[Closed] Would no internet access put you off buying a house?

It would put me off. If I found out about it. Is that something that comes up in surveys these days?

Is it just slow or a complete no-go?

Hell yes. Part of my current deal at work is the ability to work from home a couple of days a week so that I don't have to fight traffic and can spend time with my dogs. No internet means no WFH. That's a deal breaker.

Do you mean no broadband or no Wi-Fi?

Yes. We considered moving after BTO said we would never get fibre. Kids were the main reason, they chomp through the data.

We eventually got fibre some 4yrs later. Keep pestering BTO.

Yes. More so than no mains water or electricity.

Yes mate - although some folk will be less bothered, may even be a selling point 🙂
Is it a very rural location? That would moderate expectations of buyers, no cable, etc. If it's not obviously isolated then it does seem problematic - are your neighbours in the same boat?

Yep, I'd pass. Internet is an essential service these days.

Yes. I wouldn't even consider a property with no internet.

For a weeks holiday in a remote cottage it's a novelty to have no internet, but all the time - nope - we rely on it too much nowadays.

We moved from a house with 20mb fibre to 1.5mb copper. It's not great, but it works. The kids have got used to it and we've got 4g now as well. It's only going to get better over time, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I could not live without internet access as I rely on it for job hunting and teleworking, banking, holiday research and bookings, research on cars and wasting time on here!

I would not buy a house without internet access - there would need to be some way of accessing the internet or no deal.

Yes, anythng under 10Mb/s and I wouldn't bother viewing. Working from home makes decent broadband speed a necessity.

Internet is like any other utility now.

Having no mains water/sewerage/gas/electic isn't going to stop people buying but it's going to limit your market. Internet is the same, possibly more so than some as there's no alternative like there is with bottled gas/heating oil/septic tanks.

Yes it will put people off so you'll have to give them very significant grounds for choosing it over something else.

Yeh.. I rent and moved recently.. Had to turn a perfect place down as the broadband was shared with a house mate and about 2mb, due to distance from the exchange.. no plans to upgrade the street box to fibre either.
4g was strong but the usage caps for 4g Internet deals are not good enough for my usage.

I think the no work or no broad band is an important question that needs to be. Clarified.

Yes. I wouldn't even consider a property with no internet.

For a weeks holiday in a remote cottage it's a novelty to have no internet, but all the time - nope - we rely on it too much nowadays.

Instant non starter for me. Wouldn't buy a house at all without BB.

Yep would put me off, although the 'nearby masts' would probably put me off even more.

I'll give you £100 for a quick sale - cash 🙂

Yes it would put me off. I couldn't work without it so it's a non starter. In my current house BT could not commit to giving us Infinity before we moved, so I priced a dedicated leased line such was the importance. The cost was huge but had to be factored in when comparing houses

Surely there's no such thing as "no internet" these days? Satellite broadband is widely available and not horrifically expensive - it's not ideal for streaming video or for VOIP but for most purposes it's workable and faster that most ADSL.

If the property price reflected the increased cost of putting in essential services then I'd certainly not rule it out.

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So BT are saying that the line's fine but they've fed a couple of mobile masts into the exchange and that's using all the bandwidth on their back-haul network?

How's 4G? (oh the irony) my sister's just moved from fixed to mobile broadband and they've gone from 0.5mb to 6mb - still not great but a world of difference.

Please excuse my ignorance/stupidity but doesn't the internet come through a cable?

How does interference from a local mast affect internet that is coming through a cable. Or is it the Wi-Fi in the house that doesn't work as it's getting swamped by the signal from the mast?

God, I sound thick....

wouldn't buy house with no internet

OP I would say your going to get a very one sided view from the STW demographic. If this is the demographic of your buyers then I would say you are going to struggle if they find out.

I nearly didn't buy my current property as it only had 2mbps. But it was such a good deal I had to. Luckily we now have fibre.

I would say BT are very bad at helping with these issues. Are there any local broadband groups set up in your area? They might be able to help with your problem? My village had a broadband protest group.

I'd probably consider it, depends how much "no internet" it is, as long as there was a dribble so that at least skype could get through I'd be happy.

My parents have no broadband and get by just fine with a dongle and 3G, the only thing it can't do is HD streaming.

Its a definite no from me.
It is a utility now - just like gas/electricity/water.

I work from home occasionally and good internet is a must, same for the wife.
The kids also use the internet for their homework.

You're going to have to explain exactly what you mean by interference from local masts interfering with signal strength - that should make no difference at all to the signal you get down your copper wire.

You're going to have to explain exactly what you mean by interference from local masts interfering with signal strength - that should make no difference at all to the signal you get down your copper wire.

