Just wondering what alternatives are out there to current land line plus BT broadband package.

The landline never gets used and our connection speed it dire (slower than 3g). Live in the sticks and despite fibre being promised by BT for the last few years nothing has changed. Feels like we’re paying over the odds for a fairly crappy service.

Usage is about 40gb per month and is mostly internet and work via phones and laptop, no tv/games consoles etc. We do get 3g so maybe a dongle type thing could work (but only on laptop?), Ive a spare phone that could be used via tethering on an unlimited internet contract or possibly some sort of satellite service would offer better value?

Anyone have any suggestions/recomendations?

PlusNet seem ok for me. They can also take over a line when other 3d party providers can’t.

As I’m sure you realise, any other provider will be using the same wires into your house and are therefore unlikely to be any faster.

Satellite still needs a landline for upload.

3G might be an option but I can’t imagine it would be cost-effective?

Sorry, yes I realise it’s the distance from the exchange, line in etc that is causing the speed issue and was wondering if there are any alternatives that don’t require a line in.

3/4G would actually work out cheaper that what we’re currently paying* but I’d imagine would be more of a faff connecting to it with multiple devices.

*we’re that far from civilisation we have to pay the max for line rental.

Give the 3/4G tethering option a try first to see if it’s uasable.
I had to do this a few weeks ago when some numpty cut through the Phone cable near the box while digging the road to replace electricity cables.
It seemed to work OK with multiple devices connected.

I’ve had to do similar before (squirrels not numpties in this case) and it seemed to work ok but when using the laptop it does try to render stuff in low res on certain sites, I’m guessing as the connection is coming through a phone it is trying to optimise for that and speed up load times.

Ironically it was actually about twice the speed of usual the broadband connection.

You can get 3G/4G stand alone ‘hotspots’ so you have a little internet connected WLAN.. and if you get 3G now, chances are high you’ll get 4G soonish. Just gone from nothing to 4Gb at my my place, also middle of nowhere (for the South at least) and I don’t switch the wifi on on my phone anymore, it’s a far better connection.

Switched to plusnet after a long while with BT, significantly cheaper, fairly smooth changeover (apart from plusnet taking over line independently rather than asking for a MAC code and BT trying to charge for this).

Speed is possibly a little slower but don’t tend to use it for really high speed stuff – BBC Iplayer fine.

(as above though, will be same lines and may not solve problem if a distance/exchange thing)

Plusnet is owned by BT IIRC.

Apparently some 3rd party suppliers are faster than others if they have their own equipment in the exchange. Don’t know how you can find this out but my BIL swears that where we live you get a faster service from SKY than anyone else for this reason.

I switched to EE when I renewed our mobile contracts and got 4G phones.
The all in one package of calls, broadband, mobiles etc was a good bit cheaper than BT.
Plus I managed to get 20GB of mobile data thrown in.

Same speeds as the infinity that BT provide and a very easy switch.

Brassneck – that’s the sort of think I think I’m going to look into, only problem is I’m struggling to find any that offer more than 15gb a month at the moment. Maybe combine that with an unlimited data contract on my mobile could be an option.

Other options above all still require a landline which I’m trying to avoid. We’re too far from the exchange to qualify for any reduced rates from Plus Net.

Zen solved my inconsistent speed issues but not cheap.

You need to look at who offers LLU in your exchange, use sam knows website to find out.

They’re the ones with their own equipment in your exchange and generally will offer a higher speed than BT or any of the BT wholesale companies.

Usually it’ll be Sky thats in as they took over be / o2 broadband who had a lot of coverage.

And if you take out tv/tinternet/phone with sky i think there’s an offer for a free 32″ telly at the moment!

Dont think you’re going to find a solution without a landline.

+1 for Zen. Expensive, but you get what you pay for… the best customer service by miles.

You can get routers for dongles that plug the dongle into the router to create a WIFI network. (such as this – http://www.dabs.com/products/tp-link-150mbps-portable-3g-wireless-n-router-7W60.html ) Its pretty effective but latency on 3G is noticeable compared to a decent landline service. As mentioned PlusNet is a BT owned company so don’t expect to improve service that way.