Rural broadband - please help!

ChasingButterflies

Hi,

I am in a rural(ish) location too (about 3 miles from the exchange) We have a BT line and our isp is aol (been with them for years on the silver tarriff I think £9.99 pcm) I did try to change to sky as they advertised it as costing £5pm for the same package. On investiagtion they actuall wanted to charge £18pm "due to our location"

By no means is our broadband fast but supports 3 computers browsing and I remember dial up :rotfl: If I need to download any large files... I tend to leave it running overnight or at least avoid 4pm onwards when you do notice it getting a bit slower.

I guess what I am saying is that it is possible, it won't be as fast as it would if you were in a city, but not everyone will offer you coverage.

Just as a side note. Where we are there is a cluster of 7 houses one of the households runs a business through the internet. A couple of summers ago we came back from holiday and noticed that someone had hit the telegraph pole at the end of the road (and also knocked out the electricity too!) We had no phone line for a week (lol yes it was a long week ) Although all credit to bt they ran the cable underground and the power company moved the pole so that it was no longer in the line of fire so to speak... My point being if you need internet access to work you may need to have a contingency plan just in case a similar event occurs to you. (btw everyone was ok... locally it is a well known accident spot, doesn't make people take more care though...)

Sorry that was quite long - hope there is something useful in there...

Networkguy

DatabaseError wrote: »

I suppose another explanation would be that the BT profiling system is...er...pants, very slow to respond to rises in sync, quick to respond to drops, so if your line was unstable, maybe keeping high sync for a couple or 3 days then losing it and syncing a 2mbit or so then your profile would be kept low, never taking advantage of the higher sync. The rate adaptive sync which you now have with be responds pretty much instantly, so with the same instability you could still experience high sync most of the time.
?

I just put it down to BT being rubbish. Everybody on the street had similar experiences. At one point they did up it to 2.5mbits but the line was so unstable that I asked them to lower the speed again.

The one nice thing with Be* is that I have actually managed to sync higher (be let you change your own profile in near real time) but that was again too unstable. The fact i now have a line that has not been down for over 4 weeks and is many times faster (and half the price) of what BT could do will do for me.

Now to be fair, when the Be* line first went in, it was running at about 4.5mbits but I took the time to look at my internal wiring (such as disconnecting the bell wire and installing a filtered master socket) and that did make quite a difference as well so to be fair, like for like only saw a 4 times increase in speed.

DatabaseError wrote: »

not a lot you can do...are you getting home or business broadband? With a new line you should start off with good wiring, so it's all down to BT and your router

I disagree.

My house was brand new with a brand new line and as you can see above, this was not the case.

Pengwern16

It will be home broadband. We had considered getting business broadband but the existing business line is a bit old (been chewed up a few times according to boyfriend, whatever that means!) and the business offers were not as good as the home offers. Am I correct to think that the fact I'm getting a new line will mean a better connection than using an old existing line? Should I check I'm not being given a DAC / shared line (is DAC right, I think that's what his parents have got?)
Thanks for all of your advice! Much appreciated.

DatabaseError

I thought there was no line to the property?! The business packages are higher priced for a variety of reasons, one of which (with BT) is the supply of a decent router rather than the homehub, then there's the priorotised traffic, better support, faster uploads (some packages) etc...
"I need broadband for my self-employed work" suggests that home broadband is not what you should be buying (read the TOS if unsure)

ianian99

dont forget 2 way satellite broadband. Quite expensive but if its for business then comes off tax bill?

Pengwern16

Thank for your reply, Database Error.
There is an existing line to the property, which is a business line. I work from home quite often and also do some voluntary work (a newspaper) which once a month means lots of phone calls and use of email. I want to keep these calls seperate from my boyfriends calls, mainly to avoid him having to answer the phone to awkward and longwinded calls!
The self employed work is something I'm just starting and of course I'd change the account to a business one if and when this takes off (by the way, can you get two business accounts at one property?)
At the moment I just use the internet for home purposes (apart from the working at home and voluntary work mentioned above) and want to find out whether I'm worrying myself over nothing, and will be able to get broadband, or whether I will be returning to the dark ages of dialup!

Pengwern16

Update - Just had a phone call from BT. As quite a bit of the cables to the property need to be updated they won't be able to install the second line until after the 11th of March. Although I'm a bit annoyed at having to wait so much longer, it seems this means they're really trying to ensure I'll be able to get broadband there. Long wait and see ahead of me...

paceinternet

You have to recognise in Rural situations that the BB service can be affected by distance and the quality of the line. The openreach guys will tell you from their tests during the actual installation, what speed they consider it will support. It becomes a compromise of speed against stability. A slower speed may be more reliable and stay connected. Moving up a level may cause disconnections due to phone activity on the line, or weather conditions affecting the cables, and on it goes. As posted above, some modem routers are recognised to be more stable with weaker signals.
I would take more notice of OPenReach if you get an experiencd person, rather than what the ISP tells you.