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Rural Internet Connections |
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#1 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Rural Internet Connections
It's a scandal really.
My Aunt and Uncle only recently had terrible connection speeds in deepest, darkest Lincolnshire. Couldn't watch YouTube or iPlayer or anything we take for granted. Normal websites often time-out too. They solved that by moving to Nottingham city. Nice little story here of how other options are available http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37974267 |
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#2 |
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: County Durham
Posts: 78,615
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I think BT will have been concentrating on areas where there was enough of a return to be made. I think rural areas will eventually get access to very fast broadband, but only after all the heavy populated areas get it first. In my opinion, BT's priority will be to lay fibre for all the areas that will give them a good return and then maybe they'll get around to laying fibre in rural areas.
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#3 |
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: Just here, inside my head.
Posts: 5,278
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Part of the joys of living in the sticks.
We live in a small village (Less than 150 homes, no shops ) and regularly have power cuts in the winter, no mains gas and a bus once an hour with the last one through at 7.00pm. T'internets not too bad funny enough. |
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#4 |
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Quote:
I think BT will have been concentrating on areas where there was enough of a return to be made. I think rural areas will eventually get access to very fast broadband, but only after all the heavy populated areas get it first. In my opinion, BT's priority will be to lay fibre for all the areas that will give them a good return and then maybe they'll get around to laying fibre in rural areas.
If we are to be a First World Country, some solutions must be made more available. |
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#5 |
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 1,206
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Quote:
Part of the joys of living in the sticks.
We live in a small village (Less than 150 homes, no shops ) and regularly have power cuts in the winter, no mains gas and a bus once an hour with the last one through at 7.00pm. T'internets not too bad funny enough. People think village life is idyllic. I hated it. |
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#6 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 14,636
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Quote:
I can accept that, to some extent, but BT have been pleading poverty or Market Economy for 20 years.
If we are to be a First World Country, some solutions must be made more available. Stuff is happening though. Over here on the other side of the Tamar, they seem to be working on the back of beyond now. I've had fibre for about 5 years but I live in a mid sized village. No mains gas though - and I did have to wait until 2005 to get broadband at all. I visited the grandparents last week and noticed that there's a shiny new green cabinet around the corner from them (they live in a very rural country road, there are houses around theirs but not many). Their line was an exchange only line which probably held up any upgrades. Meanwhile, I'm about to move to a large suburb of a major county town and it seems that I'll be in for a bit of a wait for fibre. Who said it was only a rural problem? |
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#7 |
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Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 2,324
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They have a project to improve rural broadband here in Northern Ireland. The result now my parents who live about 5 miles from anywhere have fibre while myself in a small village only have exchange only which is heavily oversubscribed, I get about 2mb down at night.
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#8 |
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 4,474
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I'm not even in the sticks but for whatever reason l'm one of cabinets on the exchange they didn't bother with. I get cracking speeds through 4G though so I have a large data allowance and tether a lot.
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#9 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: S.West England.
Posts: 18,032
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Broadly speaking our market town can have fibre speeds up to about 40mb (depending on exact location in relation to the street cabinate) but there's no fibre to your home option.
Normal broadband is slower - I haven't upgraded to fibre, so my regular broadband is 7mb. |
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#10 |
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Quote:
They've only been doing "fibre" for about 6 years however.
But they have been upgrading the National Network (between exchanges) with fibre since the late 80s and through the 90s. (My company was a supplier of fibre related equipment, to BT, doing that) But Rural areas were low on the list. So you might only get 500kbps instead of 2 or 4 or 8Mbps. I'm not 'demanding' Superfast fibre for all now, but you should at least be able to get 4 or 8Mbps until further infrastructure is available at 10s or 100s of Mbps. |
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#11 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Many of those 'low on the list' were also permanently written off as being too difficult or uneconomic
It isn't cheap to for a big company to negotiate rights of way and contracts and dig miles across fields with various landowners. Some landowners also refuse or demand high compensation. The volunteer, Community Action seems cheaper and more likely to succeed with local landowners (farmers). I hope they do have agreements though about what happens when a farm is sold, for economic or bereavement reasons. Will the new owners honour the rights of way? |
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#12 |
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: London
Posts: 7,514
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Quote:
But they have been upgrading the National Network (between exchanges) with fibre since the late 80s and through the 90s. (My company was a supplier of fibre related equipment, to BT, doing that)
. Most of the early deployment was in wales which had more fibre than the rest if the world..... |
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#13 |
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Scottish Countryside
Posts: 2,320
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We actually got quite a dramatic boost from 256kb/s to 1.5mb/s. That difference was actually incredible. Made downloading games an actual viable option rather than having to leave the computer on all night.
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#14 |
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Quote:
See p 8 of this article https://www.theitp.org/knowledge_hub.../Short_History
Most of the early deployment was in wales which had more fibre than the rest if the world..... For some reason, our Order Processing woman took to dyslexia and we had several urgent wrong deliveries that went to Croydon. She got the hang of it in the end. Fascinating link. Paper/Article. Highly technical. I've always been a little in awe of people who understand the networks inside out, seemingly learning by osmosis. We understood Optical Fibre Technology inside out. But thats like saying you understand copper wires and soldering irons, it doesn't give the bigger picture of the infrastucture. To fill gaps in our knowledge, we did once have a very nice day long seminar by an ex-BT Engineer who explained quite a lot (D-side and E-side Exchange Cabling, MDFs, etc, and how chavvy bandits disable all the burglar alarms in a neighbourhood, and nick the copper and how dog pee is a major corrosion problem on steel Green Cabinets) |
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#15 |
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: UK
Posts: 1,975
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Quote:
Wow, a bus until 7 pm. Luxury! The village I used to live in had three buses a day, the last one being 2 pm. Though we had no gas either. You either had to have an oil tank in your back garden, or manage with propane tanks, and have a wood burner for a fire. The Internet was totally crappy.
