Rural(ish) broadband options

We’re moving house soon to a place that’s ever so slightly in the sticks. We’ll both be working from home (yes, we’re those **** who can now work from home so are moving to the country and pushing up house prices, hi), so will need a decent broadband connection.

The broadband speedchecker wotsit on Compare the Market reckons 67mb is available. We asked the owners, who said they got 7mb, but then told us that they use a smart telly to watch stuff rather than Sky, so I reckon they must be getting more than 7mb otherwise a smart telly wouldn’t really work would it?

So, is the broadband speed checker likely to be right? If it isn’t, and 7mb is actually what we’re likely to get, what are the options for getting more? Dedicated ADSL line or something (I realise that possibly old hat now, it’s not my area of expertise)?

What area you moving to?

Can you get a non bt fibre service?

I live in the sticks with no access to decent lines. Started off on phoneline, absolute rubbish. Snow took out lines for three weeks and I was able to get out of contract. Now use Vodafone Mifi. Uses a tiny router, basically a phone without a screen to get 4g broadband. Reception in my area is not great and we get 7-10mb. That is plenty to use netflix/prime etc. It’s £30 quid a month.

Looked into satellite, but was very expensive. We are miles away from any hardware, so can’t offer any advice on getting a line in.

Good luck!

ETA – speedchecker is often wrong as if the property is beyond the reach of the cable (that could be not far away) it’s unlikely that the speed checker will be able to account for this.

Postcode is SK12 2AN, how would I find out about (and what is) a non BT fibre service?

Use the Openreach site and select your target house

For ‘standard’ services check out the BT Wholesale checker – it’ll indicate things like whether FTTP is available and recently observed speeds (if applicable). Use the current phone number if you have it for best accuracy..

Ah-ha, the Openreach site says:

Great news. Superfast Fibre is available at your address.

That’s alright then 🙂

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

Looks like you can get FTTC – how far is the local street box/distribution box from the property?

Looks like you can get FTTC – how far is the local street box/distribution box from the property?

A way I’d imagine, at least half a mile. How could I find out for sure?

I live in an area like that and I’ve never needed more speed(50 down 18up). Best thing is if they could do a ookla speed test checker(or take your laptop and do it there). Maybe the current owners havent got a contract for higher speeds?

https://www.speedtest.net/

Google street view – go from the house back to the Disley Tops road and look for the cabinet

Many rural places are better provided for than places on the fringes. I live 6 miles out of Cambridge, but I have better connections that people in town as they are sharing with many others, whereas I’m sharing with a much smaller pool.

Google street view – go from the house back to the Disley Tops road and look for the cabinet

The nearest box I can find is 1.3 miles away.

This site is pretty accurate in my experience:

https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#6/51.414/-0.641/

Looks like the owners estimate is bang on. Smart TV at medium quality and nobody else using the broadband probably not too bad. Two people WFH would be a struggle I reckon.

Balls.

So, back to, what are the options for getting more?

@IHN – there appears to be a cabinet on the main road to Whaley just at the narrow bit

https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=335283&cabinets=11563

I’ve started/responded to a few threads on what we’ve done. Short summary is:

– We were 4km from nearest cab on a fairly rubbish cable. 5 meg max. Less if it rained 😉

– So installed Three broadband SIM in an dual band LTE router connected to an external omni antenna.

– More variance than fixed line, but last 90 day means are (tested every hour off my Pi using Speedtest) 52 meg down, 14 meg up, 55ms Ping.

– Run multi 4k streams no problem. I’ve been WFH on Teams/Zoom for 9 months with no issue.

– Pros: Cheap- £22/Month no cap, BW sufficient, other options insanely expensive, no land line rental (use a SIP phone for occasional use)

– Cons: some setup (antenna on chimney etc), variable BW (20% either way), sometimes local mast gets taken off line for a few hours.

– Notes: we live near a mast, our cell is uncongested as there’s about 20 hours, 1 road and a few hundred sheep in the cone. Internal router with SIM was only 12 meg and pretty unreliable. Our house has thick walls tho.

