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When we moved here in 2007, the 1-2 meg broadband on a copper cable some 5km from the exchange wasn't a consideration. Never mind a problem. Next week we're - finally - getting the FTTP originally promised in 2017.
As the internet became more pervasive in our (and definitely the growing kids) lives, we tried a whole load of interim solutions to try and negate the crap infrastructure (we shared a DACS with next door, remember those? And a lot of the copper was in a very poor state) including getting a second connection and paying for an aggregation service. That was a very expensive solution for around 10 meg!
Last 3 years we've go SIM/Broadband. It's okay but getting worse. One thing it isn't is consistent and that's having a real affect on my ability to work, and buffering is our streaming reality!
If we were looking at houses now, I'm sure the broadband infrastructure would be a consideration. I keep hearing it's the 'fourth utility' (three for us, no gas here either!). Maybe 5G will close the gap for rural areas, no way there is a commercial proposition for many of these areas (we were able to get the very last of the council grant money to 'mop up' 200 houses abandoned by the previous schemes).
So would you care? Could you live with a rubbish connection? Would it stop you buying a house? Is it really as important as electricity? Dunno, idle musing as I count down the days to 900 meg synchronous and the ritual burning of the 4G router!
Very much looking forward to running a speedtest and seeing something over 20 meg!
I think now, as streaming services overtake normal broadcast, the necessity of the internet in literally every part of life, it'd be extremely difficult for most people to justify living somewhere without reliable broadband unless you were looking to be off-grid or were able to just use mobile/5G broadband or were willing to sign up for Starlink.
Not necessarily Gb speeds - I coped fine even WFH for years on a 10-megbit connection (I'm on 50 now). My Mum gets by with no issues on about 40 but then she does far less streaming and never does anything online that would require faster.
I feel sorry for my technophobe Dad though. He relies completely on his partner for anything doing online, he's never had an email address or any form of online account. I don't know how he'd cope if he was on his own. I mean, he wouldn't even consider internet access if he was buying a house - it's just that once he moved into it he'd be unable to do a lot without the internet!
I did some work on the periphery on a university's research to try and measure the 'digital divide' a few years ago. It was scary stuff with the almost total shift from a person to a screen for everything from paying your bills to filing a tax return. One of the findings was the govt needed to step in and provide proxies for 'those in media poverty and/or those who would not /could not engage with internet based services'
So that went well then 😉
I had to do an old school call yesterday as internet was down again. I was dialled into a teams meeting of 7 people and it was rubbish! You forget how terrible conference calls were for any kind of collaborative meeting. I mean I don't love teams, but it's better than the alternative of voice only or travelling for hours for a 60 min in person meeting.
When our fibre is in, I can't decide what I'm going to do first. Backup my NAS to the cloud, or upload all my GoPro videos to the GP site 🙂
We do have a few people on starlink here. By all accounts, it's stable and fast-enough. What it isn't is cheap! Compare that to what we've just ordered: 900 meg is £32 a month with six months at half price. That's mad compared to even what we're paying for the SIM. I guess that's the other thing... other utilities are expensive, basic raw internet is cheap. Services on that internet however....
Currently got 75 mbps but in the process of buying a house where we'll only have 35 mbps. I WFH with lots of video calls and got a teenage son. Are we screwed? Probably not, but think we will definitely notice it if the wife and I are streaming HD the same time as the boy. Fttp is planned for the new house by the end of 2026 though.
Before the "kids" moved out, we had a one on / one off policy. If they were watching something on phones/tablet then we'd probably not be able to stream anything off the tv. They weren't big gamers tho, so never had that problem.
Even when the SIM is having a good day, I don't think I've ever been able to stream YT at max res. 1080P it'll do but no higher. And watching films, it might be fine for an hour then we'd sit around / reset things for 10 minutes hoping it'd come back.
35 prob be fine tho. Isn't 30 the 'minimum' the govt pledged everyone would get access to?
Having reliable internet was an issue for us when buying 10y ago (satellite at one house, that doesn’t work well in the rain, bullet dodged there) but standard 15Mb is perfectly adequate for normal streaming, zoom, downloads, home office work etc.
No online gaming here and only two of us, 4 at a time on Fortnite might be a different matter, I dunno. We have no TV, all our media is streamed, it’s absolutely fine.
We had some ridiculous level of connection speed at my last job and still ended up waiting to get served from slow websites etc.
