Newish House no fibre, alternative?

sianon

I am looking for some advice if possible. We are in the process of purchasing a newish house (built in 2010) and rather naively after looking on a couple of websites and also having lived in the local area believed we would have superfast broadband (as we did in the same village a couple of streets away).

Now we have discovered that though the exchange does have Fibre, we cannot access it and the best we can get is 2mgps adsl.... ouch when we both work from home a lot this will hurt our business. Also a lot of our down time is spent on the internet.

I have done some research and it looks like we have 2 options, Satellite Broadband or Leased Line(expensive).

Has anyone gone either of these routes? and if so what are your experiences? or does anyone know of anything else available to us?

I know this is our own fault for being naive, but any help is appreciated.

Nilrem

Satellite tends to be very high latency, expensive and relatively unreliable as there is limited bandwidth from the satellites, the signal typically has to travel a lot further, and is quite susceptible to the weather.

I suspect that you'd end up finding it a lot closer to leased line costs than you'd think for the same speed/bandwidth limitations.

benjus

I take it there's no 4G mobile broadband coverage in the area? While not cheap, and I'm not aware of any unlimited deals for use with wifi, it can be as fast as fibre.

2mbps is pretty bad but likely to be enough for typical homeworking usage, I would have thought. What kind of work do you do from home?

onomatopoeia99

Have you exchanged contracts on the house yet? If not, you might wish to consider looking for a different property. (England and Wales, I know the Scots have a different system with house buying)

I am serious - a leased line will cost you thousands a year and satellite is something of a last resort. You could also get multiple ADSL lines and bond them, if your ISP will support this at their end. It's a non-trivial thing to set up though.

macman

Exchanges aren't fibre enabled, street cabs are: is there a date given on the OR site for enablement of your cab?

sianon

Thanks for all the replies, it is much appreciated.

We have exchanged on the property so too late to pull out now.

Our business means we do a lot of online conference calls and lots of voip so latency is an issue.

Basically this is what BT Wholesale said about our address.

[FONT=&quot]Address **** on Exchange TURGIS GREEN is served by Cabinet 4 [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Featured Products[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Availability Date[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]High[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Low[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]FTTC Range A (Clean)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]74[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]54.9[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Waiting list[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]FTTC Range B (Impacted)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]65.1[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]39.4[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Waiting list[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]ADSL Max[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Up to 2[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Available[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Fixed Rate[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]1 [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Available[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Other Offerings[/FONT]



[FONT=&quot]FTTP on Demand[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]330[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Available[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Fibre Multicast[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]--[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Available[/FONT]

We have looked at leased line costs, which are exorbitant after my discussions with a couple of companies earlier, that is out of the picture unless we want to pay basically our mortgage again.

Bonded adsl... well they have stated we could get upto 6mbps with that, still not good enough for our uses really.

Last resort would be Satellite which doesn't sound great either.

Guess it serves us right for not having done our homework well enough, you live and learn.

Thanks all for your input though, it is much appreciated.

teddysmum

macman wrote: »

Exchanges aren't fibre enabled, street cabs are: is there a date given on the OR site for enablement of your cab?

These forecasts aren't reliable.
One of the sites (BT?), giving details of fibre progress, forecast September this year for fibre on this estate.
However, though the exchange now shows fibre available , it appears that our estate's enablement has been postponed, with no dates given.

sianon

Ha and finally after a lot of emailing and tweeting at superfast broadband I have an answer which is....

BT are aware that the cabinet that serves this property is full and it will be restoring capacity soon. I’m afraid we do not have a timescale for this at the moment. It is likely that they will update the availability column with a date when this has been scheduled, so I suggest you check back regularly.

Nilrem

That's good news as I understand it's easier for them "restore capacity" than put it in completely new (I think depending on the cabinet they may be able to add to it's equipment).

If you're doing VOIP or anything that requires low latency then satellite is pretty much right out.

onomatopoeia99

You can get FTTP according to the information you pasted from samknows. That will be fast enough.

sianon

And an update is that BT Openreach said...

[FONT=&quot]We appreciate that this is frustrating, but unfortunately the Fibre DSLAM cabinet has currently reached its full capacity. We are aware of this and we are looking to resolve as quickly as possible. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]However, you may place your order and your service provider will put it into a Capacity Waiting list and will be provided with the service as soon as the work has been completed. The order will remain valid for 90 days. For progress updates during this waiting period, please check with your service provider who will be able to keep you updated.[/FONT]

Unfortunately after speaking to Zen, they cant place an order (and neither can any other provider) as its states unavailable when they try, and also says the same for FTTP.

Sent another email to openreach now asking if this is the case... we shall see if I get a reply.