Internet access alternatives

I have full fibre with BT and find the service excellent.

Have been with them for 20 years and have no complaints.

Do you really need 900Mbps for home use?

Well if you had 2 adults working from home plus 3 teenagers using the net and watching different video sources then it could be handy. If you don't want 900 you can get several packages at lower cost and lower speeds. Fibre isn't just higher speed it's also more reliable and lower cost than copper.

I got a sweet deal from Sky. I did rather wonder if they were trying to sign me up pronto before 4G knocked the bottom out of the market, but no complaints. Being geriatric I have a weird notion that land lines are sort of essential, like TV licences and manual gearboxes

My D-i-L is down from Drumnadrochit for the weekend. She down-loaded a film, to watch later, in only a few minutes (I don’t actually know how long but she was well impressed) and ours is not a super fast connection, as far as I know - we may have got an improved rate recently (or soon to get one for no more cost from shell energy/broadband).

At home, she reported that trying to do the same at home resulted in only getting to 58% overnight!

When I started back in the early 80's I built an accoustic modem at 300baud, computer was a Sharp MZ80K and the software was written in Fortran. Gradually moving up in spoeed to 1200, 2400 4800 and 9600 baud. I was lucky in that I had access to high quality high speed (then) modems.

Then we had PCI card modems at 33k baud which was a huge leap in speed from a much cheaper source.

Always wanting to go faster, I went onto ISDN, 2 * 64kbit channels (and twice the cost if you used both).

It was years later, when one of my sons got married that I found out everyone wanted to come to his house because we had the fastest internet.

Working for BT at the time, I was involved in planning work for the rollout of broadband, which was a game changer. I made sure I was on the list whyen it became available in my area.

Unfortunastely I live on the boundary of two exchanges, which seriously affected the max speed available (I was lucky to get 2mbit, no chance to get the max 8mbit). there were some areas though that could not go on broadband at all as they were on aluminium cable.

As soon as Fibre was available, I signed up straght away and have not looked back. I have just been connected to FTTP @ 150Mbit (from 65Mbit on FTTC) which is fast enough for me (for now).

The land line has gone, did not use it much anyway, most of us have mobiles these days.

Now, before anyone gets up in arms about no land lines (the future of BT), I used to work for the fire service in the IT department, as I was responsible for Wan and communications I had to install and maintain an externally fitted land line for the use of the public to call out the fire brigade should there be an emergency.

When we moved on to a digital phone system I tried to argue that these phones were not needed and we could save a large amount of money (same principle with Fax machines).

Oh! no, can't do that they said, so I started to look for and gather statistics to prove they were not needed.

I gathered information for 12 months regarding use of these phones at every fire station we covered.

Not one call was from a member oif the public, the only calls on the system were test calls made by the station poersonel as part of their monthly routine.

Just because you do something a particular way, does not mean it should always be done that way, technology moves on and we should move with it or be left behind.

Just saying ,

Not needed for ordinary emailing and browsing the web, but high bandwidths are highly desirable as soon as streaming services are used. And as John says, a few teenagers in the house will shift serious traffic.

In the last 11 days my daughter, who only visits on Sundays, downloaded 1.92Gb to her phone and 72Gb to her laptop. I downloaded 75Gb to my computers, but the big hitter is a Roku Streaming Stick which took 116Gb. (A streaming stick plugs into a TV's HDMI socket and allows the television to connect to dozens of on-demand providers. High-definition telly, not Youtube videos! