Blimey. Perhaps you should tell BT you’re interested in faster products - and is dial-up is still available ?
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This is our performance data with full fibre in the rural shires.
If you can, along with the neighbours start a campaign and lobby the local Parish Council for support to get fibre in the rural community.
DG…
Without wanting to seem a complete misery, is it not a bit wishful to want these services and live in the middle of nowhere ? I appreciate everybody would like access to these services, but if you live in Chulmleigh in North Devon can’t really moan there is no 8 lane motorway nearby? Just a thought, if you absolutely need fantastic infrastructure, don’t live in a 300 year old thatched cottage in Norton Saint Smitherington!
Have a great weekend, whatever you ISP speed
Martin
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I live 3.5 miles from Chulmleigh. Really glad we don’t have a motorway nearby. But we pay the same money as people in other places - surely it isn’t a huge ask to have something better than 2Mb broadband (currently I get 1.4Mb), when there are loads of people with 200 to 300 Mb or more? I suppose we should count ourselves lucky to have electricity (we have no gas, no sewerage though we do have water). Should we be punished for not living in a city, town or large village?
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yep if you are on a long line with Openreach then all providers ADSL performance will be similar or worse - including with BT - kind of the laws of physics and limitations of the long line. You should see a good improvement with BT’s EE service or any other available 4G service provider.
Its funny back in the day with the first prototype ADSL modems, the ones I worked with peaked at 2Mbps - but it was such a revelation because at the time many of us were using 56kbps (0.056Mbps) dial up modems at home for our internet connections… how times change
I think that is a fair comment - if you live remotely you should need to expect to adjust expectations with respect to broadband. Sure you could pay 10’s of thousands of pounds to have your own fibre provided - but most are unable to do that and rely on commercial roll out or government subsidised roll out… but even here there has to be an effective use for public money.
There has been satellite broadband for more rural locations for a long time - but it can get more pricey if you exclude the more highly contended services. There is also the issue of latency or RTD… but unless you are an online gamer or use certain security protocols it is unlikely to be much of an issue. (unless you are trying to play Tidal with your first gen Naim streamer 
)
4G as provided by EE for various national infrastructure reasons tends to be reasonably well available across most of the UK - especially with an external mounted antenna. However even that is not universally available - especially in some areas that are very distantly remote or are in dips or steep valleys, heavy forestation, very tall tower blocks etc
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Or you could move to a country with an up to date fibre network that is fit for purpose? Fibre is no longer a leisure product for the well off.
Has it ever been a leisure product?
I think it used to only be available for the well off and typically for businesses - and now its increasingly available to the masses at very very low prices - more and more in urban and suburban locations - and increasingly rural locations - but there are still physical considerations.
Remember much of the world’s broadband fibre is GPON based - which relies on sharing fibre capacity and having concentrations of users to be cost effective for the the typical small business or home user.
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I think it has become more of as necessity as ‘work from home’ blossomed over the past couple of years. I also think it has become a necessity for the increasing reliance on home deliveries and personal banking and dealing with local authorities and government services. There isn’t much that can easily be done without a reliable internet connection. The governments promise to have fast broadband by 2030 with just a 30% reported installed at the moment is pitiful. My reading of usage though is more my reflection that those who can afford it and either push for, or pay for alternative solutions tend to be those who want video feeds for leisure purposes ( or even hires music) rather than reflecting the need for everyone to be able to connect in what is increasingly a connected world. Having worked in IT and distributed services since 1998 I find it shameful that the UK has remained so far behind the rest of Europe.
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I tried using satellite, but was not impressed. The problem is that there is quite a delay when you put in a search, for instance, before you get a response. Once you are streaming something, of course (a film, for instance) it was fine, but doing searches on the internet was very slow - even compared with my 1.5-2 Mb landline. I cancelled before the free period was up.
agh - ok the extra delay is only about 540 mS or 270 mS one way so it shouldnt make too much of an impact with web use - I wonder if you were on one of the more highly contended services
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Yes - various government services are pretty much insisting that you use the internet to deal with them. Farmers have to do their various form-filling activities (and, goodness me, there are lots of those) over the internet. Which can be very tedious in rural areas - which, funnily enough, is where lots of farmers live.
