poor download speeds in rural area

iscamaid

I live in a small Devon village with internet connections of about 1mb download speed and upload of 0.3mb. Currently with PlusNet (paying £32 a month as well for this with phone = bit of a joke, though other ISPs seem to be the same prices). I do not think changing the ISP would make much difference to the speed. The internet is so slow that 50% webpages fail to load and when I click on links it can take up to 30 second to upload a page. It is driving me nuts and as most of my kids homework asks them to research stuff on Google it can turn a 20 minute homework into 2 hours. A number of villages are being upgrade to fibre optic broadband but on checking there is no proposal to go into the more rural areas, with no date for our village.

Someone suggested that I could speed things up for the same cost by installing a satellite connection. Can anyone advise is this would work or give any other ideas of what we could do please.

Browntoa

any hope on here

http://www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/

On January 29th 2013 Connecting Devon and Somerset signed a contract with BT. The deal will: secure a £94 million investment to transform broadband speeds for businesses and residents ensure around 90% of premises have access to fibre optic broadband by the end of 2016, and deliver a minimum of 2Mbps for all premises by the end of 2016 - See more at: http://www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/#sthash.lR2SLyYq.dpuf

kwikbreaks

This link was posted in the Internet access board recently..

http://www.broadbandwherever.net/home-user/rental

It shows that satellite isn't cheap but could be a lot faster than long line ADSL. If download volumes are high the price goes higher still.

Another possibilty depending on location could be 3G. I'm typing this in a static caravan about 2.5 miles away across open countryside from a Three mast using an external aerial connected to a MiFi type device and it works well.
http://www.digitalham.co.uk/web/broadband/mobile-broadband/
Cost is £15 per month for 10GB - dearer for me this year than last as Three have stopped using cashback incentives but that is pretty much irrelevant for a permanent setup.



If you should be tempted by the 3G option make sure it will be 3G or better as GSM and GPRS are pretty poor. I chose Three because theirs is the only 3G service near my van - the rest are GSM only. You need to look for HSPDA masts on 2100Mhz.

iscamaid

Browntoa wrote: »

any hope on here

http://www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/

On January 29th 2013 Connecting Devon and Somerset signed a contract with BT. The deal will: secure a £94 million investment to transform broadband speeds for businesses and residents ensure around 90% of premises have access to fibre optic broadband by the end of 2016, and deliver a minimum of 2Mbps for all premises by the end of 2016 - See more at: http://www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/#sthash.lR2SLyYq.dpuf

No hope there, the exchange is being upgraded but the connection from exchange is over 7 miles away through fields, so they are not taking it this far, thanks though.

Gloomendoom

I'm also currently in Devon village and the internet speed is dire. It also drops out for around 15 seconds every few minutes.

No mobile signal at all, so 3G is out.

A friend of mine got a grant for a satellite connection because he was stuck with dial-up otherwise. He lives in rural Scotland though.

agrinnall

I think you need to get Plusnet to check out your line, I lived for years (until 10 days ago, when I moved into a city, although I'm still waiting for my 15 Mbps broadband to be activated) with a sub-0.5 Mbps download speed and while it was certainly slow I never had anything like 50% of pages failing to load. With a speed twice as fast as mine I would expect you to have far fewer problems that I did.

kwikbreaks

Gloomendoom wrote: »

No mobile signal at all, so 3G is out.

I get no signal on my mobile phone either but by using the antenna I can get the speeds I posted above. If there is a Three mast within 3 or 4 miles and it's an unrestricted path (ie no blocked by hills or huge buildings) then I reckon if you take the trouble a halfway decent internet connection is possible, At home I have FTTC that runs at 70Mbps but simple browsing on the 3G here is not that much slower. Of course big downloads would be and rather expensive too.

buglawton

How do you get a MiFi connected to an external aerial?

A solution for poor loading web pages might be a more efficient browser e.g. Opera Turbo
http://www.opera.com/turbo
might speed up the kids' homework anyways.

Terry98

buglawton wrote: »

How do you get a MiFi connected to an external aerial?

Have a read of the link posted it's very interesting....

http://www.digitalham.co.uk/web/broadband/mobile-broadband/

DKLS

Its so poor I have friends in north yorks who are still on dial up!, I went to rural Hungary last week and stayed in a farm, and they had 100 meg broadband provided by Orange via a satellite dish all for £6 per month.

radu_

Not a log term solution but I thought I mention it anyway.
I use a free chrome extension called Disconnect.me which has a number of privacy benefits but also claims to load the web pages 27% faster.