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When we moved here in 2007, the 1-2 meg broadband on a copper cable some 5km from the exchange wasn't a consideration. Never mind a problem. Next week we're - finally - getting the FTTP originally promised in 2017.
As the internet became more pervasive in our (and definitely the growing kids) lives, we tried a whole load of interim solutions to try and negate the crap infrastructure (we shared a DACS with next door, remember those? And a lot of the copper was in a very poor state) including getting a second connection and paying for an aggregation service. That was a very expensive solution for around 10 meg!
Last 3 years we've go SIM/Broadband. It's okay but getting worse. One thing it isn't is consistent and that's having a real affect on my ability to work, and buffering is our streaming reality!
If we were looking at houses now, I'm sure the broadband infrastructure would be a consideration. I keep hearing it's the 'fourth utility' (three for us, no gas here either!). Maybe 5G will close the gap for rural areas, no way there is a commercial proposition for many of these areas (we were able to get the very last of the council grant money to 'mop up' 200 houses abandoned by the previous schemes).
So would you care? Could you live with a rubbish connection? Would it stop you buying a house? Is it really as important as electricity? Dunno, idle musing as I count down the days to 900 meg synchronous and the ritual burning of the 4G router!
Very much looking forward to running a speedtest and seeing something over 20 meg!
I think now, as streaming services overtake normal broadcast, the necessity of the internet in literally every part of life, it'd be extremely difficult for most people to justify living somewhere without reliable broadband unless you were looking to be off-grid or were able to just use mobile/5G broadband or were willing to sign up for Starlink.
Not necessarily Gb speeds - I coped fine even WFH for years on a 10-megbit connection (I'm on 50 now). My Mum gets by with no issues on about 40 but then she does far less streaming and never does anything online that would require faster.
I feel sorry for my technophobe Dad though. He relies completely on his partner for anything doing online, he's never had an email address or any form of online account. I don't know how he'd cope if he was on his own. I mean, he wouldn't even consider internet access if he was buying a house - it's just that once he moved into it he'd be unable to do a lot without the internet!
I did some work on the periphery on a university's research to try and measure the 'digital divide' a few years ago. It was scary stuff with the almost total shift from a person to a screen for everything from paying your bills to filing a tax return. One of the findings was the govt needed to step in and provide proxies for 'those in media poverty and/or those who would not /could not engage with internet based services'
So that went well then 😉
I had to do an old school call yesterday as internet was down again. I was dialled into a teams meeting of 7 people and it was rubbish! You forget how terrible conference calls were for any kind of collaborative meeting. I mean I don't love teams, but it's better than the alternative of voice only or travelling for hours for a 60 min in person meeting.
When our fibre is in, I can't decide what I'm going to do first. Backup my NAS to the cloud, or upload all my GoPro videos to the GP site 🙂
We do have a few people on starlink here. By all accounts, it's stable and fast-enough. What it isn't is cheap! Compare that to what we've just ordered: 900 meg is £32 a month with six months at half price. That's mad compared to even what we're paying for the SIM. I guess that's the other thing... other utilities are expensive, basic raw internet is cheap. Services on that internet however....
Currently got 75 mbps but in the process of buying a house where we'll only have 35 mbps. I WFH with lots of video calls and got a teenage son. Are we screwed? Probably not, but think we will definitely notice it if the wife and I are streaming HD the same time as the boy. Fttp is planned for the new house by the end of 2026 though.
Before the "kids" moved out, we had a one on / one off policy. If they were watching something on phones/tablet then we'd probably not be able to stream anything off the tv. They weren't big gamers tho, so never had that problem.
Even when the SIM is having a good day, I don't think I've ever been able to stream YT at max res. 1080P it'll do but no higher. And watching films, it might be fine for an hour then we'd sit around / reset things for 10 minutes hoping it'd come back.
35 prob be fine tho. Isn't 30 the 'minimum' the govt pledged everyone would get access to?
Having reliable internet was an issue for us when buying 10y ago (satellite at one house, that doesn’t work well in the rain, bullet dodged there) but standard 15Mb is perfectly adequate for normal streaming, zoom, downloads, home office work etc.
No online gaming here and only two of us, 4 at a time on Fortnite might be a different matter, I dunno. We have no TV, all our media is streamed, it’s absolutely fine.
We had some ridiculous level of connection speed at my last job and still ended up waiting to get served from slow websites etc.
Tech duffer
I'm with Virgin, so I believe fibre. That's contracted as their 250mbps service but I just ran an Ookla speedtest and it said 16.
That's on an (old) Chromebook wireless connected to the Tenda Mesh recommended by a few on here when my router lacked oomph.
