[Closed] Rural Broadband best strategy - STW masses help/advice?

Can't help but with 1.2Mb download speed in rural Gloucestershire, I'd love to put up with 7Mb!

I'm also interested in helpful advice too!

- Use Satellite Broadband (does this work ok?)

We used this at our outdoor centre. Woefully slow, despite promises. Slowed when it rained, foggy or heavy clouds. Incredibly expensive a few years back.

From where I'm sat, that is pretty good.
We live in a small village, a mile from a decent sized town in mid Wales and get nearly that.
Where I work is too far from an exchange to get any sort of broadband, so we have a satellite, which is at least quicker than the dial up we had before, but grinds to a crawl if anyone has a large attachment in an email, worse if we all get sent that email.
Welcome to the countryside.

Edit: you get a better view whilst waiting for stuff to load.

Are you sure it's rural? I can only dream of speeds like that.

I work from home, use Skype etc etc.

And being rural... We don't get mobile reception...

Are you sure it's rural? I can only dream of speeds like that.

It's 2 miles outside Sowerby Bridge, west yorks....a bit like the land that time forgot 🙂

Live in a rural village at the moment in West Yorks and get 38Mb/sec !!!! Bloody luxury!

Lower your expectations?

If it is fast enough to work from home you are on a winner.

We get 3 max. OK for work systems, Skype, Eurosport.tv Others up the Dale have satellite and find it generally slower and expensive initial setup cost.

Cheers

I can only dream of 5mb, lucky to see 0.9mb. Surprisingly Netflix works though, if a little grainy at first.

We're looking at fibre to dish though.

Very rural here, 6 miles to a mobile signal and BB speed of 1.2-1.5 (though it seems to be slowly improving!). 6 miles from the exchange though, so until fibre comes that is about it. Can watch most stuff OK (though not in HD) so reckon 7 would be plenty quick enough. Satellite is stupid expensive if you want unlimited (which it sounds like you would). Talking over £70 a month last time I looked

I use smoke signals to send my bits wirelessly.

\three Yorkshireman

You can afford spare smoke to signal? Lucky bugger.

Adsl only option here but managed to get a couple of extra Mbits out of the thing by removing ring wires etc. Also get a decent modem. I got a Billion one and you can tune SNR to get some more throughput.

Last house was meant to be about 1Mbit. Initially, we got up to 3. Remove ring wire and sync was reliable 5.5.

Also make sure any cap on upload is removed. Sometimes seems be supplied with upload capped at 450kbit (ish, can't remember) which plusnet removed for me.

You're probably stuck with ADSL but you might be able to beat the estimated rates.

I've had bog-standard BT broadband for the last 2 years. Roughly 5mbps on average, occasionally reaching the blistering speed of 8mbps.

It's really not bad, and certainly good enough for HD streaming and gaming in my experience. The benefit of being rural is there are fewer people clogging up the lines at peak times, so you see less of a drop in speed.

What I have been doing in the last 2 years is pestering BT relentlessly to get fibre installed to the village. It is now (probably more to do with it being on the cards anyway rather than my weekly emails, but I'm claiming it) and we get Infinity2 piped into the house next Wednesday 😀

- Make do with circa 7Mb/sec and endure endless video buffering (I don't really want to)

As others have said, not too bad, we'd love to have that speed. Having said that for the applications you describe I can see why you'd want more.

- Get some form of data line bonding service and use two BT broadband lines in parallel (anyone done this here?)

This is what we have at the shop. Supplier is called Sharedband - about £20 per month on top of two broadband (and line) rentals - so not cheap, but not obscene either. Fibre, when it eventually arrives here, will be much cheaper for us.

Sharedband works pretty well, and although we probably don't get quite double the speed, it's not far off at all. It's the best solution for us at the moment.

- Use Satellite Broadband (does this work ok?)

Looked into this for home, where we get under 1Mbps. My understanding is that the latency of satellite makes it unsuitable for streaming video, although it's good for transferring lots of data quickly. So may not be suitable for what you mostly want to do?

Where are you moving to?

I'm not far out of sowerby, rural and get 6.5mb. BT had to run a new line 1.5 miles from the exchange to the site and spent 6 months doing so - but despite their being demand only installed copper and refuse to install fibre. Seems odd to dig up 1.5 mile of road to install old technology.

We don't seem to have any alternative yet either.