I used to live somewhere very similar, realtively close to town but actually quite rural. These are the most challenging properties for new fibre services, so are likely to be left on a poor service.

You have a right to request BT to quote for improved services as <10 Mb is below the USO. Usually a quote would be for a group of houses, where neighbours club together. This could take a long time and be expensive.

I think you are left with 4g router and maybe external aerial as the only viable short term alternative. Many people find this a good if the signal is strong, which it looks like it could be there.

I think you’re going to be looking at a 4G router. Probably both short and long term.

As BT have already upgraded the cabinet, chances are they’re not going to touch it again.

(Worth making sure you actually get decent 4G at the property – I get zero signal where I am).

An outdoor router (that’s both what it is and the name of the company) mounted to the old satellite dish mount with a network cable attached then into a Tenda Mesh network with 4 nodes around the old stone house with thick walls. In the router is an unlimited data EE phone sim. Not a EE router sim as that was more costly and this works just as well.

It’s not stella if you have come from a city with proper high speed broadband but we’re getting 35mbps throughout the house with the mesh (a bit less in the workshop and holiday cottage next door using the outdoor router’s built in wifi). Standard broadband was available here for £10pm (landline and broadband package) more but on a good day it was getting 3mbps so it was a no brainer as wife wfh and netflix etc. The only other option I did consider was one of our phones having an unlimited data contract and using it as a hotspot but that seemed like a lot of faff and not a whole house solution for a relatively small saving. Good 4G here these day mind – 18 months ago we’d have been snookered as there was not even reliable 2G.

We have no landline now and don’t miss it in the slightest.

Actually, I guess Starlink might be a viable long term solution.

Cheers all, will investigate the 4g options.

[strong]IHN[/strong] wrote:

so I reckon they must be getting more than 7mb otherwise a smart telly wouldn’t really work would it?

I can happily watch Iplayer, youtube and netflix to an acceptable resolution on our smart TV and we only get 1.8 mbs. Just need to make sure no-one else uses the network at the same time lol. 6 miles out from the exchange on copper cable.

2 meg will get you SD apparently.

Before we upgraded, we had to schedule who could watch what. At one point I thought the kids were going to call Childline complaining of ‘media poverty’ 😉

All I can say is really get this sorted asap. My internet has really affected my job since the pandemic and WFH; had to move in with my dad for a while whilst we waited to get it sorted.

I’ve started/responded to a few threads on what we’ve done. Short summary is:

– We were 4km from nearest cab on a fairly rubbish cable. 5 meg max. Less if it rained 😉

– So installed Three broadband SIM in an dual band LTE router connected to an external omni antenna.

– More variance than fixed line, but last 90 day means are (tested every hour off my Pi using Speedtest) 52 meg down, 14 meg up, 55ms Ping.

– Run multi 4k streams no problem. I’ve been WFH on Teams/Zoom for 9 months with no issue.

– Pros: Cheap- £22/Month no cap, BW sufficient, other options insanely expensive, no land line rental (use a SIP phone for occasional use)

– Cons: some setup (antenna on chimney etc), variable BW (20% either way), sometimes local mast gets taken off line for a few hours.

– Notes: we live near a mast, our cell is uncongested as there’s about 20 hours, 1 road and a few hundred sheep in the cone. Internal router with SIM was only 12 meg and pretty unreliable. Our house has thick walls tho.

I’d be really interested to know more about what router / aerial set up you have and how it’s all put together. My 4g broadband is adequate but could definitely be a lot better.

There may be a local wireless broadband provider too (not satellite or 4G). We had a wireless connection until we got FTTP a few months ago. A wee dish that connected line of sight to a local mast. I’d see how you go with the fibre available first though.

Is there a local provider? We have these people:

https://www.wessexinternet.com/

The nearest cabinet was 8km away from the village, so people were getting sub 1meg, which I guess made them viable. My neighbours use that, seems good for them. But there’s a new cabinet in the village so I get nearly 80Meg on Plusnet 🙂

We had 0.7mb download speed on regular broadband, Netflix would work once it had buffered (standard definition).

