Broadband and mobile coverage in "hard-to-reach" places

Rubberchicken2

When we bought our house seven years ago the fact that the area was set up to be one of the first to receive fibre optic broadband was a huge selling point. In reality, cables were laid down the end of our street, and that was the end of it. To make matters worse, a huge amount of additional building in the area means speeds have continued to drop since we moved in and we now get about 0.5- 0.7 mg at peak times. Our provider has said there is nothing the can do due to the distance we are from the exchange, and the council have said they are waiting on BT to complete work. However, this has already been cancelled twice and they have no date for completion. As a teacher I need to use the Internet for lesson planning and this can often be incredibly time consuming, if not impossible, due to the slow speeds.
Thanks MSE for passing this on as it is a real frustration.

mijawall61

I live on the edge of a town of 200k people. Hardly rural. Yet my Vodafone and Talk Mobile signals are all but non existent. Govt could insist that in such situations, mobile networks provide booster devices to attach to PCs to create a local mobile cell. This has worked for me with Vodafone (though I had to pay for it even though I already pay for the Vodafone service in my area which they list as 'no fault'). Alternatively, create a network-share so that when the contracted service is not available, the signal automatically hops to the next best service (e.g. if Vodafone is not available and Orange is, then the service hops to Orange).

no1fran

I live within the M25 in Surrey. Last year we were told that all of Surrey was getting superfast broadband - the village that I live 1 1/2 miles from the centre of has got improved broadband but we haven't. I work from home it's a constant struggle. Mobile coverage in the area is also patchy and when I visit my daughter who lives on the other side of the village (and she gets much better broadband than me now) my O2 coverage is non existent. As far as I can see Superfast Surrey never really happened as promised.

ArchangelAlan

I transferred to O2 in March as I thought their mobile signal co erage wouls be excellent (on the basis emergency aervices radios use O2 trasmitters). How wrong was I? Since mid August 2015 my phone signal has rarely crept above 1 bar of signal and I live in south Birmingham a huge city with transmitters everywhere. Having spoken to friends and family around the West Midlands they gave the same problem with lack of signal. I and they have reported the issue to O2 who tell us that they can't find a problem. I drove past a transmitter the other day and had about 200m of full signal before it went down to 1 again. Mmmm I wonder if they've purposely turned the signal power down for whatever reason? It's been over 3 weeks now and my signal is no better.

oldagetraveller

Rural Staffordshire. The only broadband option is ADSL, about two miles from the very small exchange and no doubt because of the line length (not as the crow flies) speeds are very poor. At least there are two LLU providers at the exchange so I don't pay as much as a market 1/market A exchange.
I'm on Tesco Mobile/O2 and usually receive an excellent signal but my local mast has been "down" for days now and no signal whatsoever. O2 advise they are waiting for their suppliers to fix the fault. I suspect that because of the location it will be way down the list of priorities.
We really are still in the 20th(or 19th!) century in some parts of the country.

Saran118

I live in North Devon. There is a public-private partnership involving 6 local authorities to bring fast broadband to areas where BT and Virgin aren't investing on their own. Unfortunately where we live isn't even in this plan for the next few years. A local company provides a satellite service bouncing off houses in a chain. This is unreliable and terrible in bad weather. I work from home and live in fear of losing my job as my ability to communicate is severely impaired by bad internet speeds. I think that parliament fails to understand that fast broadband is rapidly becoming an essential service for many in rural areas to run their businesses or be employed. Far more investment needs to be given to this before it becomes another reason why rural communities are disappearing.

CasperBloomberg

We live less than 3 miles from the centre of Southampton and still well within the Southampton boundaries. There are many large buildings with telephone masts on (we are very close to the university) but signal is strength is sporadic and in some places none existent. Most networks are affected to some degree.
In our home in order to try to maintain a signal that can drop out indiscriminately, my husband has to keep his mobile in one window where it works and uses a bluetooth headset to make calls.

For internet we are one of the few streets not cabled by Virgin (in fact they initially accepted our order not realising they hadn't cabled and then cancelled it). There is no trunking in the street for BT and no spares, so if there is a problem (like we had) they have to dig the street to find the break and fix the wire we are attached to the box by. This takes months due to the ridiculous arrangement of BT and Openreach and their poor project management/communication.

I was astonished to find that service can vary so dramatically in a city when moving from less than a mile away where we didn't have a problem.

boysim34

I live in stoke on trent and with Vodafone, we can't even get a proper signal in areas of st1, the internet which is 4g in certain areas is only g in others, mainly where we want to use the phone, calls drop, signal drops. Vodafone know all about it as I have reported it several times and filled in the same form several times, not happy , worst thing I ever did was the join Vodafone

Familysearcher

I live in a small village in Norfolk south of Fakenham. Half the village can now receive infinity, but the rest receive a very poor service. I am only able to get half a mg or less, sometimes nothing. Rural areas need good broadband, we are becoming isolated. Intermittent mobile signal also a problem, I frequently visit the coast, the mobile signal in the Blakeney Cley area is non existent.

Mrs_Mac_1

I live in rural Northern Ireland, postcode BT53. I have my internet with BT and I always wonder what I am paying over £40 per month to them for. I have a call package and BT Broadband. Can't get fibre broadband. Can't use the internet from around 8pm any evening and particularly worse at weekends. Connection is slow or non-existent. If I want to book something I usually have to get up in the middle of the night to do it when the internet is faster and more readily available. Ridiculous really.


Mrs Mac