Point 1 - NEVER believe BT - they're effing liars!
Point 2 - there are many rural (and in some cases not so rural) areas where there are connectivity 'not spots.'
Point 3 - BT extort vast some of cash from government and county councils to V-E-R-Y slowly roll out superfast broadband, while still avoiding the 'not spots.'
Point 4 - most of the other providers are no better because they piggy back on BT's cables.
Point 5 - satellite can be an option, but is bloody expensive.
Point 6 - here in rural Suffolk (but a mere 35 miles as the proverbial crow flies from Martlesham Down, BT's Stasi-like research HQ) we have resorted to a community run wireless service - not too costly, but prone to breakdown, and of dubious legality insofar as it taps into the BT service in local areas where this is stronger. Pirate broadband!

5-9mb is exceptional for rural areas....

Typically, Netflix streams 1080p resolution at 3 Megabits per second (3,000 kilobits per second). That's ideally what you want to see.

What are you streaming at 15mb/s

I don't really remember endless video buffering like you describe when I was on those speeds or lower. I could happily stream HD Redbull TV on less than that. Maybe one pause in 3hrs if you were unlucky.

Skype scales very well, my boss is on under 3 and we skype/screen share heaps (he lives in a city too)

Next you will be telling us Occado doesn't deliver there...

We have circa 1 - 2 Mbs here in rural Norfolk and about 4 miles from the exchange. Fortunately, given the location, there are very few other houses so bandwidth whilst low, remains fairly consistent.

Buffering isn't too much of a problem, although it took a while for El Capitain to download the other week.

The more common problem is the overhead wires supplying telecom services, with trees and weather bringing the lines down. Response time via PlusNet and BT has thus far been okay to get them sorted.

I'm off to google the ring wire stuff previously mentioned to see what that's all about and whether it's something I can do here. My dad would have been handy at this point, he was one of the leading comm's experts BITD before he died.

Was on 0.9mbs or less (I'm pretty sure the telecoms companies turn down the gain on the signals just before they roll out super fast)
Now on 38mbs. No Mobile phone signal inside the house and can only get TV with a satellite dish

Take heed of dekadanse for he speaks wise words 🙂 Round here BT have been promising fibre in the next 3 months since 2012. The dates keep slipping, apparently due to "technical issues". They even tried to say that when the retirement homes were built the developer should have provided it.

I can only dream of those speeds. On a good day I get 2MB.

Best advice I can give is to move to the same village as your local MP. For some strange reason his village whilst being smaller than ours and further from the exchange has great broadband.

I wouldn't complain about that, i get 200kb/s in rural Scotland!

Despite our village being only 10 miles from two pretty big towns/cities, we didn't even figure on the countries plan for quick broadband at all (BT/Sky gives us 1.5Mbps on a good day).

We had to resort to a community campaign to get residents to pre sign to Gigaclear (company that specialises in rural broadband). Think we needed about 200 customers before they would agree to putting the infrastructure in - was pretty easy to hit that target in the end, although it's taken over a year to get it all in and connected (should be running at 200Mbps before the end of the year, although they offer up to 1000).

Is your village/community big enough to go down this route? Might be a longer term plan?

The first world problems thread is over there -> 😉

Same issues here.

BT Openreach have fibre enabled* the exchange we run off but, of course, haven't then uprated the cabinets in/near our village because - to be blunt - they (by which I mean the wider BT group) won't make any money from their investment.

This exemplifies why BT Openreach - as the monopoly provider of connectivity between the exchange and your home and currently rinsing the state for broadband rollout - should have been separated from the rest of BT. But the CMA have just bottled doing that.

It doesn't matter how much any other telco invests in its own network infrastructure if it's forced to continue to have to use BT Openreach for the last mile. This is why the UK is lagging so far behind other advanced economies on connectivity.

*Any fule kno that FTTC isn't really fibre broadband. It's just an enhanced copper service.

*Any fule kno that FTTC isn't really fibre broadband. It's just an enhanced copper service.

This. Its just tail-shortened copper. Irritates me so much to see those 'fibre' adverts on telly.

http://b4rn.org.uk/

Point 2 - there are many rural (and in some cases not so rural) areas where there are connectivity 'not spots.'

3 miles from the fibre cabinet here- the villages either side of us have fibre.

we have 2mb..... reliably 2 meg but 2mb non the less....

I'm looking at Solway Comms (regional, I have noticed similar set ups around the UK), they have several masts that are connected to fibre, this then beams the signal to your dish. Prices start from £28ish a month for 5mb. It's not the same as satellite broadband. They assured me streaming works totally fine and the monthly cap was only for people taking the piss.

And it frees you from bt openreach.

