Emerging From The Dark Ages

[Lazarus]

The sound of many diggers and the sight of green underground ducting heralds the long, long awaited installation of Fibre in our village.

Many years of procrastination, disorganisation and the quest for funding resulted in a firm promise that we would be up and running in Spring .......

...... 2025!

Still, mustn't grumble. Mind you the present lot of workpersons are only going as far as putting connection boxes out in the service margin, so who knows how much longer before the final leg into each property is completed.

Anyone else still stuck with copper wires, 4 or 5 G Mobile or (as we have) Fixed Wireless Access?

 

[vma]

Just get Starlink. It really rules.
I have a property in the remote part of the montains in a village with 40 people.
Thanks to Starlink I have 100-300MBit/s. Can work in home office from there with RDP to my regular main computer, Teams, etc.

 

[timo_w2s]

The price of Starlink in the UK can be very high compared to other options like 4G/5G but they are starting to bring in cheaper contracts as long as you don't live in the South East of the UK.

Luckily CityFibre finally passed our house in Maidenhead a couple of years ago so we now have 500Mbps up and down for less than the old copper VDSL 37Mbps/8Mbps service. I like the ability to stream HD channels or recordings from one Linux satellite box to another over a VPN connection. A few years ago when I was still using a Slingbox to really compress the video quality down to less than SD, that would have seemed like an absurd thing to do.

 

[Channel Hopper]

The sound of many diggers and the sight of green underground ducting heralds the long, long awaited installation of Fibre in our village.

Many years of procrastination, disorganisation and the quest for funding resulted in a firm promise that we would be up and running in Spring .......

...... 2025!

Still, mustn't grumble. Mind you the present lot of workpersons are only going as far as putting connection boxes out in the service margin, so who knows how much longer before the final leg into each property is completed.

Anyone else still stuck with copper wires, 4 or 5 G Mobile or (as we have) Fixed Wireless Access?

Got VM here on a coaxial from the pit a hundred metres away, never checked if there is copper in the conductors (but I doubt it)

Streets ahead of the parallel twin copper from a BT pole 20m away, even after the Openwretches discovered a known two year fault that cost us a few thousand pounds.
Ombudsman you say ?

 

[Terryl]

I have an AT&T hot spot, 125 down/23 up, $22 a month unlimited data.

 

[vma]

I didn't realize Starlink is more expensive in the UK!

 

[rolfw]

The price of Starlink in the UK can be very high compared to other options like 4G/5G but they are starting to bring in cheaper contracts as long as you don't live in the South East of the UK.

Luckily CityFibre finally passed our house in Maidenhead a couple of years ago so we now have 500Mbps up and down for less than the old copper VDSL 37Mbps/8Mbps service. I like the ability to stream HD channels or recordings from one Linux satellite box to another over a VPN connection. A few years ago when I was still using a Slingbox to really compress the video quality down to less than SD, that would have seemed like an absurd thing to do.

Starlink now offer an upto 100mbps for £35 per month in the UK and you can swap between speeds on a monthly basis f you require more bandwidth for a period of time.

 

[vma]

That is ok, I would say. 100mbps is more than enough for normal users.

 

[timo_w2s]

Starlink now offer an upto 100mbps for £35 per month in the UK and you can swap between speeds on a monthly basis f you require more bandwidth for a period of time.

As long as you don't live in the South East. It's still listed as costing £75/month plus a one-off "demand surcharge" for me if I'd want to sign up in Maidenhead.

 

[rolfw]

As long as you don't live in the South East. It's still listed as costing £75/month plus a one-off "demand surcharge" for me if I'd want to sign up in Maidenhead.

I don't think that's the case now, just put my Berkshire postcode in and it shows no congestion charge, but only offers the full speed package at £75 per month.

 

[Lazarus]

Well, this is hilarious - just been out for a walk in the lanes by the village and discovered two raggedy orange cable ends stuck up in the air. Putting two and two together, the incoming (but not yet live) run to the village had been severed by a local farmer who had his digger out a few days ago to clear an additional path for flood water to escape into a watercourse. He did the latter as a favour to us all as otherwise the lane was impassable to cars.

No doubt it'll be spliced well before go-live date - but better it happened now than later!

 

[Terryl]

Starlink is ok untell you get a heavy thunder storm or snow storm in the way

 

[dankargo]

Openreach still hasn’t provided FTTP in our village. The checker website has been claiming “We’re building in this area in the next year” for three years now so I’ve lost faith in it. Interestingly Openreach also listed our telephone exchange for closure. I’m unsure how they’ll manage that unless they finally stick to their word or simply leave a whole village without internet access. I’ve never been particularly desperate for FTTP though. I currently have a solid 70mbps down and 19mbps up on FTTC and I've never really needed anything faster. But if they finally make it available soon I’ll definitely take the upgrade.

 

[Lazarus]

^^^^

Thankfully, Openreach are not involved here - the funding was given to Quickline, who also happen to be the provider of the excellent FWA Broadband we have had hitherto.

 

[Channel Hopper]

As long as you don't live in the South East. It's still listed as costing £75/month plus a one-off "demand surcharge" for me if I'd want to sign up in Maidenhead.

Good thing you are not moving to Maidstone...

 

[rolfw]

Starlink is ok untell you get a heavy thunder storm or snow storm in the way

Starlink doesn't appear to be particularly heavily affected by adverse weather conditions, but then again we probably don't get the really heavy snow storms as in the USA.