what broadband can I have?

ali-t

Iam planning to move house early next year and am looking at my options for phone, broadband etc. For as long as I have lived away from home I have used Virgin (and its predecessors for the last decade or so) so haven't given any thought to what is involved with other companies.

I have had a read through some threads on here and looked at the SamKnows site and put in the postcode of the house I am moving to. It is on the outskirts of a city but rural.

There are no LLU operators enabled so does this mean I can only use BT?

The virgin media website states when I put in the postcode:
You're in a Virgin Media National broadband area


You're not in a fibre optic cable area, so we can't give you TV. But we can give you Virgin Broadband using your existing phone line.


I was thinking I would save money by not getting a landline and just upping the talk time on my mobile but do I need to get a landline to get broadband?

Sky broadband seems to get quite good reviews and I would probably be getting sky tv anyway but would I need to pay line rental costs anyway even if I didn't want the landline?

Sorry for the thick questions but I have never paid much attention to any of this before.

If it makes any difference I believe the current owners of the house have BT.

spud17

Others are more qualified,;), but avoid Virgin National and Sky Connect (non-LLU).
You will need to pay line rental.
You are not restricted to BT, but as you have found, the cheap deals are not available.
So the only variable will be cost and potential customer service.

There may be a chance of using mobile broadband, but it will depend on your location and your broadband usage.

Mark_In_Hampshire

If you can't get cable then your broadband options are:

1. ADSL - which requires a phone line (available to about 96% of homes, speeds from 160kbps through to about 20Mbps, national average between 4Mbps and 6Mbps - speed depends on length and quality of phone line). You can get an estimate of speed though it's only an estimate - see below

2. 3G Mobile broadband (availability varies, speeds from next to nothing through to 21Mbps, national average about 2.5Mbps, speed depends on signal strength and how many connect to the same cell) - check provider's websites for coverage maps, 3 is about the best. No phone line needed. If you can get it it might be quite good (ours is hitting 9.2Mbps at the moment), absolutely pants, or anywhere in between. Good cheap option if it works well where you are and you don't download much as data is relatively expensive and allowances usually small (especially if you're coming from cable!).

3. A local provider such as a Wi-Fi provider (ask neighbours, search the net, also see below). Rarely available. Speeds can be excellent (20Mbps+ possible) but variable.

4. Fibre-to-the-Cabinet: BT Openreach's "answer" to cable, the competing service. Not widely available. Speed anywhere between 5Mbps and 40Mbps. Offered by IDNET, Zen, Aquiss, BT, Talk Talk and others. Speed depends on length and quality of line.

To find out, go to www.samknows.com, Availability checker, use your postcode and check the results. You can also get an estimated ADSL speed and see if there are any local providers or other options.

The xDSL LLU tab will presumably be empty for you as BT Wholesale is the only option. So you could pick any ISP as all can supply over that network. However Sky's service over that network is widely criticised as extremely poor, unlike a Sky LLU service (which you can't get). Virgin Media's similar service over ADSL called Virgin National is also widely thought to be poor (it's nothing like cable). I don't think you need to have Sky line rental to have Sky TV but do check. There used to be some silly requirement to have the Sky box plugged into a phone line so it can "dial out" (not necessarily a line supplied by Sky)

Best bets for BT Wholesale ADSL are probably IDNET, Zen, Aquiss.

For option (4) use the availability checker here: https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

..and do a full address check, postcode checks aren't reliable because within any one postcode some may be able to get and some not, it depends on which cabinet serves you. If not, it may be coming in the future and you may be able to find that out.

Options 3 and 4 are the closest you'll get to cable performance especially if you're used to e.g. 20Mbps or 30Mbps.

If you need more help paste the results from Samknows in here, but you might like to remove the full postcode before you do.

ali-t

Thanks for the really helpful answers. I will try to fill in some of the blanks and answer some of the points raised.

I checked with BT last night but struggled to find anything meaningful on their website as I don't have a phone number, just an address and postcode. I have looked at the BT link you have provided Mark and it is depressing reading. I currently get speeds of around 11mbps with virgin and the link you provided says I would get fixed line speeds of 2mbps but that the line supports an estimated max of 7.5mbps.