Tech duffer
I'm with Virgin, so I believe fibre. That's contracted as their 250mbps service but I just ran an Ookla speedtest and it said 16.
That's on an (old) Chromebook wireless connected to the Tenda Mesh recommended by a few on here when my router lacked oomph.
Does it matter much that I'm not directly wired to the router or that the device might not be that great? Does the speedtest not work out just from the router.
If it's really 16, should I be complaining to Virgin? Are they obligated to a service speed, or is it mired in contractual estimate only?
Just ran 2 others and got 26 and 14 (VM's own tester)
So would you care?
Yes, I probs would make it a non negotiable that would be certainly a top 10 'must have' if I was moving even somewhere semi-remote.
Definitely should be 4th utility. I've been WFH at least part of the week since the days of dial up modems (remember the Psion Goldcard? Lovely!). Doing terminal access via dial up was fine. ADSL was a gamechanger. I've now got 30-40 Mbps which is good enough for most purposes. I should get fibre in the next month not that my neighbour has agreed access for Gigaclear.
I'd not buy a house without fibre now unless it was truly compelling. Then I'd splash for Starlink.
[edit] it's raining outside and I'm bored, so have been experimenting
My (modernish) smartphone right next to the Mesh box that's connected to the router got 90+
Back in the dining room where I was sat to do the others I got 88, so not much loss. Is it my Chromebook that's the problem?
So - try the CB - put that next to the Mesh box and i got........33. Sit in my chair the other side of the room and it drops to 29.
Hmmmm..... reasonable spec work Dell laptop gets 15
Does it matter much that I’m not directly wired to the router
Yes, you're measuring the slowest part of the chain, in this case probably the Tenda WIFI
I'm also clueless on general subject, but community based companies seem to make it work - this is constantly expanding across the remote rural bits of the NW.
It is comically good. One very competitive price is offered and just one speed (bloody fast). It has briefly gone wrong once in 2 years, and a Twitter message fixed that in 30 minutes - including a human being calling to explain that they were doing maintenance and switched the wrong bit off 🙂.
Edit: Not been on their website for a bit - they now do a social tariff of £15 a month for 1GB fibre broadband if you are on council tax support. What an ace company 🙂.
Online gaming does not require much bandwidth, just low latency. My parents live in a village and normally get about 3.5mbps download and 0.5 upload. It's often painful to stream but they don't mind as they rarely do that. WiFi video calls are pretty poor and they get very poor phone signal, but they aren't interested in complaining to try to get a better service. BT too so I bet it costs them an arm and a leg!
1.5 - 2mb here on a fixed connection. 50 house village, so no plans to upgrade us anytime soon. Even with just two of us it was a nightmare for streaming, but online gaming was actually ok as we have decent ping
Mobile upgrades in past few years means that mobile is now viable and get 27-30 mb. Sons only 5 so not using much, so it’s fine for us. Recently been getting a good outdoor 5G signal but would need a new router and an outdoor aerial, so holding off for now.
Definitely something I’d be looking at if considering a move.
We started of with something like 8mb ADSL many moons ago. That was ok for RDP access to work computers on the few occasions I worked from home. Then upgraded to FTTC, which gave us 85mb as the cabinet was a out 20 yards away. Had this for a long time and it was perfectly serviceable for two adults and three kids WFH and learning from home during COVID, plus streaming and playing online games.
Moved and new house has FTTP and we've opted for the 250mb package. No real difference for those of us WFH, streaming or gaming. Only thing the kids like is that a huge COD update is now a lot quicker.
Does it matter much that I’m not directly wired to the router
Yes, you’re measuring the slowest part of the chain, in this case probably the Tenda WIFI
Yet a decent phone next to the router gets 3x the speed of an old CB in the same place? So must also be recipient device dependent?
Wouldn't really care - had 2meg copper for years.
Most of the Internet I use is low demand.
The early days of covid with teams calls were tough but about 3 months in we got upgraded to 40meg when the new livery yard went in down the road.
Once lived in a house with no mobile phone signal - on any provider and WiFi calling wasn't a thing back then. That made my employers "on call" policy challenging but I was ok with it funnily enough. They thought I was taking the piss till I invited the boss round..... Half way up the drive he got the jist of it.
Psion Goldcard?
I do remember 🙂 What a thing!
5G has been mooted for our mast for ages but not happened. The biggest issue with have with 4G is the latency, it's not that it's terrible (50-60ms mostly) but it's so variable. Some days you'll run a speedtest and it'll be 400 and that really messes with video etc.
