Internet in 2019

[bmwmike]

First off apologies if this comes off as a rant.

In my area I've got adsl or 4g. The 4g is about 50mb and the adsl is topping out at 27mb with (right now) a paltry 0.40 upload.

What are my options for internet for say £150 per month?

I need unlimited data and fast as possible.

Currently trying to upload data to s3 and it'd be no slower to Morse code it up.

I'm with Sky unlimited fibre for (adsl2?) Via telephone line and even though they say it's truly unlimited every now and then i have to reboot the router. Junk. Edit to add it feels like I'm getting kicked.

Any thoughts from techies please? I've done all usual like making sure what I've got coming in is working properly, lines all clean etc. Issue is limited options no virgin etc.

Thanks
Mike

[LJTS]

I binned Sky Fibre and went with a Huawei 4G router and Three Unlimited data sim for £20 month! might be an option

[bmwmike]

LJTS said:

I binned Sky Fibre and went with a Huawei 4G router and Three Unlimited data sim for £20 month! might be an option

I've been thinking of that.

Is there a way (I should know this haha) to have multiple internet connections?

So internally each computer connects to the WiFi or wired Lan (in some rooms) normally and the gateway just uses whatever bandwidth is available?

I could then keep adsl and beef it up with 1 or 2 4g dongles. What hardware would I need?

[BigTZ4M]

Yes you can use something that supports multiple WANs that then uses load balancing to route traffic by whatever has the most capacity. Something like pfSense installed on a quad NIC mini PC from Amazon is going to cost you about £250. This is the setup I’ve run before with one VDSL and 2x 4G connections.

[mickytruelove]

i didnt think you got a 4g unlimited sim, checked about a year ago. seems i can get one for £11 a month?

is it really unlimited? why is it a third of the price of BT infinity? am i missing something ?

[bmwmike]

mickytruelove said:

i didnt think you got a 4g unlimited sim, checked about a year ago. seems i can get one for £11 a month?

is it really unlimited? why is it a third of the price of BT infinity? am i missing something ?

Got a link? I looked recently too and didn't seem that cheap.

I could just run multiple networks.. Netflix and streaming on one, laptops on another etc

[bmwmike]

BigTZ4M said:

Yes you can use something that supports multiple WANs that then uses load balancing to route traffic by whatever has the most capacity. Something like pfSense installed on a quad NIC mini PC from Amazon is going to cost you about £250. This is the setup I’ve run before with one VDSL and 2x 4G connections.

Cool, will check that out. Thanks !

[LJTS]

mickytruelove said:

i didnt think you got a 4g unlimited sim, checked about a year ago. seems i can get one for £11 a month?

is it really unlimited? why is it a third of the price of BT infinity? am i missing something ?

I've downloaded nearly 1TB in a month before with no issues so seems unlimited so far

You need to check that you can get a good signal with a Three Sim

Stick your postcode in to link below to see how far you are from a mast with Three dish

https://www.mastdata.com/

You'll need a 4G Router that takes Sim cards

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones

£11 for 6 months then £22

Edited by LJTS on Wednesday 24th July 22:44

Edited by LJTS on Wednesday 24th July 22:45

[bmwmike]

Thanks. Good point about asking provider about upgrades to house. Cheers

[alorotom]

we have a full FTTP line ... it was £11,500 installed per house.

plus for the first 12mths of service you have to use BT as your provider as they wont release the line until after the first contract period, which with BT is actually 18mths.

I would go the 4G route should I do it all again

[bmwmike]

Just spoken to an ISP (A&A - never heard of them but found on openreach website after it said I can get FTTP) and they have quoted £100 setup fee and £60pm for 130/30 with 2tb limit.

Prices start at £40pm for 80/20 with 200gb limit.

+£10 for 130/30
+£10 for 2TB data.

Hard to see why I wouldn't go full fat for an extra 20.

Only a 12 month contract too.

Seems too good to be that straightforward ?! I'm a cynical old git sometimes.

Edited by bmwmike on Thursday 25th July 13:10

[Slushbox]

^^^^

A&A are quite well regarded, if not the cheapest. 2TB cap is a bit irksome.

BT are doing 'unlimited' fibre deals at the moment with £110 cash card. Also works through Quidco for an extra cashback reward.

Edited by Slushbox on Thursday 25th July 16:05

[bmwmike]

Looking at their site FTTP at 130/30 should be stable moreso than adsl etc? If I can really get 130/30 consistently any time of day and 2tb limit for £60 I'm all over that. I'll compare quotes elsewhere but really it's only £28 pm more than I'm paying with sky for 27mb!

I've uploaded 36GB of data to s3 with an average upload of 273 KiB/s so far.

[bmwmike]

Slushbox said:

^^^^

A&A are quite well regarded, if not the cheapest. 2TB cap is a bit irksome.

BT are doing 'unlimited' fibre deals at the moment with £110 cash card. Also works through Quidco for an extra cashback reward.

Edited by Slushbox on Thursday 25th July 16:05

Thanks, yes having any sort of cap is annoying. 200GB was a LOL though. It's like if I use too much electricity the supplier doesn't turn it off, why is BB different. It's just a utility.

Still, 2tb should be enough for our use.

It's speed is my main problem especially upload. I rarely use broadband at home normally but my 4g has been flakey (3) which has left me switching back to WiFi and reminding me of how crap it is.

[Dromedary66]

Can't you go with BT directly for FTTP without a cap?

[bmwmike]

Dromedary66 said:

Can't you go with BT directly for FTTP without a cap?

Dunno, guess I could ask them. I usually try to avoid BT tbh, past experiences etc.

[boxst]

If you can get FTTP then Zen are good. No caps and reasonably priced.

[anonymous-user]

Fibre has just reached our village. So I checked out openreach website which said I couldn't get it. So I contacted them to ask why a house 200yds down the lane could and I couldn't. After a few emails reach way they just ticked a box in their system to say my house was enabled for fttp. Which in reality it wasn't.

So a day or two later I went onto bt website and hey presto I could order ultra super mega fast broadband. I went for 150/30.

A few days after that the openreach guy came out to connect me ??

He was like ..... Wtf, where's your fibre distribution point?

I dunno, that's your job ????????

After 2 days of hard graft him and his boss pulled fibre nearly 300 meters under some fields and hey presto I have fibre all the way into my living room.

Now like a pig in st. Having been on 3mbps copper and 10mbps micro wave.

Just try your luck and see how you get on.

Only drawback is when WFH I don't have time to make a brew anymore when uploading software mods to AWS.

[bmwmike]

Haha cool. I'm WFH too.

Going to order FTTP.

Thanks everyone. Honestly didn't realise I could get FTTP so this has been great info.

[silentbrown]

How far are you from the Openreach cabinet?

It sounds like you're not getting FTTC at present, even though you're paying for it. FTTC upload speeds in particular should be way better.

The speeds you're getting sound like ADSL (ie. non-fibre) speeds. (I get about 8mb upload on FTTC here). FTTC needs a VDSL modem/router, not ADSL...

Edited by silentbrown on Thursday 25th July 22:13