Fibre was never coming to my house anytime soon, the Welsh government paid for the starlink hardware...latency is not an issue with starlink despite what others might say
Well if you want a good 5G signal don’t come to Bournemouth/Christchurch/Poole, apparently we have a planning approval rate at 30% of the national average. I can see mobile providers just giving up and going elsewhere
Given the rural spread of habitation you describe, I wonder if enquiring about the government’s social inclusion project devised specifically to overcome rural internet isolation may bear fruit. As @Ivor describes, there are pockets of govt cash sitting around to get your service up to speed. The challenge is tapping into it.
Smarty do an unlimited SIM for £20 per month with no contract ( they use the Three mobile network ) GiffGaff do a similar deal but with a 60 GB cap It really helps to look at a network coverage map before choosing . I started out with GiffGaff then moved a few miles away , and it was useless . Same here .....
I have Virgin broadband. Its £21.25 per month unlimited usage. Its also really fast & it never breaks down -not once in 7 years. I would rather it cost less, but I don't think its that expensive.
I can pay more and get a faster service but this is more than enough for me. My service is so good I've never even bothered to find out what the upgrade to "even faster" would cost as its irrelevant.
I remember when I first looked into it that Three Mobile had some great deals - I had friends come over on the different networks to test for a 4G signal and EE was my only option at the time. This was 6 years ago so the situation might have changed but I have never checked again! There’s only 4 actual mobile networks in the UK. O2 Vodafone EE Three Mobile All of the others are virtual providers that piggyback on the other networks. GiffGaff uses the O2 network. Virgin mobile used to use EE but has been transitioning to the Vodafone network which has caused issues for some users as they suddenly notice they don’t have a signal in places they used to even though from their perspective they haven’t changed providers.
That’s nice for you, have you ever checked what estimates of service you can get from other providers? I’m guessing fairly good? we are paying more than double that, we have a basic tv and phone bundle but it only adds a fiver to the cost. as existing customers we tried to haggle a new deal (in reality we only need the BB) but they won’t budge even after telling them to disconnect us and waiting for retentions to call Us back as I think they know full well we have no other option. Could happily live with a quarter of the speed we get from Virgin but they know the best we can get elsewhere is 25 times slower. The deals offered to us from SKY to come back were unreal but they are shackled to Openreach and so aren’t an option (as is everyone else). At my old place used to shuffle back and forth between the two for the best prices as I could get close to 80mb through sky back there.
TBH I don't really pay the alternative providers much attention. All the others are slower, some dramatically so. The fastest of them cost the same or more AFAIK, but come with unknown reliability plus long contracts so why bother... I am looking forward to 5G and hopefully once that is available I will be able to get unlimited data for less than £25 replacing broadband completely.
I felt your pain 3 years ago, new house not even a phone line to the property, middle of nowhere like yourself. BT did various surveys and had to get permission of land owners to run a copper wire over some fields, this was 4 months after my initial enquiry. I ended up with a 4G router with EE from memory, had to be up in one of the bedrooms to get around 20Mb. Luckily for me an Openreach guy came around to have a look, he had a blade and was in the white helmets in his youth so well into his bikes, after talking bikes for ages he said I can get fibre (although it wasn't listed anywhere)and don't take the copper as you'll be 3Mb. Much complaining and another month or two goes by I end up with 300Mb FTTP, at reduced rate, £480 credit (max they can give) and 1/2 price BT sport for a year. I've since moved to Sky BB, still hassle as they struggled to see I was on fibre, but now at 500Mb.
Reminds me of some friends near my last place, a few miles away, really in the middle of nowhere, but discovered that there was fibre on the pole opposite their house, 10 yards or so, so they got FTTP.
Isn't that their introductory, lure you in, price? How have you managed to keep that going for 7 years? Here the same connection, 100M Fibre only is £44... If I could get the same deal as you I'd without a doubt drop the TV add on, which I never use. Having said that I do have 200M, TV and mobile for £50 which was negotiated at last renewal.
Recently learned I've been paying BT for FFTP despite there being no fibre on our entire housing estate. I do have one of their EE 4G router thingys should the BB drop out for any significant period of time and have to say when the BB failed totally for a fortnight, I’d didn’t notice any degrading of service with the 4G router. Although not a Luddite, I’m not sure why I would need the download speeds being bandied about. The most I use the internet is to surf on an iPad or desk top PC and use the wifi to save on my mobile phone data usage. What am I missing (if anything) ? Andy
depends on your household, but even when I only had 12MB we could still stream a movie in HD off Netflix with no lag or buffering, it’s was the 400k upload speed that crippled us, mrs couldn’t work remotely, sending an email with an attachment was faster by pigeon! But if you’ve a household of 3-4 and they are gaming, watching online then that’s when you need the speed, on the odd occasion I fire up my Xbox most of the times the games want to update and the files are 10-30GB!!! my mrs renegotiated her mums package, she was paying a fortune for stuff she never used Inc 350MB BB, she’s 80 FFs
Good post ..... all of the relevant mobile wifi facts in a nutshell . Asda Mobile ( which used to be a good PAYG deal ) have done this to their customers ..... twice ! They changed the carrier that they were piggy-backed onto , kept all of the customer credit after the change-over date , which then dumped many contract customers onto a network where coverage ranged from poor to zero . It's just the Modern World ..... innit !
@oldtech I didn’t want to complicate things by saying that Virgin have merged with O2 since signing the deal with Vodafone so are now trying to back out of it! At least they haven’t doubled their prices yet like the energy firms - although it’s just a matter of time!