Proper first world problem there OP 😉
7-9mb would be fine - although we have fibre we 'only' get 10mb and it works OK in a house with three teenage girls who know how to use netflix.
Don't worry about it.

Yes definitely 1st world problems 🙂

Next you will be telling us Occado doesn't deliver there...

Where are you moving to? I'm not far out of sowerby

What are you streaming at 15mb/s

This is what we have at the shop. Supplier is called Sharedband - about £20 per month on top of two broadband (and line) rentals - so not cheap, but not obscene either.

Seems like my best bet is to get a single BT broadband service in, see how it goes and then perhaps consider bonding another line, if a single service isn't good enough.

Thanks for all the feedback and advice!

as has been said that is pretty good for rural broadband - 1 to 2 MB here

I know of two options but both need the buy of the community

[url= http://b4rn.org.uk/ ]B4RN[/url]
or
[url= http://www.boundlesscomms.com/ ]Boundless communications[/url]

going to try & motivate the community for the boundless route as possibly a quicker turnaround

We had to resort to a community campaign to get residents to pre sign to Gigaclear (company that specialises in rural broadband). Think we needed about 200 customers before they would agree to putting the infrastructure in - was pretty easy to hit that target in the end, although it's taken over a year to get it all in and connected (should be running at 200Mbps before the end of the year, although they offer up to 1000).

This +1, we have just managed this in our village and the speed is awesome although expect them to finish a while after they promise to...

Our office is local and we run a dozen folk (and ip-phones) off two 4MB broadband lines. And been a software house with telephone support we are 'intensive' users.

Stop moaning.

FWIW our nearest point-of-presence is 16 miles away (as the crow flies), cheapest quote is £1500 per month for a leased line - and £9k installation.

Our current 38Mb/sec connection is fairly hammered at times.

Clobber - Member
This +1, we have just managed this in our village and the speed is awesome although expect them to finish a while after they promise to...

use case would be when I'm working and doing a video Skype call, downloading a file and also using a customer's OTT streaming video service all at the same time (I need it to work 100%) also out of work - when both of us are streaming different videos and and/or doing downloads. Our current 38Mb/sec connection is fairly hammered at times.

I doubt your 38Mb/sec link is being hammered, but your router may have stats to prove this right or wrong.

In all honesty if you are expecting to download multiple HD streams, files + skype and for it to work 100% of the time, this isn't going to work in a rural area; and when you have moved in there will be **** all you can do about it, if you really need a fast connection then moving somewhere rural isn't going to work.

I live 10 miles from the Center of Bristol in a black spot, my speed was 800Kps, by moaning at BT and tuning my Billion router I'm now upto a wopping 3.5Mbps, in the day time. Night time is ~ 2Mbps. Which is OK.

However my latency at times is shocking, normally I'm looking at ping times to London sites at ~ 35mS, however I frequently (every 10th packet) see spikes upto 200 to 10000 mS. Line is clear and no errors on the ports. This makes interactive remote sessions impossible unless you are using SSH or similar.

About 13 years ago, our village got together and we got a community broadband off the ground. At first it was 3Mbps but then we upgrade it to 20Mbps that we get anywhere in the valley. That's wireless all over the valley. There are 120 homes on it. That's Austwick in the Yorkshire Dales. We pay £90 a year for that. Businesses in the area (ie hotel, pub etc) pay more but get better band width.

We are just sorting out B4RN for the village now. That will be live in 2016 and will give 1Gbps for £30 a month.

C

You're not in East Northants by any chance?

Yep, take it you are too?

[You're not in East Northants by any chance?]

Hi Clobber and Colournoise

I am in East Northants and am interested in this option. I work from home in Brigstock and we suffer from 2-3Mb/s. How much does it cost to get the scheme up and running, and I'd be interested to know what are you monthly charges?

Cheers

mart.

In all honesty if you are expecting to download multiple HD streams, files + skype and for it to work 100% of the time, this isn't going to work in a rural area; and when you have moved in there will be **** all you can do about it, if you really need a fast connection then moving somewhere rural isn't going to work.

I recently went from 8 to 80mb...I was on a fibre enabled exchange but cabinet was uneconomical in the first wave. Not sure if the BDUK government funding resulting in my cab going live or Openreach decided the update was worth it.

However, 8-80mb. Don't really notice the difference unless I'm downloading something that is measured in hundreds of mb.

Netflix, HD youtube, on-demand TV etc all works fine on both. The plus for Infinity is you have more choice of channels on Youview.

