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Author Topic: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...  (Read 2942 times)

GaryW

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An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« on: January 05, 2019, 05:51:05 PM »

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?
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Ronski

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2019, 09:10:56 PM »

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

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2019, 10:03:12 PM »

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

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2019, 08:55:35 AM »

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
« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 09:03:40 AM by Ronski »
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GaryW

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2019, 12:53:53 PM »

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

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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j0hn

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2019, 02:30:03 PM »

Also, the unlimited 3 SIM isn't actually unlimited - there's a 1TB cap (still very good, but not truly unlimited).

There is no strict "cap" on 3's unlimited packages.

“Even if you used your phone for every minute of every day you could only use, subject to TrafficSense™, around 1000GB each month. We may use this cap to identify inappropriate use of the service, such as commercial use, which isn’t permitted under our terms and conditions”

They're covering their back with T&C's like that and who can blame them.
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Ronski

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2019, 04:01:13 PM »

Gary, have you tried an external antenna, perhaps on the highest point on the house?
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niemand

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2019, 08:38:35 PM »

Glad to hear it, Ronski, Three is utter arsecandle here. In town you're talking sub-100kb on full 4G+ carrier aggregation signal with jitter near a second.
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GaryW

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2019, 05:38:55 PM »

Gary, have you tried an external antenna, perhaps on the highest point on the house?

I haven't, but may try it at some point (listed building though, so strictly speaking I can't without permission...).  I have upgraded from the standard EE hub to a Huawei B618, which has improved the downstream by about 20-25% (now peaks at 100M) and the upstream by about 100% (now peaks at 30M).  On the one hand that's enough, but on the other hand I suspect curiosity will get the better of me  :)
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Ronski

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2019, 07:34:24 PM »

So long as they can't see it from the road/paths you should be fine  :fingers: I used to own a grade 2 listed building once, never again.
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Balb0wa

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2019, 10:12:15 AM »

Im close to switching to 4G when my BT broadband ends, currently get 15 down and 1 up on fttc! cant see it ever getting better ,no gfast coming here.

Currently have a 4G Virgin sim in my phone ,i pay £20 for 300GB , i get 50+ down and 10-20 up , might be even better with a proper 4G router and external antenna.
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GaryW

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2019, 02:44:36 PM »

Im close to switching to 4G when my BT broadband ends, currently get 15 down and 1 up on fttc! cant see it ever getting better ,no gfast coming here.

Currently have a 4G Virgin sim in my phone ,i pay £20 for 300GB , i get 50+ down and 10-20 up , might be even better with a proper 4G router and external antenna.

By spooky coincidence, my wife's mobile on EE (used by Virgin) gets 50 down and 10 up and a decent router (Huawei b618) with internal antenna in the same spot gets 100 down and 30 up.
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GaryW

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2019, 01:58:18 PM »

Just a quick update in case it's of use to anyone...

Out of curiosity, I've also tried a 3 unlimited data PAYG phone sim in the B618 - £35 per month.  It works OK, but does have limitations versus EE.  I believe the EE mast and 3 mast are very close to each other where I live but for whatever reason the 3 signal strength and SINR are worse than EE - about 10db less for RSRP and about the same difference for SINR.  The download and upload are still pretty reasonable: typical 55Mb down (versus typical 80+Mb for EE) and 7-8Mb up (versus 15-20Mb for EE).  I also seem to be lucky in that the 3 performance doesn't nosedive at peak times, which is a common complaint for many.  The big negative is latency - ping delay is around 40ms for 3 versus around 20ms for EE.  Streaming is fine, but loading web pages, etc is much clunkier.

I'm probably going to stick with EE (500GB per month) as my main option with the 3 PAYG SIM for those odd periods when we're downloading more than usual - it's expensive, but sadly in this case you get what you pay for.  It does mean I'll have an alternative backup option to my grossly over-priced and under-performing BT Infinity so can ditch it as soon as I'm out of contract....
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Ronski

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2019, 05:29:43 PM »

At least these options are becoming more affordable now. Is that with an external antenna?
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GaryW

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Re: An alternative to waiting until 2033 for decent broadband...
« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2019, 03:11:02 PM »

At least these options are becoming more affordable now. Is that with an external antenna?

This is all with the the router's built-in antenna, sitting on the utility window sill...which is quite amazing really.  I did try the router on an upstairs window sill which improved the RSRP from around -95dBm to around -85dBm but it made no difference to transfer rates - although putting it a slightly different location downstairs where RSRP was around -100dBm did drop the rates a little, so it seems like -95dBm is the point at which I get all I'm going to get (and that does correspond to 5 bars on the router).  Upstairs could be useful in future though if I have problems when all those pesky leaves are on the trees!
« Last Edit: January 17, 2019, 03:30:23 PM by GaryW »
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