If the cable to your house is overhead and the mast is nearby, it will induce a current on your cable at the RF frequency....

You're going to have to explain exactly what you mean by interference from local masts interfering with signal strength - that should make no difference at all to the signal you get down your copper wire.

This. Sounds like nonsense to me. Unless as above the backhaul is saturated.

However - yes of course. I tested 3/4G strength and investigated broadband every house I looked at.

[quote=footflaps ]If the cable to your house is overhead and the mast is nearby, it will induce a current on your cable at the RF frequency....

It will, but those cables don't make particularly good antennas for those frequencies, and neither should those frequencies interfere significantly with the data modulation on the copper. I'm not an RF engineer, but I've worked with people who are and done modelling of stuff like that, and also many years ago worked with a committee investigating RF interference due to ADSL and power line communications (the latter would have been shit, as power lines would have made good antennas for the proposed modulation frequencies - copper phone lines were far less of an issue as they made far less efficient antennas).

No. i couldn’t work/earn money. i’m just ftp’ing 120 images for a client now, will take about 40mins on 50mb virgin fibre. not possible on rural 2-4mb as it would take so long that you get dropped connections and even on 8mb services sending stuff up the pipe slows the downstream and you cant use the internet or send/receive emails.

Our cottage only has a mobile phone reception with O2 and even that was a nightmare when we moved in.
Having no internet would be a deal breaker for me (even before I ran my own business from home).

It will, but those cables don't make particularly good antennas for those frequencies

Doesn't really matter if the mast is nearby, you'll still get a decent current induced, although whether or not that is a problem is another matter.

NB I am an RF engineer and have designed, built and trialled some of the very first power line and ADSL systems (20+ years ago). Although I've long since forgotten all the details and technology has since moved on!

IIRC the biggest problem was street lights, they pollute the LV cables considerably when they switch on.

If the cable to your house is overhead and the mast is nearby, it will induce a current on your cable at the RF frequency....

It will induce a current on the ground shield, if it gets to the signal conductor then someone has a problem with their cable. That's why you shield cables...

You will also usually find that the frequencies are quite different. A copper phone cable (which can carry ADSL up to ~1 MHz) isn't going to do too well with the GHz frequencies of GSM, HSDPA, UMTS, etc so even if you did get some pickup it is going to attenuate pretty quickly.

Yeah non-starter for me I'm afraid - we're house hunting at the moment and I check every address before viewing - I've got 4Meg at the moment and it makes working from home very dificult, I can't do all the tasks I can in the office.

Open Reach are duty bound to offer all addresses fibre by the end of March 2016 - frankly they're never going to do it, but there is at least hope!

bruneep - Member
Yes. We considered moving after BTO said we would never get fibre. Kids were the main reason, they chomp through the data.
We eventually got fibre some 4yrs later. Keep pestering BTO.

How did you go about pestering Openreach?

Before we bought our house a quick search said fibre was available at our cabinet. How ever we are too far from the cabinet to have it supplied to our house.

Well looks like I'm probably one of the minority in that it wouldn't put me off outright, but you're not clear in your OP what you actually mean, ie: is it just very poor DSL speed, or NO DSL service possible?

Our address is currently FTTC capable from BT and also in a VM cable area, I'm not bothered about upgrading*, standard (not even great ~6meg) DSL more than enough.

I could get by without decent Internet access at home, but it would be tricky with none at all, but then I'd look at mobile or satellite...

* STUPID DISCLAIMER - I work for an ISP and my connection is free either way 😯

we get between 0.5 and 2.3 mb depending on the direction of the wind it would seem.....

doesnt bother me.

Absolutely no internet on the other hand would be a pain so id be wanting that clarified.

my favorite house still to this day was in the foot of a glen where we got no mobile signal at all and the land lord was open about it. didnt bother us.

[quote=grumpysculler ]A copper phone cable (which can carry ADSL up to ~1 MHz)

Rather higher frequencies than that - when I was looking at the RF interference, which was also about 20 years ago, they were using ~3MHz modulation (hence an issue with the HF comms band which is what I was involved with), and I'm assuming the frequencies are higher now given rather higher data rates. Though otherwise I agree with your comments - PLT had much bigger issues as the lines are essentially unshielded - though that also illustrates that even very high currents in the communication lines aren't an inherent problem provided they're at a different frequency!

Has it occurred to the OP that asking [b]online[/b] how important Internet access is might just be missing an important demographic for whom the Internet isn't important.. But they are very unlikely to have seen the question.

Yes. Friend of mine recently refused to buy any house without ultra-fast broadband, its about re-sale in the future

[i]we get between 0.5 and 2.3 mb depending on the direction of the wind it would seem.....

doesnt bother me. [/i]

We get 200Mb.