We had to invest in an external antenna. To be fair Herefordshire council then provided a grant to halve the cost of the broadband SIM based service. Issue only network we can 'see' at our house is Three. And it's beyond panrts.
Customer service is definitely way better with the smaller ISPs. We've signed up wite BeFibre and they've just been ace. Whereas three have no way of contacting them other than twitter when they say 'reboot your phone' and 'we're not aware of any issues in your area'.
My guess would be 5G would be good IF the service is consistent. I know a lot of masts in city's can get over-run bt ours is on a bloody big hill with no one around it (its the tv mast) and it's still terrible!
I should get fibre in the next month not that my neighbour has agreed access for Gigaclear.
Apparently the worst job at the fibre installer (full fibre here) is the wayleave officer 🙂 It's not been too bad on our community scheme as everyone really wanted it. There's been a few grumbles about new poles going up, but mostly everyone is so relieved to be dumping BT/Airband/Three etc.
Gigaclear are not on my list of good ISPs as it was them who welshed out on finishing the contract they'd been awarded by the council. Still got all the money tho. The minutes from the council meeting made interesting reading. Apparently contract had been written that they had so many clauses for non delivery, no way of getting any money back!
30 mbps download is fine for us but I find the 5 mbps upload a pain for backing up my photography hobby to the cloud and when backup is running it means we can’t stream. Easily enough to fix by scheduling overnight backup so only a mild annoyance.
Definitely 5th utility for me
Water
Electricity
Mains Humous on Tap
Gas
Broadband
In that order
My 93 yr old Dad's rural house gets about 2-3 Mbps. Thats' enough for him to get his online banking done* and send the odd email so he's perfectly happy. Him being happy with it though is a right pain in the arse as it's impossible to persuade him to upgrade to the Gigaclear FTTP connection that runs along his road. If he did I'd be able to spend much more time checking in on the old git as I could WFH from his house on some days - rather than having to take a days leave if he needs a hand with something for an hour or two.
Gigaclear's stupid, £15 for 18 months then £38 after that for slowest package isn't a great help either. Plus the fact getting any clarity on whether he'd be liable for any installation costs seems impossible without placing an order (house is about 400m from the road).
*though he'll be totally screwed if they ever mandate 2-factor authentication via mobile phone.
Humous on tap? I'd probably go for 'beer in the fridge'
The upload thing is annoying. Even when we get 30 meg download, we never get better than about 3-4 up. Any length GoPro updates take about two hours at best assuming they don't crap out. I load them at a reasonably high quality as I know YT compressions algorithms are going to munch them!
Uploaded a couple of hundred pics to Flickr after a holiday. Have to do it in batches.
That's a speedtest running every 30 mins. You can see the variance we get on download especially and how bad it is this week.
Data connectivity is a total game changer to your way of living and potential to work. So 4th utility seems a legit claim.
I'm rural but not stupidly rural - 15min drive to a Maccy Drive Thru and live on an A road, but broadband is a problem. 3mb on a good day with a following wind, so some way below the 10mbs we are meant to all expect as a minimum right. I'm lucky however as EE & Voda 4g arrived in the area just before Covid so we use a 4G router and get about 40mbs. Folk down the lane can't pick up the 4g and are a bit scuppered. Their choice is not to be able to stream or WFH with video calls or bend over and shell out for a bit of Musk's Skynet (£85pm and maybe £600 for the kit unless you luck out on an offer). People who live between me and the aforementioned Maccy D are in the same position even though they are only a mile or so outside of a town of 5000.
As a community Openreach "reached out" to us and suggested we might like to pay just shy of £20K per household and we too could have broadband worth having. I struggle to work out a system that says we have a right to request 10mbs or greater and simultaneously a community can be asked for half a million to have it. I guess there's a difference between a right to request a service and a right to be provided a service - not looked into it too hard.
40mbs does us and the sim is only £20odd quid pm. I'd struggle to justify the Skynet price and TBH I'm not sure what the extra speed would do for us.
Interestingly (if you are a geek) I was Ladakh, India last summer and stayed at the SECMOL School. Sonam Wangchuk who founded the place and the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives is a properly inspiring person in many different ways (His story was the basis of the main character behind the 3 Idiots film). Anyway, they are experimenting with LiFi - a 5G internet broadcast by laser, and powered by solar.
And you can see how variable the ping response is off the 4G router.... I am hoping both these graphs will be rock solid with little movement around the mean once fibre is in.
