Improving your internet (short of digging a trench)

A while ago I asked about recommendations for places to live in Northumberland and received a number of very helpful replies. On a trip to look around just now we saw a house we really liked that ticked a lot of boxes, but … the mobile phone reception was rubbish and the internet speed was very low. Probably this seems like the dumbest thing in the world, but regardless of how pretty the location, internet is important to us, for work and leisure.

So – 2 questions:

1. Is there any way of getting a better internet service short of digging a trench to a fibre cabinet?
2. (Local knowledge) – is it always going to be the case that rural Northumberland has rubbish internet, or were we just unlucky to like the wrong house?

I’ve heard that everything about Northumberland is rubbish and that we’re not to go there.

I’ve heard that everything about Northumberland is rubbish and that we’re not to go there.

Me too, but I was born contrary :-)

4G routers are good and 5G is on the horizon. You said mobile signal was rubbish, is that just on your provider? Do you have an option of alternative provider with better signal?

Lack of mobile signal you might be able to live with if you can get decent Internet and use WiFi calling instead. When you say the Internet speed was very low – how did you find that out?

Some info here http://www.inorthumberland.org.uk/

My parents have the same issue in the Quantocks, on the very end of a copper phone line a couple of miles from the exchange, with cables strung though trees and poorly maintained. Made some progress when a fallen tree brought the line down, and I pushed for Openreach to check everything and they went from < 1 to > 4 Mbps, so at least it’s usable now.

Currently looking into what fixed-WiFi is available. Got one company interested and coming out to do a survey.

(Local knowledge) – is it always going to be the case that rural Northumberland has rubbish internet, or were we just unlucky to like the wrong house?

Which area? Keeping in mind there’s still some farms off the national grid.

This might be of benefit

https://www.alncom.co.uk/rural-broadband/

@drac – near Bamburgh.

In that case I’d check other providers EE is pretty good around there and Three.

In case you missed my Edit https://www.alncom.co.uk/rural-broadband/

Any other schemes available other than cable? I’m in rural Norfolk and for those villages with slow broadband, there is a scheme called “SpireSat” where they place sat. dish on tops of local churches if enough people sign up.

Other thing to do is to speak to locals see what they say?

<edit>Repeated previous post</edit>

near Bamburgh

Good choice, truly beautiful part of the world

What does it say here? http://dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

(i.e. is conventional internet slow because current residents bought slower package than is available, or is it just destined to be slow?)

If slow, digging a trench is still only an option if there’s somewhere to dig to. Is FTTP on demand available on my link above? If so you can dig to BT. But that gets expensive fast (prohibitively so). If there’s a local scheme (like, say b4rn in Cumbria) you could dig to that. Unlikely though.

Other options:
4g home broadband.3 and EE both offer something. Try and check coverage. You can mount antenna outside to improve things.
Satellite internet. SpaceX will come to your rescue eventually. In the meantime, it’s expensive but can actually be OK. Low latency means bad for gaming /video calling. Other uses it’s fine.
Wireless broadband. There are providers scattered all over. Their marketing is always rubbish, like they’d rather be kept a secret. I don’t know of any website that lists them. Get googling. They’ll survey coverage for free if you’re in their zone.

When this affected me, there were grants available to cover some of the cost difference between weird desperate internet and conventional internet. I don’t know if these schemes are still running.

If you are tensing up reading this, just buy a different house.

Or use it to knock down cost of house, then use the money you saved on expensive satellite connection whilst you wait for better broadband or mobile options.

Are B4rn doing anything in the North East? Sounds like the service they offer in the North West is pretty good.

Have a look for a local ‘rural wireless broadband’ provider. We were on a terrible copper connection, speeds rarely beyond 1 mbps. We now have a line of sight wireless link to a relay a few miles away on a farm and get 10 mbps. We are capped at 100GB per month for £25 but we’re yet to exceed that. I guess in cost/download limit terms it’s not directly comparable but it’s far less frustrating than our old connection.

Edit: quite a lot more people replied with the same in the time it took me to finally hit post – I’d agree with the comment ‘it’s like the don’t want to be found’ regarding the marketing of wireless broadband!

What does it say here? http://dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

It says downstream rate “up to 1 Mbps” so it seems destined to be crap :-(

Thanks for all the other info about non-conventional connections!!

Probably this seems like the dumbest thing in the world,

Not at all, connectivity is a lot more important to some people than just Netflix and Amazon.

why not just dig a trench?

@drac – near Bamburgh.

Flipping flip, I’m jealous. I love where I currently live, but there are few places on Earth more wonderful than up around Bamburgh.

why not just dig a trench?

Or just use existing poles to string the fibre.

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Fibre-broadband/FTTP-in-a-rural-property/td-p/1905297

Point to point WiFi would be my choice. Depending on your technical skills possible to DIY

the mobile phone reception was rubbish

For every network? Check EE / 3 / vodafone / O2 to see if they have 4G there, which will also solve your ropey internet connection now that they do more or less unlimited packages and decent routers.

Are B4rn doing anything in the North East? Sounds like the service they offer in the North West is pretty good.

B4RN are awesome, one of the co-founders is a friend of mine. They cover the North West, I don’t think they’re as far over as Northumberland yet but you can check here: https://b4rn.org.uk/postcode-checker/

Check the rural broadband providers (subsidised by central government):

Welcome

https://www.alncom.co.uk/rural-broadband/

The samknows website is normally fairly accurate:

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker?address=true

4G routers are good and 5G is on the horizon.

5g range is shorter than 4g, so I’m not sure that’s going to help.