The info on the postcode area from samknows is as follows

ADSL: Yes
SDSL: No
LLU services: No
Cable: No
Wireless: No

BT Wholesale information
ADSL status: Enabled as of 01/09/2004
ADSL Max status: Enabled as of 31/03/2006
SDSL status: Not available
21CN WBC status: Not available
FTTC status: Not available


Wireless broadband availability
Now Wireless: Not available
Urban Wimax: Not available
Kijoma: Not available
EMNET Notts: Not available
Orbital / VFast: Not available


Cable Broadband Availability
Virgin Media: Not available
Smallworld Media: Not available


Ofcom Classification What is this?

Market 1
This exchange has BT Wholesale as the sole provider of broadband services.

• ADSL is available in your area
• Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services
• Your exchange is not yet enabled for ADSL2+ services

According to BT Wholesale, houses at your postcode should be able to support a 7.5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max.
Standard ADSL RAG results

• You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 512kbps ADSL
• You can receive 256kbps ADSL

You are approximately 1.40km from the exchange. Note that this is the straight line distance - the actual cable length will be longer!





The following table details the availability of LLU services at your location.

• AOL is not yet available in your area
• O2 / Be Unlimited is not yet available in your area
• Bulldog (C&W) is not yet available in your area
• TalkTalk (CPW) has not yet unbundled your exchange
• Digital Region is not yet available in your area
• Sky Broadband / Easynet is not yet available in your area
• Edge Telecom is not yet available in your area
• Entanet is not yet available in your area
• Lumison is not yet available in your area
• Newnet is not yet available in your area
• Node4 is not yet available in your area
• Pipex is not yet available in your area
• Rutland Telekom is not yet available in your area
• Smallworld Media is not yet available in your area
• Tiscali is not yet available in your area
• Tiscali TV is not yet available in your area
• WB Internet is not yet available in your area
• Zen is not yet available in your area

Cable broadband availability

The following information details the availability of cable broadband in your area.

• Virgin Media cable is not available in your area
• Smallworld Media cable is not available in your area

Any recommendations based on the above info? I am starting to wonder if they are moving due to crap broadband

Mark_In_Hampshire

Depressing perhaps compared with cable, but actually, very good results for ADSL.

Ignore the fixed 2Mbps service. That isn't even really supplied any more.

Your close proximity to the exchange might indicate a short phone line. That's backed up by the possibility of 7.5Mbps out of a possible 8Mbps ("up to 8Mbps") - one subtlety - the most you'd actually see is 6.7Mbps because "up to 8Mbps" is actually "up to 6.7Mbps" in terms of real world speed.

No LLU services and no ADSL2+ (Up to 20Mbps) available, so your only ADSL options are BT Wholesale options.

So per original post: best bets for BT Wholesale ADSL are probably IDNET, Zen, Aquiss - all are highly rated. What that's getting at is, of the potential 7.5Mbps you might be able to get, which ISP is most likely to supply most of that most of the time?

That's where both Sky Connect and Virgin National fall down, as they don't buy enough bandwidth to go around.

As far as getting this set up is concerned you can either take out a phone line with company A and pay them the line rental, then have company B set up and supply the broadband.

Or, you can go with one company (so start with your choice of ADSL provider) and have them set up and supply both.

ali-t

Thanks for the quick response Mark. I will have a look at IDNET, Zen and Aquiss and take it from there. Thanks

michbright

Can I just add to this.

Aside from the technical bits, you also need to consider how much you use each month.

As I live in a rural area, I'm also stuck with which providers I can use as there is no cable in the area and our exchange is not LLU either. While I have quite a good choice of providers, all apart from BT only offer capped broadband, e.g. max 40gb per month usage. BT is the only one in my area that offers "unlimited" broadband usage as an option. That's the main reason we stick with BT, so we have the option to get unlimited broadband without too much fuss. We have recently switched to capped broadband but have reached the limit and gone over it the last few months so will be switching back to unlimited.

Of course, unlimited isn't always truly unlimited as it's normally subject to a fair usage policy, but that's just an aside.