My son still says he can tell when his sister's streaming videos when he's playing game online with his mates.

I'd have a mutiny at .5Mb...

Has it occurred to the OP that asking online how important Internet access is might just be missing an important demographic for whom the Internet isn't important.. But they are very unlikely to have seen the question.

Stick a note up in the local post office

Ha, yes i see your point imnotverygood. We were getting 0.4mbps before we gave up & got a 4g tablet (which is still pretty crap). It did bring it home to me when we had some guests at Christmas & me 14 y/o sort of neice asked for the wifi password & she just looked at me blankly when i said we don't have broadband.
FWIW, it wouldn't put me off, but i can use the net at work & aren't into social media or streaming stuff.

We get 200Mb.

My son still says he can tell when his sister's streaming videos when he's playing game online with his mates.

Way more likely to be your wifi bandwidth here, especially if both are on cheaper/older devices that can only do 2.4Ghz (or you have a 2.4Ghz router).

Rather higher frequencies than that - when I was looking at the RF interference, which was also about 20 years ago, they were using ~3MHz modulation (hence an issue with the HF comms band which is what I was involved with)

Oh they must be using something faster and going up in frequency a bit but I don't know what comes after 1 MHz ADSL. I suppose I should have gone to wiki to find out what they do today.

I get 150 Mbps FTTC so fitting Shannon-Hartley down some dodgy copper doesn't really bother me. And my day job is at rather higher frequencies.

yes, would need a minimum 20mb line.

I get 150 Mbps FTTC so fitting Shannon-Hartley down some dodgy copper doesn't really bother me.

FTTC is only Fibre to the Cabinet, the connection to your house is still twisted pair....

Open Reach are duty bound to offer all addresses fibre by the end of March 2016 - frankly they're never going to do it, but there is at least hope!

In my village all but one cabinet has fibre the last cabinet (the one I'm connected to) isn't commercially viable because when it was put in ~20 years ago they took the easy option and didn't put it near a sufficient power supply.

Now OpenReach are saying they can't afford to update it and the community should raise the money to do it! As a community we've declined OpenReach's offer for us to pay for their poor planning but the battle is ongoing!

I ended up emailing their CEO and got referred to their 'High Level Complaints Front Office' team and I've had some sensible dialogue with them about the cabinet and for what's it's worth they've said "The current situation is that cabinet 8 is in our plans to be upgraded in the next financial year – 2016/2017." So we MAY get fibre in that cabinet by April 2017 meaning it's taken about 3 years to get them to agree to anything! t

I wouldn't buy a house without decent broadband/fibre because it's so much hassle to get OpenReach to do anything and by the time they do it's out of date!

How does interference from a local mast affect internet that is coming through a cable. Or is it the Wi-Fi in the house that doesn't work as it's getting swamped by the signal from the mast?

Absolute clincher. There are ways around it but the net is life.

If it was some historic or very rural house, then no, I wouldn't be put off buying it without internet access. If, however, it was just a plain, modern house with no access simply due to an engineering/infrastructural question, the lack of internet would probably make me feel murderous.

[quote=grumpysculler ]Oh they must be using something faster and going up in frequency a bit but I don't know what comes after 1 MHz ADSL. I suppose I should have gone to wiki to find out what they do today.

Hmm, well I've checked and it looks like I was wrong. Standard frequency range seems to be up to ~1MHz.

The technology they were looking at for higher data rates was VDSL which does appear to use higher frequencies (what was being tested wasn't in commercial use at the time - 512kbps was normal back then for ADSL and they were researching higher data rates) I mistakenly assumed that was what we now had and were referring to as ADSL, whereas it seems that is a completely different thing and they've simply squeezed higher data rates into the same bandwidth. I probably should have known that given that the issue of interference with HF comms largely went away.

Not that it is anything other than of academic interest to this discussion - any radio waves from a mobile mast will be in the GHz range so in a completely different part of the spectrum.

[quote=stever ]Cause was a dodgy laptop charger in a house a few doors up on the other side of the street. Mixture of technician, detective and diplomat needed to fix that one!

Well if somebody has defective (and illegal!) kit dumping interference onto the wire that's a different issue and all bets are off - I'm still dubious about problems being caused to a copper TP due to RF interference - not if the wire isn't defective in some way.

Just don't mention it when your selling?.

When we sold our last house, I neglected to mention the 15 stone Rottweiler and bull mastiff pup that had recently moved in next door, and were left out all day. And only took viewings after dark....

