Broadband Related > FTTC and FTTP Issues

An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...

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GaryW:
I live in a rural location, a fair distance from an ECI DSLAM which in turn is a long way from the exchange.  My FTTC connection syncs at a (banded) 15M down and a pitiful 0.5M up...  The former means no 4K streaming, and the latter makes it almost impossible to work effectively from home (Skype, Webex, Cloud storage, etc).  If I ever get a long enough run of "green" DLM days the download might improve a little, but the upload will still be dreadful.

Supposedly Kent County Council is working with BDUK to get funding for FTTP for our area, but it never seems to make any progress...and of course the target for full UK coverage is 2033 so it could be a long wait!

So, what to do?  Answer: 4G!

I've just got my hands on a 4GEE home router (500GB per month data allowance) and because I'm fortunate enough to have open fields between by Utility window and the EE mast (which is a couple of km away) I'm getting 45-80Mb down (depending on time of day) and 15-16Mb up.  So that's 3-5 times better downstream and 30+ times better upstream.  Yes it's expensive, and the 500GB limit is marginal (so my daughter is on her own "Netflix" network on the crappy FTTC line!) but it works...  And by the time we finally get FTTP, 5G will be here with near gigabit/s downstream and (hopefully) effectively unlimited data allowances.

Makes me wonder if FTTP will have outlived its usefulness before we ever get it in the sticks?  Is it the equivalent of my friends who wired their houses for (slow!) Ethernet in the days before wi-fi?

Ronski:
Wasn't Three doing their Unlimited SIM for £20 a month recently?

niemand:
They are around that ballpark, however their network does suck so buyer beware.

Ronski:
I've been with Three for many years, to me the service has only improved. Sat in bed I get 82/33 Mbps, ping 36ms, jitter 7ms loss 1.3% on the speed test. Net app. The download is better than fttc, and the upload is better than fttc & VM added together.

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/4574751426

 Roberto on TBB I believe is using a Three unlimited sim for broadband now although I haven't read his thread recently.

ETA just hit 100Mbps down https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/4574762663

GaryW:

--- Quote from: Ronski on January 05, 2019, 09:10:56 PM ---Wasn't Three doing their Unlimited SIM for £20 a month recently?

--- End quote ---

It does depend on where you are - EE's far and away the best signal/data-rate where we are (and sadly 3 is next to useless as we don't have decent line-of-sight to the mast).  £20 a month would be much nicer than £100 a month though!  Also, the unlimited 3 SIM isn't actually unlimited - there's a 1TB cap (still very good, but not truly unlimited).

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