Very Fast Rural Broadband - Any Snags?

Davesnave

Living in a rural area, I’ve become accustomed to sluggish broadband, probably not helped by cabling in the loft done by the previous owner. “Eventually,” I tell myself, “they’ll upgrade the service here.” There are promises in the local press about improvements.

Now, a neighbour 100m away has told me that the only thing preventing him from receiving superfast broadband right now, beamed from a new local company’s transmitter, is a group of trees blocking his line of sight. My house can ‘see’ the transmitter, however, so if I were to host the service, or take it myself, then the signal could be beamed to him.

About 12 other properties on that site could also benefit if they wished to join the service, at a cost of £25 a month. It’s not known if any might do so.

The receiver that would relay the signal would be placed on the wall of my house and powered from our supply, consuming 5w an hour. I calculate that this would cost around £6p.a. at current electricity prices, which the other party has agreed to cover.

So, I have a few questions:

If I agree to host this service here, having a mini transmitter on my house, is it likely I could bargain for a discount on the cost to myself? After all, no service to anyone can happen here if I don’t agree. I would only bounce the signal to one other, but any further subscribers would still need me doing that.

Is there anything to be bothered about, if I’m asked to sign an agreement as a host? I would never agree to ‘rent a roof’ solar panels, for example, but this is just a small box or dish and not visually very intrusive.

Anything else to consider? I’m a complete dunce regarding telecommunications. I don’t even know whether we’d lose our current email addresses if we ditched BT broadband and just kept the phone. Would we?

Your thoughts are welcome. There must be something I haven't considered!


This is the company concerned:

http://wildwestnet.co.uk/Default.aspx

macman

You did see the £100 installation charge? And given that you'll still need the BT landline for calls, the whole thing is not cheap at £25 on top of your line rental and calls package. 10Mbps is not 'superfast', though it may well seems like it compared to what you are getting now. It's ADSL speed, not FTTC.

kwikbreaks

From what I can see the standard package offers 25Mbps which is faster than any ADSL but slower than FTTC. The 100GB limit should suit most users.

Part of the blurb says "For this reason we make it a condition of service that anybody we supply to will permit one other receiver to be fitted to their house if we require it." so you won't get any preferential deal on the basis of sharing the signal as it's part of their standard operating procedures.

You need to check the current state of play regarding continued use of the BT email address. I'm pretty sure I saw stuff about this no longer being possible recently. You should think about getting an email address independent of any ISP - either free such as Gmail or as a paid product.

If you wanted to you could completely ditch the landline and use a VOIP service such as Vonage. The snag there is that if ther power or internet fails you have no phone other than your mobile. If you only use mobile phones you could dump the phone line completely which would make the £25 look more competetive.

macman

I was basing my comment on the slowest speed guaranteed, which is 10MBps. If it's consistently around 25MBps, which you have no way of knowing, then you are effectively getting FTTC speeds and so the £25 pm is better value.
Only you can decide that, but in the absence of anything else on the horizon, I'd give it a go-there is no minimum term, so all you have to lose is the install cost.

kwikbreaks

I doubt it would consistently deliver the headline speed but then nor does ADSL...

I would see the main way of mitigating the price to lie in ditching the phone line and call package if any as this is one of the few BB technologies which allow that. As macman says though it would need trying out and I'd do that before commiting to cancelling the phone line.

System

What happens if you move or decide you no longer want their services? Would you effectively agreeing to a wayleave?
What happens if you get your electricity cut off for some reason?

The broadband is your choice but you also need to look at the legal angle of the company using your house to host the transmitter and what happens if you move etc since you will be providing the broadband for your neighbours as well.

Davesnave

Interesting thoughts, all.

I think it's unlikely we'll ditch our BT line in the near future, so you're echoing my feeling that it's expensive for people like us. We're on a smallholding and not indoors half as much as the people who want this service, especially at this time of year. Even in winter, we have enough stacked up on the PVR to keep us going without streaming films, or whatever.

Besides, we think that better rural broadband is maybe only a year or two away now

As to the hosting bit, we already have two wayleaves, so another for such a small piece of equipment doesn't necessarily scare us.

I will have to look at the T&C though, as it seems that anyone on a ridge site, like me, could indirectly end up supplying many people, not just the couple who have made the enquiry.

System

But those wayleaves don't expect you to supply the power to run them as this would.

Davesnave

!!!!!! wrote: »

But those wayleaves don't expect you to supply the power to run them as this would.

Exactly, and while this person is willing to pay me the cost of the electricity, they might move on, as it's a rented property.

And if they did that, would any others, by then also linked to the system, pay up instead? Knowing some of their track records, it's unlikely.

There again, could this person fit a receiver/transmitter to their house without their landlord also entering into an agreement? The situation gets more complicated the more I think about it!

As I hold all the cards, I think I will only enter into an agreement, limited by time and/or scope. They can either write me one to serve this individual circumstance and receive their £25 a month, or they can go swivel. It really is that simple.

After all, the other wayleaves pay (or paid) me hundreds of £. There is no incentive, other than a desire to help this one person.

Thanks for your replies. It really has helped me think this through.

I_have_spoken

Their T&Cs puzzle me, why 'seven users'? If you're putting a radio receiver up and then have a wi-fi access point in the house, you could have many folks using the hot-spot if you have a party etc.

Certainly there doesn't seem to be enough gain for you to be worth the downsides of having network kit installed that up to 12 other folks rely on.

kwikbreaks

I don't know for sure how this works but you obviously need a receiver high outside cabled to a modem/router inside for your own use. I think the 7 users means you can only serve 7 devices. The business product mentions multiple IPs but I can't see that they'd offer more than 1 for a home installation.

You wouldn't have any network kit for anybody other than yourself. The T&C require you to allow 1 additional transmitter to be paired with your receiver and that would provide 1 or more other customer with a signal. They might have to fit one of the users linked to your repeater transmitter with another repeater for someone else. I would have expected that every receiver fitted should have the ability to retransmit unless that is an expensive addition otherwise they'd have to be revisiting old installations to service a new one which would be a pita - far easier if they had the ability to remotely turn on the transmitter section. What if somebody with a transmitter decided they no longer wanted the service? Or moved? They can hardly expect customers to set up a perpetual contract for equipment hosting by the property. I imagine a lot of this is going to be covered in the small print and hopefully the FAQ.