This exemplifies why BT Openreach - as the monopoly provider of connectivity between the exchange and your home and currently rinsing the state for broadband rollout - should have been separated from the rest of BT.

Everyone has a chance at the 'states cash' but Openreach have proved they can deliver so have 'won' the majority of the contracts. Would you give government cash to someone who was offering less connections and no track record of getting the network running? You don't see many other companies offering to provide new infrastructure, especially when the returns make dubious financial sense. Even with the government cash up for grabs they are not exactly hammering on the door for it.

For the 'not spots' I believe there are various alternative options being explored and I imagine decent broadband will be available to virtually anyone in the not too distant future.

I worked from home and streamed video and so on on less than 7Mbit, so you'll be fine. Also from moving heavily recently I've noticed that what BT predict and what you actually get can vary - the good way - by quite a bit. BT's exchange checker claims I'll get 7MBit where I live, but I get 11Mbit. If you discover that it's not enough then a proper ISP like A&A (aaisp.net) will do bonded lines with no hassle to double your bandwidth.

If the exchange is FTTCd up then try clubbing together with the other residents to get your cabinet upgraded. That works for my inlaws village which is many miles from the exchange. The irony here is that the village now has the choice of <2Mbit ADSL or 40MBit FTTC...

I do wonder if as part of this "rural outreach" thing BT should be forced to FTTC more rurally but sell throttled services where they have a FTTC service but are capped at something like ~10Mbit with ~ADSL prices. Some people just want enough bandwith to netflix and don't want to pay for FTTC.

No point capping FTTC when you can still choose to have normal copper ADSL at a lower speed.

If you are rural and ADSL was not feasible, the investment in FTTC would be considerable. If anyone was 'forced' to throttle the speed to provide a cheaper product, that would just make the investment less attractive due to a longer payback period. It still costs the same to get the infrastructure in place.

Clobber - Member
You're not in East Northants by any chance?
Yep, take it you are too?

tallmart10
I am in East Northants and am interested in this option. I work from home in Brigstock and we suffer from 2-3Mb/s. How much does it cost to get the scheme up and running, and I'd be interested to know what are you monthly charges?

Not sure about the setup charges. Think they work on trying to sign up a certain number of accounts in the community/area to make the infrastructure worthwhile - their website might have more info.

Monthly charges, I think ours will be about 65 quid a month for 200Mbps and phone, which I reckon is decent value.

Wait up everyone! It's all going to be fine, our esteemed leader says so...

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34753331 ]Fast broadband for all by 2020 pledges Cameron[/url]

'Fast', in this case apparently represents 10Mbps. Sorry OP, you may have to wait a little longer. Still, at least it's been pledged, which means of course jackshit.

http://www.revk.uk/2015/11/10mbs-uso.html is an interesting analysis on that pledge (which seems oddly familiar, has it been a decade now of PMs pledging to solve the rural broadband problem?)

Frustratingly for us, our cabinet is fibre enabled but it's miles away so we're stuck on regular broadband.

Yup. Kings Cliffe.

No way! same here, there are 3 or 4 of us on here from cliffe, we ought to meet up for a ride!

Clobber - Member
Yup. Kings Cliffe.
No way! same here, there are 3 or 4 of us on here from cliffe, we ought to meet up for a ride!

I hope this doesnt sound flippant - have you checked 4G coverage in the area? Some of the 4g compaies eiter listened to rural communities, (or spotted them as a profit potential) and have rolled out coverage to some areas. You can get a 4G routers aren't too expensive, I appreciate the contact might be, but you can ditch the phoneline altogetherr if it works (which is the only other way of getting BT's attention)

Are there any rural broadband action groups in the area - they might have info on whats available, and possibly either funding, or at least deals with alternative providers.

other than that - pigeons and SD cards.

[i]You don't see many other companies offering to provide new infrastructure, especially when the returns make dubious financial sense. Even with the government cash up for grabs they are not exactly hammering on the door for it.[/i]

Yep.

The region I live in has 109,000 people scattered across 4,700 square km. Or as a provider you could look the next-door area, which has 492,000 people in 264 square km...

Orange Alpine! That's a big bike for round 'ere...

There are a couple of fast lads on Strava but not me... too slow...!

Email is in my profile if you fancy a ride out

Well, best laid plans and all that...

Despite being in the same little village as Clobber, I won't now be getting Gigaclear 200Mbps+ fibre to the premises.

Looks like I'll have to make do with BT/Openreach 50Mbps fibre to the cabinet.

So, what are the best deals/best provider to go with that use BT infrastructure? I need/want truly unlimited data each month.