No, not really contended AFAIK. I can’t now remember the figures, but round trip was in the region of 2 or 3 seconds, IIRC. Throughput once you were connected was much higher than my landline - something like 10 to 20 Mb/s
2 to 3 seconds sounds like something was very wrong. I used to be quite involved with satellite internet accesses - and roughly .6 second was the impact for a geostationary orbit transponder- and the routers have accelerators that convert TCP to UDP to reduce chatter and therefore latency further.
It sounds like perhaps you were on one of the more highly contended services - that at peak times could get very slow - but they are relatively cheap. Some of my neighbours in the village used the more conceded services before we had super fast deployed by the gov subsidy BTUK activity.
Satellite is used for many control systems across the UK like power and water in remote areas.
M247 is a specialist UK broadband satellite provider offering Gigabit access, and of course we now have Starlink in the UK - which is low latency (low orbit) satellite broadband using SpaceX technology… that wasn’t around when I was working with satellite broadband. Low latency (low orbit) satellite used to be ultra expensive and only really used in volume by the military and similar - even that has changed now…
Low orbit is also safer from solar weather - and we have not really had any juicy solar weather and cycles since we have been heavily using satellites - but that time will be coming
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I stayed in rural Wales a few years back. 67MB download 25MB upload - way better than I get and I’m in theory in a more developed area. My fibre at home has been a pole away from me for 3 years.
@QuickSticks I’ve used this national broadband service in coastal Devon on 4G and it was reliable and about 25 up and down. Tended to slow down in summer though.
I do find it a bit odd that, in 2023, we’re still talking about connecting via “wires and cables” - with all the potential reliability issues (failure, wind damages/being dug up) that they bring.
5G has the potential to eradicate these issues, at speeds approaching fibre. I suppose the issue will still be there for remote areas - if you can’t get 4G now you’ll unlikely be part of the 5G revolution. But as an overall connection strategy, to me at least, it looks a lot more elegant and reliable than wires and cables.
Speed test at the caravan location Sewerby, provider O2 using a Teltonika RUT950 / Qumax directional antenna.
Not sure why that is strange, the distribution cables use twisted pairs… not dissimilar to Ethernet twisted pair we have in the house… and of course cables carry fibre too.
However for distribution for new deployments twisted pair can be increasingly expensive and fibre has come down significantly, especially GPON networks as advancements in bonding and distribution construction has reduced time and costs… as well as GPON fibre distribution networks can scale better for higher shared bandwidths and are more energy efficient to run that copper twisted pair. Therefore GPON fibre is increasingly the medium of choice in new developments.
Yes I would find it odd if one in 2023 was talking about trunked twisted pair connections… but I am not aware of that … and much of that is or has been replaced by DWDM fibre now.
It is true that for distribution, GPON fibre is not affected by oxidisation which can affect aging twisted copper pair which reduces its reliability on old or weathered/flooded infrastructure… but fibre does have issues of its own and of course shared risks that twisted pair does… such as being dug up and damaged.
Of course the issue with totally relying on the radio spectrum is that it is limited and therefore prone to significant contention in the more useful frequency band plans. At very much higher frequencies it starts to become not that useful for general distribution as you need more line of sight and are more likely to be affected by the weather. You see this of course to some extent with Satellite broadband comms.
I think in the future we shall see a blend of RF and fibre…with twisted pair in use where it is appropriate… kind of like how local area networks are evolving.
I’ve gone WiFi, Simon. Couldn’t hear a difference from the Ethernet solution, so I dumped my cables and switches.
My point is that any sort of cable connection to the home is an actual physical thing. FTTC and FTTP - just that. First it has to be installed, then maintained and forever not damaged. And, as noted above, you might still have to wait for a connection to be made from the nearest pole. How frustrating must that be ?
With 5G none of that is necessary. Point at the mast and off you go. Surely that’s a more elegant and 21st Century way of doing things ?
Point taken.