We still don't have any Broadband where I live in our rural area on the Shropshire / Cheshire border

Iestyn1

It is frustrating, there are so many cheap deals for broadband yet there are still homes like ourselves in rural areas without any broadband connectivity at all, not even dial-up and as for fibre......not a chance. BT Openreach bypassed our area for better, richer pickings.

Openreach have no plans for any network upgrades to provide broadband to us unless we all want to contribute thousands of pounds each. We have complained to our Council and our MP, all sympathise but seem powerless to get BT Openreach to do anything.

The only options we have are satellite which was dreadful and very expensive or EE SIM connectivity which we and our neighbours all now use. We can only get 3G at our house but at least it gives us something.  

I am sure there must be other communities out there in rural areas with the same problem of no broadband at all. Perhaps MSE should consider highlighting this issue? 

southsidergs

Iestyn1 said:

The only options we have are satellite 

Ergo there is broadband available, a bit dramatic to say there's none

QrizB

southsidergs said:

Iestyn1 said:

The only options we have are satellite 

Ergo there is broadband available, a bit dramatic to say there's none

Satellite and mobile. So a choice.

OP do you actually have a fixed-line telephone service?

Neil_Jones

Iestyn1 said:

It is frustrating, there are so many cheap deals for broadband yet there are still homes like ourselves in rural areas without any broadband connectivity at all, not even dial-up and as for fibre......not a chance. BT Openreach bypassed our area for better, richer pickings.

Openreach have no plans for any network upgrades to provide broadband to us unless we all want to contribute thousands of pounds each. We have complained to our Council and our MP, all sympathise but seem powerless to get BT Openreach to do anything.

The only options we have are satellite which was dreadful and very expensive or EE SIM connectivity which we and our neighbours all now use. We can only get 3G at our house but at least it gives us something.  

I am sure there must be other communities out there in rural areas with the same problem of no broadband at all. Perhaps MSE should consider highlighting this issue? 

Dial-up is just the same principle as a phone call so if you can make phone calls, you can use dial-up, if you have an actual modem available (and a fixed phone line):

https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp as an example.  There are others.

So you can get online via EE or via satellite.  So there is broadband available.  Just not the way you want it.

flashg67

have you searched for 'WISP' providers locally. I'm in a similar situation but luckily get a good 4g signl so I use that as my main connection, but there are a couple of wisp providers that are cheaper than satellite

Iestyn1

I think you are all with the exception of flashg67 totally missing the point I am trying to make.

My point is that every household in the UK, regardless of location should be able to have a direct broadband connection of at least 2 Mb. BT Openreach are being paid billion of pounds of tax payers money to provide fibre connectivity to all homes across the UK yet there are homes like ours across the UK in rural areas where we don't even have a direct broadband connection at all so are disadvantaged and will continue to be disadvantaged unless Openreach start to connect up areas like ours.

I'll also address the comments made by the others who have replied to my post.

Satellite - The cost of this was £70 a month for just 20Gb monthly download allowance. If you went above that 20Gb your access stopped altogether until the next month. You could buy additional 1Gb increments at £5 a time to get you by until your next month started but those 1Gb top-ups went in no time. Oh and if you had use up any more than your 20Gb monthly allocation before your access was throttled, then whatever you had used up over 20Gb was taken out of your top-up before you even got it. Apart from the very high price for satellite there was massive latency and I mean massive. Connections would continually time-out. You couldn't have a video conference using audio and video as it just froze, at best you could only have audio. Even then there was always a delay and echo reminiscent of making international phone calls in the 70's and 80's where there was an echo and delay in conversations. The reason for the latency is that your signal is beamed from your satellite dish to a receiver out in space and then beamed back down to a base station in the South West where it would then break-out into the network.
 
EE 3G - This works ok and we get a reasonable download speed but upload is not great. I work from home and it can take 2 or 3 hours to upload a 2Gb file to a client portal or via WeTransfer. It is cheaper than satellite but still costs me around £50 a month for 200Gb a month download. Download speed does also suffer at peak time when other people are using the mobile network. 
Don't forge, this is just 3G, it is a mobile SIM just like the SIM you have in your mobile phone and my 3G SIM has it's own mobile number. It isn't a home broadband service to replace direct connection, it is just a work-around.

I have a PSTN line so can have Dial-up -  sorry but no, you are wrong. To have a dial-up you need to have a suitable PSTN line capable of carrying a DSL signal. Unfortunately for us, our PSTN copper pair is 11 KM from the local BT street cabinet. Now it isn't actually 11 Km away, it is abut a mile and a half away but it covers 11 KM on poles zigzagging across fields from farm to cottage to farm etc until it finally gets to us. And by the time it gets to us the line quality is so poor it cannot support any form of dial-up. The line quality is so poor that often people struggle to even hear us on the phone. That aside, lets be honest, who in this day and age would actually want to use dial-up anyway, would you be happy with a 256 or 512k internet connection!