I'll have a watch of that vid - thanks.
As a community Openreach “reached out” to us and suggested we might like to pay just shy of £20K per household and we too could have broadband worth having. I
Pretty similar here. That was the 'commercial' price. Obviously everyone just laughed. I can't remember exactly what grant full fibre received but I *think* if was around £5000 per household. Obviously some easier than others but the farm next to use needed a solution to get up a 3/4 mile driveway!
Getting it over the line was not easy. Had to door knock to get people to provisionally sign up and only one fibre provider bidded. Been great from a community point of view tho, met loads of people and the WA group is fun (apart from the odd 'pole denier') with those connected citing almost life changing connectivity!
Definitely important for me as part WFH job, and my next perhaps full WFH. Lack of good internet could make living somewhere unviable for me.
4th utility though, not sure. Idealistically, yes. But like non mains sewage and gas, you can make your own arrangements with starlink, 4G etc. You choose to live somewhere nice out of the way, there sre various prices to pay for that decision.
4th utility though, not sure. Idealistically, yes. But like non mains sewage and gas, you can make your own arrangements with starlink, 4G etc. You choose to live somewhere nice out of the way, there sre various prices to pay for that decision.
I think we might have different ideas of a utility. Just because they are not on 'mains' I don't think they are not a utility. I'm on mains leccy, but private water (spring) and sewage (septic tank), LPG tank and now 4G for internet. They are 4 utilities - just 3 of them are a bit more of a ballache for me than for most folk!
We have (essentially) a digital utility bill with a fixed budget that we raise by 10% each year. If what we want doesn’t fit, something has to go/be renegotiated.
It covers phones, BB, TV pic and subscription services. It’s £100 a month. That’s 4 people’s mobiles, the TV Lic, the BB and the TV subs. I can’t see it getting any less year on year, quite the opposite in fact.
£1200 a year!
Probably similar, family Spotify, Amazon, Apple TV (but that's going once we've finished catching up on slow horses), Netflix, some apple icloud extra space... all ads up.
I went back and looked at what the two aggregated ADSL lines cost. It was over £100 a month!
Is it really as important as electricity?
At the last election... the Labour party said it was... and that providers have for too long dragged their feet (while taking both large subsidies and charging customers large fees) in rolling out fast connections to rural areas and towns... their solution? Direct control, investment and ownership of the physical infrastructure... government driven expansion towards universal fast access (as has already happened in some other countries). Lots of people laughed. And it's no longer on the table. But it seemed a sound approach to me... small companies can be spread everywhere, and people can successfully work from anywhere, IF the infrastructure supports it. Making it so would be genuine "levelling up" of the regions.
the Labour party said it was
Sounds like they were trying to stay relevant rather than concentrating on the main issues of not having reliable and weather resistant electricity
Odd thing to say, like a political party in government can only address one infrastructure at a time. 🤷🏻
@mick_r - thanks for the kind words about B4RN. I'm also a customer. Plus, I work for B4RN developing new project areas. I like the term "comically good" ' we should use that as our strap line 😜 I'll tell the folks st work...
Not sure about the 4th utility - we don't have gas or mains water here so for me it's the second one. Ironic as I've just got home from a couple of days caving to find no electricity either! Whole dale is down.
We sacked our broadband off, 0.7mb regular broadband. Then fibre came to the cabinet, we were promised faster broadband, realistically that was 2mb but really sketchy, could drop out for a day easily.
We're currently on an EE 4g plan. It mostly does ok. FTTP is imminent with Fibrus so that's something to explore.
Starlink user for over 3 years £75 a month but we recover Vat/Tax so probably £50.
Runs at 160 to 250 mega elons down and about 20 mega elons up. Latency is 28 milliseconds. It has been very reliable and will easily stand netflix, web browsing, streaming music, homeworking etc.
Not cheap but very good
Odd thing to say, like a political party in government can only address one infrastructure at a time
Do you follow the politics of this country over the last 10-15 years
It is apparent to many than the current crop of political parties cant address any infrastructure project coherently at any time.
Hs2
Replacement nuclear
Adequate spread of resources to cover peak production without use of coal tu -let alone getting rid of the gas.
Cutting off the means to be Energy self sufficient then importing en masse by tanker.
Starlink would be have been our next option. Install and rental tho were hefty - thought it was £99 / month and £400 for the kit?
But that's pretty much your non fibre option other than 4G/5G..
Kits 250 and it's 75 a month now.