People think village life is idyllic. I hated it. No shops, no pubs, no post office just houses. Buses only comes up a few times. I think 7pm was the last as well. Or you walk. A walk is about 30 - 45 minutes into town. There is maybe 80 or 90 houses. |
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#16 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: S.West England.
Posts: 18,032
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you can also get satellite 2-way broadband for your home. The one main supplier around here offers speeds upto 30-40Mb. You do need a dish, and you cant use a sky dish (just in case anyone was wondering). I understand its not great for online gaming, but that aside its a consideration for anyone living with zero fibre broadband coverage.
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#17 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Buckingham
Posts: 28,534
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Quote:
No shops, no pubs, no post office just houses
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#18 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: goo goo ka choo
Posts: 25,475
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Quote:
It's a scandal really.
My Aunt and Uncle only recently had terrible connection speeds in deepest, darkest Lincolnshire. Couldn't watch YouTube or iPlayer or anything we take for granted. Normal websites often time-out too. They solved that by moving to Nottingham city. Nice little story here of how other options are available http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37974267 ![]() I had faster speeds on dial up in London years ago! :
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#19 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,921
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Quote:
It's a scandal really.
My Aunt and Uncle only recently had terrible connection speeds in deepest, darkest Lincolnshire. Couldn't watch YouTube or iPlayer or anything we take for granted. Normal websites often time-out too. They solved that by moving to Nottingham city. Nice little story here of how other options are available http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37974267 Well, we live in darkest North Cornwall, not even in a village (though it's not isolated) and for some reason Cornwall was earmarked for the fibre-optic upgrade. Not we get no problems with speed at all, very fast, though very occasionally the supply drops off altogether for 20 seconds or so. Don't know why that is, but it does. |
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#20 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 6,771
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I live in a village in NI. Internet is quite good here and we even have fibre Internet. Mobile phone signal is another story. We're near the Irish border so we either get O2 Ireland or no network at all. Although, my phone has actually been on O2 UK for 2 weeks so I'm wondering if something has been done here to solve the problem.
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#21 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 5,741
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The whole rural broadband thing is a total mess. In a lot of cases rural locations have better provision than the major cities since the government mandated that public money be ploughed into making it happen. If you live in a city it is purely done on commercial grounds and the only way you will get any assistance from the government is if you are a large company willing to subsidise a hefty installation.
The other issue is that coverage stats are majorly fiddled. Openreach claim near 100% coverage in a lot of cities but fail to mention the countless estates that aren't served because a fibre cab was never installed or because EO lines were used. People in this boat could be waiting years for any kind of upgrade. For such a developed nation we have a pathetic broadband infrastructure and rather than working on improving it we seem to just be cutting corners and lowering our targets to please the MPs. I guess as long as the connection is fast enough for them to process their snooping data that is the important thing. |
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#22 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 14,636
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Quote:
No, they have been widely doing that (FTTC/FTTH) Green Cabinet stuff only recently.
But they have been upgrading the National Network (between exchanges) with fibre since the late 80s and through the 90s. (My company was a supplier of fibre related equipment, to BT, doing that). BT, as you say, hasn't had a problem getting backhaul to exchanges for years - but this isn't really the problem. The problem is the access network and it is only around 2011 that BT finally woke up and did something about it. Quote:
But Rural areas were low on the list. So you might only get 500kbps instead of 2 or 4 or 8Mbps.
I'm not 'demanding' Superfast fibre for all now, but you should at least be able to get 4 or 8Mbps until further infrastructure is available at 10s or 100s of Mbps. The problem is line length - and that is something that will never be overcome by providing exchanges with more backhaul capacity. As you are probably aware, the only way to fix that is to reduce the copper length, and that's what BT has been doing with its FTT* rollout. I mean, I am fortunate that my line was both short and free of defects - so I was on 8Mbps for years (right up until I could get FTTC). Many rural dwellers are in a position like mine. I was able to get 8Mbps on the same day that millions of others could - rural and urban - as BT switched it on nationwide almost in one go. And if you're going to spend tons of money on putting in miles of fibre + cabinets to serve rural areas, you might as well push the boat out and offer high performance too. Hence 40/80/160/330 and soon 1Gbps (depending on whether you can get VDSL, G.fast or FTTP) 4 or 8Mbps is rather pointless too, given that it looks set that BT will have a 10Mbps USO placed on it. You can't do that purely with ADSL from exchanges - you need to do that with FTTC and FTTH (or maybe 4G now that they own EE) |
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#23 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 14,636
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Quote:
The other issue is that coverage stats are majorly fiddled. Openreach claim near 100% coverage in a lot of cities but fail to mention the countless estates that aren't served because a fibre cab was never installed or because EO lines were used. People in this boat could be waiting years for any kind of upgrade.
Openreach insists on working on an "exchange" basis when your local exchange may actually have nothing to do with the FTT* network where you live. I know for a fact that the fibre cabinets (and the FTTP network) in my village doesn't touch the local exchange, it runs to the nearby town, and is terminated at an OLT there. Openreach actually upgraded my cabinet first, and then took the best part of two years to come back and do some more. So my exchange appears as "enabled" even though nothing was done to it, and my village shows up on the stats even though literally one road was the only one who had been upgraded. |
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#24 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Devon
Posts: 12,833
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Sorry, I wasn't being pedantic. Just sharing whatever knowledge and experience I have, as you others are doing too.
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#25 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 5,103
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Quote:
Part of the joys of living in the sticks.
We live in a small village (Less than 150 homes, no shops ) and regularly have power cuts in the winter, no mains gas and a bus once an hour with the last one through at 7.00pm. T'internets not too bad funny enough. |
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