Does it matter much that I'm not directly wired to the router or that the device might not be that great? Does the speedtest not work out just from the router.
If it's really 16, should I be complaining to Virgin? Are they obligated to a service speed, or is it mired in contractual estimate only?
Just ran 2 others and got 26 and 14 (VM's own tester)
So would you care?
Yes, I probs would make it a non negotiable that would be certainly a top 10 'must have' if I was moving even somewhere semi-remote.
Definitely should be 4th utility. I've been WFH at least part of the week since the days of dial up modems (remember the Psion Goldcard? Lovely!). Doing terminal access via dial up was fine. ADSL was a gamechanger. I've now got 30-40 Mbps which is good enough for most purposes. I should get fibre in the next month not that my neighbour has agreed access for Gigaclear.
I'd not buy a house without fibre now unless it was truly compelling. Then I'd splash for Starlink.
[edit] it's raining outside and I'm bored, so have been experimenting
My (modernish) smartphone right next to the Mesh box that's connected to the router got 90+
Back in the dining room where I was sat to do the others I got 88, so not much loss. Is it my Chromebook that's the problem?
So - try the CB - put that next to the Mesh box and i got........33. Sit in my chair the other side of the room and it drops to 29.
Hmmmm..... reasonable spec work Dell laptop gets 15
Does it matter much that I’m not directly wired to the router
Yes, you're measuring the slowest part of the chain, in this case probably the Tenda WIFI
I'm also clueless on general subject, but community based companies seem to make it work - this is constantly expanding across the remote rural bits of the NW.
It is comically good. One very competitive price is offered and just one speed (bloody fast). It has briefly gone wrong once in 2 years, and a Twitter message fixed that in 30 minutes - including a human being calling to explain that they were doing maintenance and switched the wrong bit off 🙂.
Edit: Not been on their website for a bit - they now do a social tariff of £15 a month for 1GB fibre broadband if you are on council tax support. What an ace company 🙂.
Online gaming does not require much bandwidth, just low latency. My parents live in a village and normally get about 3.5mbps download and 0.5 upload. It's often painful to stream but they don't mind as they rarely do that. WiFi video calls are pretty poor and they get very poor phone signal, but they aren't interested in complaining to try to get a better service. BT too so I bet it costs them an arm and a leg!
1.5 - 2mb here on a fixed connection. 50 house village, so no plans to upgrade us anytime soon. Even with just two of us it was a nightmare for streaming, but online gaming was actually ok as we have decent ping
Mobile upgrades in past few years means that mobile is now viable and get 27-30 mb. Sons only 5 so not using much, so it’s fine for us. Recently been getting a good outdoor 5G signal but would need a new router and an outdoor aerial, so holding off for now.
Definitely something I’d be looking at if considering a move.
We started of with something like 8mb ADSL many moons ago. That was ok for RDP access to work computers on the few occasions I worked from home. Then upgraded to FTTC, which gave us 85mb as the cabinet was a out 20 yards away. Had this for a long time and it was perfectly serviceable for two adults and three kids WFH and learning from home during COVID, plus streaming and playing online games.
Moved and new house has FTTP and we've opted for the 250mb package. No real difference for those of us WFH, streaming or gaming. Only thing the kids like is that a huge COD update is now a lot quicker.
Does it matter much that I’m not directly wired to the router
Yes, you’re measuring the slowest part of the chain, in this case probably the Tenda WIFI
Yet a decent phone next to the router gets 3x the speed of an old CB in the same place? So must also be recipient device dependent?
Wouldn't really care - had 2meg copper for years.
Most of the Internet I use is low demand.
The early days of covid with teams calls were tough but about 3 months in we got upgraded to 40meg when the new livery yard went in down the road.
Once lived in a house with no mobile phone signal - on any provider and WiFi calling wasn't a thing back then. That made my employers "on call" policy challenging but I was ok with it funnily enough. They thought I was taking the piss till I invited the boss round..... Half way up the drive he got the jist of it.
Psion Goldcard?
I do remember 🙂 What a thing!
5G has been mooted for our mast for ages but not happened. The biggest issue with have with 4G is the latency, it's not that it's terrible (50-60ms mostly) but it's so variable. Some days you'll run a speedtest and it'll be 400 and that really messes with video etc.
We had to invest in an external antenna. To be fair Herefordshire council then provided a grant to halve the cost of the broadband SIM based service. Issue only network we can 'see' at our house is Three. And it's beyond panrts.
Customer service is definitely way better with the smaller ISPs. We've signed up wite BeFibre and they've just been ace. Whereas three have no way of contacting them other than twitter when they say 'reboot your phone' and 'we're not aware of any issues in your area'.