Either it's selling well and economy of scale or .... More likely. It's not selling well and he needs to get the numbers up
I moved to an area that "just" managed to get FttN. We were all promised fibre years ago but that changed. What we have now is a mixed model of copper, fibre and satellite. A mix of prices. Our area was one of the first to get NBN (copper) now many areas that got copper then got upgraded to fibre. We still have to wait until at LEAST Septemeber this year (so that's close to seven years of copper and sub 80mb connection - for the same prices as others pay for fibre).
5g gives me 700-800 down but despite the potential, it never feels as snappy as the "slow" copper connection.
Given it's 2024, yes not having a future focused infrastructure is a deal breaker for me. (Not that I can be arsed to move now!).
I wish there was a B4RS 😕
Having lived a year during lockdown where there was barely one bar of mobile signal outside, we had to rely on EE 4G external aerial which regularly dropped out. Now living where there are people within 10km reliant on Starlink, but we are quite close to the fibre ‘ring main’ that runs around the island so we get FTTP which has been very reliable. Having no good broadband infrastructure does hold back investment in remote areas and should be essential.
@daverhp - keep up the good work with b4rn 😃
The comical bit is how the Community Benefit Society approach has made something work really really well that the commercial operators deemed non-viable, and as soon as you remove the make massive profit bit you can have something that is equitably cheap, fast and reliable for everyone (no more artificial special offers, discount periods, pay an extra £x per month and supposedly get faster etc).
So what is the secret? Is it actually much cheaper to lay cables across open fields than digging holes in urban roads? (Provided you get involved at the parish level so the landowners allow access for free as they also benefit?)
Are there similar projects popping up elsewhere? Responses to this thread would suggest not.....
Per metre it's certainly a lot cheaper in fields than in roads. The catch is that it takes a lot more planning, surveying and meeting landowners.
The secret is that we recruit local volunteers who put a huge effort in - they have the local contacts and credibility. I don't think it could work without them.
It's a moderately unique model. Broadband for Surrey Hills (B4SH) is doing well, and Balquhidder has a similar project. I would say it works on a small scale but we now have 13,000 live customers and a footprint which could connect the same again without expanding our area. In global terms that's tiny - but for those 13,000 in very rural areas I doubt it seems so. Certainly doesn't to me, who joined B4RN when we had a handful of employees.
The staff also are massively committed; many of us came fresh to the industry from other careers having got involved in our parish projects. Being a volunteer is B4RN's "extended interview process". 😀
There probably isn't a single secret; B4RN has been smart and lucky, and retaining our community benefit society status keeps us from grabbing commercial hands who might be happy to compromise to make a few more quid.
When I drive around the country we cover I do feel great pride to have had a hand in it, and I have personal favourite 'crazily remote' houses we connect with gigabit speed. I know of two that don't even have mains electricity.
Bonkers but brilliant. Shouldn't work, but it does. You just have to want to do it enough. Hopefully another 13,000 to come!
It'd be a deal-breaker for me. But I work from home, I need a reliable connection. There's also a considerable amount of internet-connected stuff.
I've often considered this, living somewhere rural sounds amazing in theory, but I expect the novelty would quickly wear off when I can't get a pizza delivered and it's an hour and a half round trip to Tesco.
Currently got 75 mbps but in the process of buying a house where we’ll only have 35 mbps. I WFH with lots of video calls and got a teenage son. Are we screwed? Probably not, but think we will definitely notice it if the wife and I are streaming HD the same time as the boy.
If you're both streaming 4k video then probably, it needs about 25Mbps. Lower resolutions have considerable lower requirements.
Yes, you’re measuring the slowest part of the chain, in this case probably the Tenda WIFI
It's likely the Wi-Fi NIC in the Chromebook it it's old. Different standards support different speeds.
That’s a speedtest running every 30 mins. You can see the variance we get on download especially and how bad it is this week.
Your internet connection would probably be a lot better if you weren't stress testing it every half an hour. 😁
Broadband is the new currency.
the govt pays the royal mint to print currency.
Qed, broadband should be free, as a means to promote business and trade.
Your internet connection would probably be a lot better if you weren’t stress testing it every half an hour. 😁
I did actually consider that. But I wanted to try and build up some data I could beat Three with. Because being told to reboot your phone wasn't improving things! I'll prob go back to twice a day once the fibre is in.
Rural is lovely. It's only a 30 min round trip to Tesco 🙂
Wasn't there an Eu Directive a decade or so ago regarding the move to online services and internet connectivity?