[i]Way more likely to be your wifi bandwidth here[/i]

We've got Cat 5 looped all over the house so I don't get wi-fi slow down in my office and he doesn't in his room in the loft conversion 🙂

My son still says he can tell when his sister's streaming videos when he's playing game online with his mates.

In FPS games and the like it tends to be ping time that is critical, not (just) throughput.

And yeah if he is on wifi and his sister is also on it streaming movies to a tablet or something then that [i]could[/i] hit wifi performance regardless of your internet speed.

Edit: but he is wired it shouldn't.

Given 200Mbps broadband data rate, wired connection (or more likely router) could still be a limitation depending on how it's connected if somebody is using a lot of BW - I've certainly seen rate issues in wired networks.

tbh, I think it's all a bit princess and the pea - he's claiming he knows but in reality he's never been able to pin it down. It's probably some teen he's playing against in Canada's fault 🙂

[edit] Just did a test: 19ms ping, 185 up 12 down and there's other people using the connection. He's got nowt to worry about.

[quote=breadcrumb ]
How did you go about pestering Openreach?
Before we bought our house a quick search said fibre was available at our cabinet. How ever we are too far from the cabinet to have it supplied to our house.

Our street, 35 houses were stuck at 1.0 meg whilst the surrounding streets were all on fibre. Due to the shitty wiring when houses were built in 92 BTO say there was nothing they could do.

However I

Emailed CEO more than once [url= http://www.ceoemail.com/ ]http://www.ceoemail.com/[/url]

Contacted my local councilor/MP/MSP to get BTO to do something about the shite wiring we had.

Sometime later local council had an initiative to get "super fast broadband" to all in our area, again emailed anyone and everyone.

Got all of the street to register for fibre (don't actually have to take it)

Just got to keep at it.

Thanks bruneep.

It may be a little trickier for us, our hamlet is probably not even 20 houses. The ones at the bottom can apparently get something faster than regular BB. But we're another 100m or so away from the cabinet but can't get anything other than BB.

I'd be happy with 5mb to be honest!

Some rural locations have access to a service similar to (or the same as) that offered by Vfast for those who live too far from the exchange to be supplied internet down the wire.

Re uploads hogging download bandwidth on slower broadband connections: get a throttler to limit the upload rate of any application you use to upload, that way you can still surf the net while the 8gb video uploads to youtube overnight. On Linux, there's trickle (and yt-upload). On Windows, I think netlimiter can do it.

Just today after having had a 4g phone for the past fortnight, I have been thinking that I'll probably cancel my broadband and landline when my minimum contract ends. Been really paying attention to how much I use it, and the answer is not much! 4g is faster than my BB anyway so am using that rather than BB on my phone, can let my iPad use the phone data, will see how much it uses in total. Will just have to put up with not downloading sky box sets at 2Gb per episode 😐

So, in short, no, it wouldn't put me off. As long as 4G is available...

The interference is known as REIN, and you can pick it up with a standard AM radio (Google it). Street lamps, electrified railways, ham radios and faulty chargers/household goods can cause it at any point along the route.

I don't think fibre everywhere by March 2016 is true...possibly a universal service obligation stating a minimum speed by whatever technology is suitable.

I also don't think you can accuse BT of poor planning when they sited a green cab 20 years ago away from any power supply! It was never envisaged that we would need DSLAM cabs with power. My cab was also uneconomically viable for the first few years...ended up being livened up via part funding from BDUK cash. It's a business at the end of the day, you don't see Virgin pushing their coax/fibre into rural areas.

However, when you look at the numbers, the speed of the FTTC rollout is mind boggling a huge investment in the network over a very short period. Long may it continue...

If it didn't have Virgin high speed I wouldn't even consider it.

I love the interwebs me.

the net is life

I may be a thirty-something country bumpkin but is it only me who finds this all a bit kind of tragic?

You Don't need Virgin if you have FTTC and your streeet box is reasonably close to your house, I had plusnet FTTC andwas averaging about 72mb dl.

Anyway, 4g I couldnt cope with as most are capped to about 25gb per month dl max, and if you dont watch TV etc, and stream everything you can chew through 300GB per month quite easily.

[quote=spooky_b329 ]The interference is known as REIN, and you can pick it up with a standard AM radio (Google it). Street lamps, electrified railways, ham radios and faulty chargers/household goods can cause it at any point along the route.

Sure - standard electrical noise from high current stuff which can generate noise in the relevant frequency bands (some ham radio does use those bands - ADSL interferes with them!) Not masts (I presume mobile phone masts) which is what the OP was being told. I reckon he's being fobbed off by the BT "engineers" who don't know what's causing the intereference and aren't RF engineers so don't realise they're wrong about it being the RF.