My guess would be 5G would be good IF the service is consistent. I know a lot of masts in city's can get over-run bt ours is on a bloody big hill with no one around it (its the tv mast) and it's still terrible!
I should get fibre in the next month not that my neighbour has agreed access for Gigaclear.
Apparently the worst job at the fibre installer (full fibre here) is the wayleave officer 🙂 It's not been too bad on our community scheme as everyone really wanted it. There's been a few grumbles about new poles going up, but mostly everyone is so relieved to be dumping BT/Airband/Three etc.
Gigaclear are not on my list of good ISPs as it was them who welshed out on finishing the contract they'd been awarded by the council. Still got all the money tho. The minutes from the council meeting made interesting reading. Apparently contract had been written that they had so many clauses for non delivery, no way of getting any money back!
30 mbps download is fine for us but I find the 5 mbps upload a pain for backing up my photography hobby to the cloud and when backup is running it means we can’t stream. Easily enough to fix by scheduling overnight backup so only a mild annoyance.
Definitely 5th utility for me
Water
Electricity
Mains Humous on Tap
Gas
Broadband
In that order
My 93 yr old Dad's rural house gets about 2-3 Mbps. Thats' enough for him to get his online banking done* and send the odd email so he's perfectly happy. Him being happy with it though is a right pain in the arse as it's impossible to persuade him to upgrade to the Gigaclear FTTP connection that runs along his road. If he did I'd be able to spend much more time checking in on the old git as I could WFH from his house on some days - rather than having to take a days leave if he needs a hand with something for an hour or two.
Gigaclear's stupid, £15 for 18 months then £38 after that for slowest package isn't a great help either. Plus the fact getting any clarity on whether he'd be liable for any installation costs seems impossible without placing an order (house is about 400m from the road).
*though he'll be totally screwed if they ever mandate 2-factor authentication via mobile phone.
Humous on tap? I'd probably go for 'beer in the fridge'
The upload thing is annoying. Even when we get 30 meg download, we never get better than about 3-4 up. Any length GoPro updates take about two hours at best assuming they don't crap out. I load them at a reasonably high quality as I know YT compressions algorithms are going to munch them!
Uploaded a couple of hundred pics to Flickr after a holiday. Have to do it in batches.
That's a speedtest running every 30 mins. You can see the variance we get on download especially and how bad it is this week.
Data connectivity is a total game changer to your way of living and potential to work. So 4th utility seems a legit claim.
I'm rural but not stupidly rural - 15min drive to a Maccy Drive Thru and live on an A road, but broadband is a problem. 3mb on a good day with a following wind, so some way below the 10mbs we are meant to all expect as a minimum right. I'm lucky however as EE & Voda 4g arrived in the area just before Covid so we use a 4G router and get about 40mbs. Folk down the lane can't pick up the 4g and are a bit scuppered. Their choice is not to be able to stream or WFH with video calls or bend over and shell out for a bit of Musk's Skynet (£85pm and maybe £600 for the kit unless you luck out on an offer). People who live between me and the aforementioned Maccy D are in the same position even though they are only a mile or so outside of a town of 5000.
As a community Openreach "reached out" to us and suggested we might like to pay just shy of £20K per household and we too could have broadband worth having. I struggle to work out a system that says we have a right to request 10mbs or greater and simultaneously a community can be asked for half a million to have it. I guess there's a difference between a right to request a service and a right to be provided a service - not looked into it too hard.
40mbs does us and the sim is only £20odd quid pm. I'd struggle to justify the Skynet price and TBH I'm not sure what the extra speed would do for us.
Interestingly (if you are a geek) I was Ladakh, India last summer and stayed at the SECMOL School. Sonam Wangchuk who founded the place and the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives is a properly inspiring person in many different ways (His story was the basis of the main character behind the 3 Idiots film). Anyway, they are experimenting with LiFi - a 5G internet broadcast by laser, and powered by solar.
And you can see how variable the ping response is off the 4G router.... I am hoping both these graphs will be rock solid with little movement around the mean once fibre is in.
I'll have a watch of that vid - thanks.
As a community Openreach “reached out” to us and suggested we might like to pay just shy of £20K per household and we too could have broadband worth having. I
Pretty similar here. That was the 'commercial' price. Obviously everyone just laughed. I can't remember exactly what grant full fibre received but I *think* if was around £5000 per household. Obviously some easier than others but the farm next to use needed a solution to get up a 3/4 mile driveway!
Getting it over the line was not easy. Had to door knock to get people to provisionally sign up and only one fibre provider bidded. Been great from a community point of view tho, met loads of people and the WA group is fun (apart from the odd 'pole denier') with those connected citing almost life changing connectivity!