I know we had a target in Sweden to have 97% with facility to be connected to a 10Mbps service by 2020 (at reasonable cost). As a couple of my neighbours were involved in the work.
We were in the 3% and should have been connected 2023, so we did our own community project about 10 years ago instead. (23 slipped to 25, so some of the other small villages/hamlets nearby still aren't connected, but we did extend our system to the next hamlet, so ~60 properties).
Quite a few of the older folk (who didn't want internet) got the conduits fitted and clipped into place, but didn't get the fibres blown through (saved them about 6-700 quid). So even they saw the writing on the wall. Think there are only 3 houses not fully connected now. But we've also got full 4G and some 5G locally.
Realistically, you can't function in Sweden without a connection. Most banking is online now, most of the council and government services as well. So even those without a connection have to go to the library or get someone with a connection to help. (Though most companies do still offer a offline version of their services. Sometimes at a cost!)
I suspect the gov are wholly relying on 5g, if they have a plan at all. The community group installs are all well and good if there is a community, but if there's just one house then that will never happen. My parents live on a farm 1 mile from the nearest road, I don't think they will ever have an option beyond mobile broadband, which just about works. They're lucky in that they have signal because they are only 15 minutes drive from the nearest town despite being very isolated in the direct locality. No idea what all the farms in the dales, Wales, lakes can ever do.
That's before you get on the the digital switchover - old people in a remote house liable to power cuts, mobile signal only in one spot and a landline reliant on power supply. The gov have got that one seriously wrong
That’s mad compared to even what we’re paying for the SIM.
5G Sims (on all networks) are available unlimited (I think maybe there is a theoretical cap of several 100Gb) for around £250 a year or less if its 3. While its not going to work for everyone its price wise quite viable for many as an alternative. The issue is the contention on mobile data networks remains horrible as the capacity to the pole lags behind the capacity pole > phone.
@mert - when the council were originally planning the rural rollout, they quoted some of the EU directives as that's what unlocked the EU funds! (pre brexit, sigh). The funding was split between some UK Gov grants and EU money. There was 'target' for a min 30 meg but tech just overtook that really. I guess the 4G can be 30 meg but as @benpinnick says the contention is horrible.
The community stuff for us has tried to be really inclusive. Even when we knew a few locations were going to be really expensive to do and it'd drive the overall price up. Like I said before, we had one bidder for the work (even with the massive subsidy) and I don't think they're making huge amounts on it, I think its about reference-ability and long term revenue as we're never going back to what we had before.
Door knocking was interesting. We had one 'the internet is evil, we won't have it in here' and quite a few 'yeah we'll sign up but we're not installing it as we hardly use it' from those in - shall we say - later years. The one worry we kept hearing was 'does this mean my landline will stop working'. I reckon they must be phoning each other as nobody we know has a landline anymore!
I did actually consider that. But I wanted to try and build up some data I could beat Three with. Because being told to reboot your phone wasn’t improving things! I’ll prob go back to twice a day once the fibre is in.
One would hope that an ISP had access to performance stats at their end, but I take your point.
Door knocking was interesting. We had one ‘the internet is evil, we won’t have it in here’
I once took a support call from a vicar who was seriously unimpressed that we'd connected up his church with Demon Internet.
One would hope that an ISP had access to performance stats at their end, but I take your point.
They will *absolutely* lie about it.
Had that with BT, "our system says you're getting 10Mbps, like what you paid for." *Looks at router maintenance page showing 0.7*. Took a month of calls to get to that stage. Then i emigrated and had to deal with Telia (Swedish national provider) who swore blind that if we paid for 16/2Mbps that's what we'd get, all the way up to their "experts" that we spoke to after about a dozen calls to their help desk and being escalated twice. Fibre couldn't come fast enough.
Paying for the slowest fibre they offer now, get more than i'm paying for.
Really it was an exercise in frustration mgt. They didn't ever acknowledge their poor performance. Every and I mean EVERY call went like this:
Me: it's rubbish, here are some stats
Them: Reboot your phone. Does it work outside.
Me: It's an external antenna connected to a router with one of your 4G sims. All provided through your.
Them: Reboot the router
Me: Done that, still rubbish.
Them: We don't see any problems in your area
Me: See these stats, they would suggest otherwise
Them: "Three has left the chat"
I once took a support call from a vicar who was seriously unimpressed that we’d connected up his church with Demon Internet.