So, I have a choice -   No I don't actually have a choice at all. If I had a choice I would have a direct broadband connection. All we get at the moment is a very poor quality PSTN line which costs £28 a month for line rental. We didn't choose to have satellite and then EE3G, instead of a direct broadband connection. They are not substitutes or lifestyle choices, they are workarounds as we have no other options available to us for internet access. They are much more expensive than direct broadband connection costs and they are also on top of the cost of a PSTN line.    

littleboo

It sounds that you are in area that is not commercially viable for Openreach or any other provider

RogerBareford

Iestyn1 said:

I think you are all with the exception of flashg67 totally missing the point I am trying to make.

My point is that every household in the UK, regardless of location should be able to have a direct broadband connection of at least 2 Mb. BT Openreach are being paid billion of pounds of tax payers money to provide fibre connectivity to all homes across the UK yet there are homes like ours across the UK in rural areas where we don't even have a direct broadband connection at all so are disadvantaged and will continue to be disadvantaged unless Openreach start to connect up areas like ours.

I'll also address the comments made by the others who have replied to my post.

Satellite - The cost of this was £70 a month for just 20Gb monthly download allowance. If you went above that 20Gb your access stopped altogether until the next month. You could buy additional 1Gb increments at £5 a time to get you by until your next month started but those 1Gb top-ups went in no time. Oh and if you had use up any more than your 20Gb monthly allocation before your access was throttled, then whatever you had used up over 20Gb was taken out of your top-up before you even got it. Apart from the very high price for satellite there was massive latency and I mean massive. Connections would continually time-out. You couldn't have a video conference using audio and video as it just froze, at best you could only have audio. Even then there was always a delay and echo reminiscent of making international phone calls in the 70's and 80's where there was an echo and delay in conversations. The reason for the latency is that your signal is beamed from your satellite dish to a receiver out in space and then beamed back down to a base station in the South West where it would then break-out into the network.
 
EE 3G - This works ok and we get a reasonable download speed but upload is not great. I work from home and it can take 2 or 3 hours to upload a 2Gb file to a client portal or via WeTransfer. It is cheaper than satellite but still costs me around £50 a month for 200Gb a month download. Download speed does also suffer at peak time when other people are using the mobile network. 
Don't forge, this is just 3G, it is a mobile SIM just like the SIM you have in your mobile phone and my 3G SIM has it's own mobile number. It isn't a home broadband service to replace direct connection, it is just a work-around.

I have a PSTN line so can have Dial-up -  sorry but no, you are wrong. To have a dial-up you need to have a suitable PSTN line capable of carrying a DSL signal. Unfortunately for us, our PSTN copper pair is 11 KM from the local BT street cabinet. Now it isn't actually 11 Km away, it is abut a mile and a half away but it covers 11 KM on poles zigzagging across fields from farm to cottage to farm etc until it finally gets to us. And by the time it gets to us the line quality is so poor it cannot support any form of dial-up. The line quality is so poor that often people struggle to even hear us on the phone. That aside, lets be honest, who in this day and age would actually want to use dial-up anyway, would you be happy with a 256 or 512k internet connection!

So, I have a choice -   No I don't actually have a choice at all. If I had a choice I would have a direct broadband connection. All we get at the moment is a very poor quality PSTN line which costs £28 a month for line rental. We didn't choose to have satellite and then EE3G, instead of a direct broadband connection. They are not substitutes or lifestyle choices, they are workarounds as we have no other options available to us for internet access. They are much more expensive than direct broadband connection costs and they are also on top of the cost of a PSTN line.    

Starlink offerers low latency (20ms) internet with unlimited data for £84 a month with speeds of between 100-200Mbps for about £84 a month. Yes it may not be the cheapest but it will work for video calls and the speed is more than fast enough for most people.

So yes you do have a choice and personally that is what i would choose.

Also you chose to move there when you knew the property had no kind of internet connection available and that a rural location won't have the benefits of investment such as properties in or near highly populated areas. So i don't think you have a right to complain when it's not financially viable to upgrade the connection and you refuse to pay towards this yourself.

flaneurs_lobster

I have blisteringly fast broadband from a choice of providers. I also have good, reliable, multiple public transport options, 5 supermarkets within 2 miles, theatres, bars & restaurants. 

I also have traffic noise, high pollution levels, annoying neighbours, nowhere to park and huge housing costs.

We all make choices about where we live, access to affordable broadband is in the mix.

J_B

Down here on the Shropshire Staffordshire border (not too far from Cheshire!) we use Airband https://www.airband.co.uk/ - have you asked them?

We used Connecting Shropshire https://shropshire.gov.uk/connecting-shropshire for guidance

Iestyn1 said:

............. We have complained to our Council and our MP, ...............

Have you discussed this with the famous Jackie Weaver?  

maisie_cat

flaneurs_lobster said:

I have blisteringly fast broadband from a choice of providers. I also have good, reliable, multiple public transport options, 5 supermarkets within 2 miles, theatres, bars & restaurants. 

I also have traffic noise, high pollution levels, annoying neighbours, nowhere to park and huge housing costs.

We all make choices about where we live, access to affordable broadband is in the mix.

Spot on, we all make choices.
We knew when we moved that fibre broadband would be some years away, I assume the OP did as well.
We also have no near neighbours and are surrounded by fields and the sea, Surrey was hell by comparison even though we had the fastest broadband ever.