere we just had to have and speeds were less than 100, i investigated and funded a fibre connection.

Yes, it is a priority, but amongst everything else involved in a house, it's not the first thing I check.

Within about 10 different houses we've seen, speaking to brokers, selling our home, looking at stamp duty deadlines, etc. searching Virgin Media connectivity was not something I thought to do immediately.

Apologies for getting the wrong area of the forum - feel free to move

[Byker28i]

I think you'll be amazed how little you need. Depends on how many people are streaming but if only 1 then we lived with an 11mb connection for two years until we swapped to BT (50mb for the same price).

[dmsims]

Having done the reverse 3.0Mb ADSL to 200Mb Virgin it is not the download that you have to worry about on slow lines. They have a tiny upload window - and as soon as this fills everything slows to a crawl.

Do not believe a word the 4G coverage checkers say - you have to actually test it and things can change vastly by changing siting and external aerials

Edited by dmsims on Tuesday 27th October 09:19

[BobSaunders]

Just gone from Gigabit to 4meg down. Waiting whilst BT pull their finger out next week to connect us to FTTC, with a max of 55meg down.

Will be looking into FTTPoD via a supplier, but i suspect it wil cost to much and will have to speak to the parish council about fibre partnerships etc.

[Felicity28]

Just tried Openreach - website said;

We're sorry, our fibre products aren't available for you yet.

However, we are starting to roll out our Superfast Fibre product in your area, giving you speeds of up to 80Mbps - provide your contact details and we'll keep you up to date with progress and what this means for your address and let you know if our ultra-fast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre, with speeds of up to 1Gbps is planning to come to your area.

---

No idea if that's just a standard message

[condor]

Useful thread for me too
I'm partially moving to Devon in 2 weeks time and until I've sorted internet and TV out, I'm going with an iphone and sim card with 18GB data and free appletv . Now trying to work out how to watch tv on laptop, or a kindle fire at a push. It can be done, just need to find out how
There are sim cards with unlimited data so that could be a temporary option.

[Bikesalot]

I had similar fears when I moved house last year. Had VM 100mbps and was moving 'further out' so no fibre lines.

I'm with plusnet and get (just checked) 24mbps download and 17mbps up (It should be a minimum of 56 I think, although I think this is ethernet only)

I've not needed to complain yet as I've not had any issues with online gaming, HD streaming, downloads, or the mass of video calls I do every day as I now WFH.

[dmsims]

Bikesalot said:

I'm with plusnet and get (just checked) 24mbps download and 17mbps up (It should be a minimum of 56 I think, although I think this is ethernet only)

That's not an ADSL line

[Felicity28]

With Sky, it says I can only get this:



Checking Plusnet - it's pretty much the same

[Felicity28]

Although Vodafone say I can get up to 63Mbps average download speed. The 4G mast is apparently very close by.



I checked the 4G coverage using Ofcom website:

[anonymous-user]

We are in a similar situation albeit in a different country. No landline available as we live in the middle of nowhere. Work from home so rely on the internet to earn a living. No TV antenna or dish so solely rely on streaming.

We use an unlimited LTE contract with an external antenna on the roof. (We get between 25-40 Mbps) no issues streaming even in 4k.

Considered a load bonding router and 2 unlimited LTE connections to increase speed but decided against it due to costs and the fact we don't really "need" it.

[BobSaunders]

Felicity28 said:

Although Vodafone say I can get up to 63Mbps average download speed. The 4G mast is apparently very close by.



I checked the 4G coverage using Ofcom website:

This means nothing. I have green across the board but i can tell you right now that 2 x same iphone next to each other one has 2 bars EE 4G, the other 1 bar Three 4G, and considerably varying internet speeds at different times of the day + weather. You will need to go and stand in the house/garden with the mobile phone and figure out what connection you will have.

My huawei mobile router with external omni antenna has 3 bars 4g on three, and it's in the roof of the garage. We've just moved in this weekend, and my task in 20 minutes is to take it into the roof of the house and see if i can get a better connection.

Go and buy different network £1 SIM's from tesco's and try with your mobile. Only way to be sure.

Edited by BobSaunders on Tuesday 27th October 11:45

[Felicity28]

Funnily enough, I am here now and doing just that. I have my phone with Vodaphone 4G, tethered to my laptop.

DOWNLOAD: 36.09Mbps
UPLOAD: 26.34Mbps

It's a rainy, overcast, windy day

Edited by Felicity28 on Tuesday 27th October 12:22