Proper LOL that's brilliant.
Me: it’s rubbish, here are some stats
Them: Reboot your phone. Does it work outside.
Me: It’s an external antenna connected to a router with one of your 4G sims. All provided through your.
Them: Reboot the router
Me: Done that, still rubbish.
Them: We don’t see any problems in your area
Me: See these stats, they would suggest otherwise
Them: “Three has left the chat”
I gave up on three for exactly this issue. I could get 70mb at 6 in the morning but by 6 in the evening I would struggle to push 5mb.
EE share alot of the same infrastructure and yet on the EE service I could stay consistently fast. Three is not the network to be on for data only service.
EVERY call went like this:
Ah, yes, I know this system. We flirted with it.
The idea is that you have a helpdesk in front of the helpdesk. They aren't technical so you can pay peanuts for chimps who can follow a script without drooling. "Is it plugged in? At both ends?" genuinely fielded like 80% of the calls we took. The problem is, it ****s you for the other 20%. The pre-helpdesk are instructed that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are they to pass a call to Tech without first doing basic checks.
This is exponentially toss for a customer with providers like Sky whose policy is that once you get to speak to Tech they come up with some attempted fix or other and then close the call. So when it doesn't work and you call back you're starting afresh with Simian Support again, asking the same questions you've already answered five times over.
@benpinnick - exactly the same. I've attempted to explain this is not a 'phone' issue but feel @cougar explanation of who I was dealing with may explain why that was an exercise in frustration.
We grabbed a bag of SIMs a few weeks ago and found both EE and Vodafone now work here for phone signal. So we'll be binning our Three phone SIMs as well. I'll expect customer service to be just as bad, but hopefully won't have to use it as often. Plus wifi calling has made it less of an issue.
Quick update - I'm tending to Yes it is a 4th utility now having had fibre installed.
I was waiting for the pics to upload as I normally would and they were just there! More usefully I re-imaged my macbook in 20 minutes rather than 4-5 hours it took on 4G, I can now do a proper backup to the cloud for files/videos and everything is way more snappy.
The 4G was so bad these last two weeks I've been reduced to voice calls. Couldn't even run teams with camera off!
Outside work we had Apple TV streaming on big TV and two other HD streams on laptops. No buffering. This is both new and I won't miss the 'will it won't it' jeopardy of the 4G. New problem is mesh (not wired backhaul) can't get near the 900 meg. This is a good problem to have and I have plans 🙂
If I’m reading that right you’re getting less than 1 Meg upload on the device you are testing with. I would agree you are going to need that sorted as that’s a long way from even supporting a video call I should think.
In my news, I got the go ahead from my Dad to order him FTTP. Will be intrigued to see how Gigaclear cope with a 200m distance from their cable along the road to the actual house.
Nah that's just what the mesh was showing when we had multiple streams running so 100 meg/sec (not 1 meg-odd notation on the deco) of the 900 we have provisioned. The mesh is throttling at about 400-600 meg depending on where you are. Due to house shape/size/outside buildings we have six nodes so it's 'worse' in here where data has to transit three nodes to get to router and it's best in the middle of the house where it transits one.
Video is fab- done two calls already today, rock solid, health stats showing 0% packet loss, 20ms ping.
First thing I need to do is dump the provider router and plug internet directly into the Deco mesh so removing a hop. That'll give me something, but because we can't run ethernet backhaul we're always going to get some losses esp with multiple hops away.
If I connect to the deco next to the router I'll get 800+ but sadly that's not where most of the devices are. Also we have two flavours of deco so I'm going to remove the older 3 to see if they are pulling the speed down. All good fun.
Nah that’s just what the mesh was showing when we had multiple streams running so 100 meg/sec (not 1 meg-odd notation on the deco) of the 900 we have provisioned.
I'm talking abut the "855 kbps" figure. That's showing less than 1 meg upload speed.
That's just a snapshot, it's all download for the TV streams - this wasn't a speedtest, it was a screen grab of the app. If I run a speedtest I'll get the 400/500 up/down.
In my news, I got the go ahead from my Dad to order him FTTP. Will be intrigued to see how Gigaclear cope with a 200m distance from their cable along the road to the actual house.
Here we had to have a pole put in to get access to the three houses. I'm guessing that's not feasible. Here they are meant to do a site survey before turning up but they're so busy they just come and work it out on the day. For example we needed a 'swan hook' because otherwise the first tractor would have taken out the cable!