Definitely important for me as part WFH job, and my next perhaps full WFH. Lack of good internet could make living somewhere unviable for me.
4th utility though, not sure. Idealistically, yes. But like non mains sewage and gas, you can make your own arrangements with starlink, 4G etc. You choose to live somewhere nice out of the way, there sre various prices to pay for that decision.
4th utility though, not sure. Idealistically, yes. But like non mains sewage and gas, you can make your own arrangements with starlink, 4G etc. You choose to live somewhere nice out of the way, there sre various prices to pay for that decision.
I think we might have different ideas of a utility. Just because they are not on 'mains' I don't think they are not a utility. I'm on mains leccy, but private water (spring) and sewage (septic tank), LPG tank and now 4G for internet. They are 4 utilities - just 3 of them are a bit more of a ballache for me than for most folk!
We have (essentially) a digital utility bill with a fixed budget that we raise by 10% each year. If what we want doesn’t fit, something has to go/be renegotiated.
It covers phones, BB, TV pic and subscription services. It’s £100 a month. That’s 4 people’s mobiles, the TV Lic, the BB and the TV subs. I can’t see it getting any less year on year, quite the opposite in fact.
£1200 a year!
Probably similar, family Spotify, Amazon, Apple TV (but that's going once we've finished catching up on slow horses), Netflix, some apple icloud extra space... all ads up.
I went back and looked at what the two aggregated ADSL lines cost. It was over £100 a month!
Is it really as important as electricity?
At the last election... the Labour party said it was... and that providers have for too long dragged their feet (while taking both large subsidies and charging customers large fees) in rolling out fast connections to rural areas and towns... their solution? Direct control, investment and ownership of the physical infrastructure... government driven expansion towards universal fast access (as has already happened in some other countries). Lots of people laughed. And it's no longer on the table. But it seemed a sound approach to me... small companies can be spread everywhere, and people can successfully work from anywhere, IF the infrastructure supports it. Making it so would be genuine "levelling up" of the regions.
the Labour party said it was
Sounds like they were trying to stay relevant rather than concentrating on the main issues of not having reliable and weather resistant electricity
Odd thing to say, like a political party in government can only address one infrastructure at a time. 🤷🏻
@mick_r - thanks for the kind words about B4RN. I'm also a customer. Plus, I work for B4RN developing new project areas. I like the term "comically good" ' we should use that as our strap line 😜 I'll tell the folks st work...
Not sure about the 4th utility - we don't have gas or mains water here so for me it's the second one. Ironic as I've just got home from a couple of days caving to find no electricity either! Whole dale is down.
We sacked our broadband off, 0.7mb regular broadband. Then fibre came to the cabinet, we were promised faster broadband, realistically that was 2mb but really sketchy, could drop out for a day easily.
We're currently on an EE 4g plan. It mostly does ok. FTTP is imminent with Fibrus so that's something to explore.
Starlink user for over 3 years £75 a month but we recover Vat/Tax so probably £50.
Runs at 160 to 250 mega elons down and about 20 mega elons up. Latency is 28 milliseconds. It has been very reliable and will easily stand netflix, web browsing, streaming music, homeworking etc.
Not cheap but very good
Odd thing to say, like a political party in government can only address one infrastructure at a time
Do you follow the politics of this country over the last 10-15 years
It is apparent to many than the current crop of political parties cant address any infrastructure project coherently at any time.
Hs2
Replacement nuclear
Adequate spread of resources to cover peak production without use of coal tu -let alone getting rid of the gas.
Cutting off the means to be Energy self sufficient then importing en masse by tanker.
Starlink would be have been our next option. Install and rental tho were hefty - thought it was £99 / month and £400 for the kit?
But that's pretty much your non fibre option other than 4G/5G..
Kits 250 and it's 75 a month now.
Either it's selling well and economy of scale or .... More likely. It's not selling well and he needs to get the numbers up
I moved to an area that "just" managed to get FttN. We were all promised fibre years ago but that changed. What we have now is a mixed model of copper, fibre and satellite. A mix of prices. Our area was one of the first to get NBN (copper) now many areas that got copper then got upgraded to fibre. We still have to wait until at LEAST Septemeber this year (so that's close to seven years of copper and sub 80mb connection - for the same prices as others pay for fibre).
5g gives me 700-800 down but despite the potential, it never feels as snappy as the "slow" copper connection.
Given it's 2024, yes not having a future focused infrastructure is a deal breaker for me. (Not that I can be arsed to move now!).
I wish there was a B4RS 😕