Fibre brought us a temperamental 2.0mb that would crash a lot.

4gee home broadband has been a game changer, streams 4k no issues. Speed can vary but lowest I’ve seen is 20mb all the way up to 90mb.

We get between 2 and 3 weather allowing.

I work from home.

Runs one smart TV OK.

7 would be like a jump into the future.

On the local provider q: Airband appear to be broadening both coverage and technology. They used to be microwave to a ‘village’ and then local cabling. It was expensive and capped and needed line of sight. They seem to be in the fibre game now, might be worth checking out.

Gigaclear – as I’ve said before – are due to deliver us FTTP. But it’s coming up three years late and I’ve no confidence they’ll ever get it done (before funding runs out).

I’d be really interested to know more about what router / aerial set up you have and how it’s all put together. My 4g broadband is adequate but could definitely be a lot better.

We used http://www.solwise.co.uk – They recommended: https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-antenna-omni-xpol-a0001.html and https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-routers-rut240.html – about £200+VAT.

Might be better stuff now. Really helpful if you give them a call. Also 5m restriction for router-antenna cables so our router is in the loft. It gets very hot/cold in there so one of teh reasons we have that router is it’s operating range is huge. Proper little industrial device. Interface is bog slow but it’s super reliable.

Drop me a msg if you have specific questions.

Couple of pics of my mate Rex on our roof. He’s a braver man than me!

We stuck a little shelf in the loft directly under the antenna so had lots of spare in the 5m length

Swapped out the Tenda for Orbi’s as it wasn’t good enough after we’d upgraded to higher speeds! (we did have six nodes tho). Now I also have a couple of cheap smart plugs so I can do an emergency reboot without going into the loft.

Also I can check status and reboot router/modem using my phone and SMS. Dodgy as this sounds it will only respond to my number. It was useful when I was working away because we’re on the boundary of two cells. Sometimes it flicks to the ‘wrong’ one and we go from 50meg to 10meg.

This xmas I’m going to write some automation scripts for HomeAssistant to monitor that value on the router, and do an auto-reboot of the modem (to reset it to the right one).

Oh finally, I also leave the WiFi enabled on the router. In case I think there’s problems with the Orbi (which rarely happens) I can get to the ‘outside’ of them for troubleshoooting.

I have the whole thing in bridge mode, so the only routing interface is the default gateway of the router. The Orbi’s just shovel the traffic that way. DHCP runs off out Pi, as does Ad-guard etc as I like to keep the services separated.

I have a drawing somewhere, I’ll see if I can dig it out.

Superb, thanks for all the info!

I’d love to know what exactly people who work from home do that requires these super fast speeds. OH is on a work MS Teams call as I type this and we max out at 5 Mbps.

Speed varies from 2 (in the morning) to a  max of 5.6, assuming the BT wholesale speed checker is accurate.

I’d love to know what exactly people who work from home do that requires these super fast speeds. OH is on a work MS Teams call as I type this and we max out at 5 Mbps.

That’s interesting. Could you both be on separate Teams calls at the same time and it still cope?

I used to know the farmer there, he converted some buildings to luxury stop overs for business men flying into Manchester , I can’t imagine the broadband would be poor for his clients, go see him and ask.

Google rural broadband for your county. You may find there is a provider. We’re also ‘moving to the country’ in Berkshire (subject to ever getting our local searches back!) – house has got a 900mb fibre connection 😲

@IHN

I think we’ve only been on Teams at the same time once. No problem, but I’m guessing that was a pedal to the metal 5+ speed day. The MS spec for Teams is fairly low – 1.2 Mbps for 720Hd at 30FPS.

OH’s meeting was hampered by a co-worker in Surrey with crap internet, whilst we are at the end of the line on copper and 2+ miles from the exchange.

Next door uses an O2 mobile connection to back up his cable internet as we get a good 4G signal here. Seems to work fine for him.

I can’t help with your query beyond what’s already been suggested. But I can heartily recommend the escape room just North of you in Disley.

Also, there’s a bar just down the road named Malt Disley, which makes me happy.