Here we had to have a pole put in to get access to the three houses. I’m guessing that’s not feasible. Here they are meant to do a site survey before turning up but they’re so busy they just come and work it out on the day. For example we needed a ‘swan hook’ because otherwise the first tractor would have taken out the cable!
Currently the phone line is on poles for about two thirds of the way and then goes underground across the garden. I can't see it being easy but maybe I'm being pessimistic.
How they handle the the pre-installation visit seems odd as they seem to say they'll just turn up randomly sometime ahead of the installation day (or maybe not at all in your case!). They say you don't need to be in as they don't need access to the house. Seems entirety unsuitable for a complex installation (and my situation where I need to be around to deal with them, rather than leaving it to my 93 yr old Dad).
That does sound a bit rubbish.
I was surprised how durable the fibre is, you really can abuse it (but also it 'snaps' when you bend it over as the installer did to make it the right length) - but the problem with anything underground is it's likely to be blocked. I know that's been the issue every time a duct or similar has been part of the house connection.
I was waiting for the pics to upload as I normally would and they were just there! More usefully I re-imaged my macbook in 20 minutes rather than 4-5 hours it took on 4G, I can now do a proper backup to the cloud for files/videos and everything is way more snappy.
This is something which needs to be talked about more, because it's huge.
ADSL is asynchronous - that's what the 'A' stands for - so upload speed is typically terrible. Historically this hasn't really been much of an issue because who regularly uploads things? But with the rise in popularity of cloud services like OneDrive and the Apple equivalent it's increasingly important. Fibre (and for all its failings, VM cable) utterly demolishes this issue at a stroke.
I think we're on the cusp of seeing DSL start to go the way of ISDN. BT is going to have a rude awakening when the country goes "why are we paying north of twenty quid a month for a landline again, exactly?"
Fibre (and for all its failings, VM cable) utterly demolishes this issue at a stroke.
Fibre to property via Openreach is asynchronous eg. mine is 950/110 down/up (Mbps)
Virgin fibre (assume that's what you mean by VM) is also asynchronous eg low end package 132/20, high end 1130/104. Maybe VM varies geographically - that's what I am offered at my postcode.
Totally agree with your overall point that upload speed is chronically over looked. I'd throw in latency as well - that's what makes a connection seem 'snappy' to your average web-browsing consumer - it's not just a stat for gamers.
Latency here has gone for 60-90 to 14. It's not just about the size of the pipe, it's definitely also how long it takes to get there.
I think we’re on the cusp of seeing DSL start to go the way of ISDN. BT is going to have a rude awakening when the country goes “why are we paying north of twenty quid a month for a landline again, exactly?
Agree with that. ADSL is a brilliant technical solution to creating a digital infrastructure on what is essentially an analogue medium (last mile etc) but it's increasingly not fit for purpose. When it was developed those sync services weren't even considered never mind available.
The difference to ISDN for me was it was often bemoaned as It Still Does Nothing and was seen as an expensive luxury compared to adsl on analogue. Whereas ADSL is both expensive (our fibre connection is cheaper than ADSL+Phone from 2 years ago) and increasingly not going to meet the needs of WFH, Gaming, every service being digital etc.
Fibre to property via Openreach is asynchronous eg. mine is 950/110 down/up (Mbps)
Mine isn't, it's 500Mbps in both directions.
Virgin fibre (assume that’s what you mean by VM) is also asynchronous eg low end package 132/20, high end 1130/104. Maybe VM varies geographically – that’s what I am offered at my postcode.
I was referring to Virgin cable, not fibre. Again, anecdotally of course, but when I had VM cable it was 350Mbps in both directions (IIRC).
But as you say, all of this stuff likely depends to a great degree on geography.
@Cougar - what ISP is that with as I'd be all over 500/500 compared to my 950/110? I assumed all Openreach based stuff was the same packages just resold bay all the ISPs.
What relationship they have with Openreach beyond Physical Infrastructure Access I don't know. Probably not much.
What relationship they have with Openreach beyond Physical Infrastructure Access I don’t know. Probably not much.
Pretty sure they're just using existing poles & ducts to install their own fibre hence being able to offer synchronous connections.
FullFibre are allowed to use the existing BT poles but they can't go near the power poles. This has caused an issue with a few houses not being connected. They definitely use existing ducts if they exist and they can unblock them.
From memory for the 300 houses in the scheme, they needed something like 90 new poles. They have a very cool machine for putting them in. Doesn't take long at all.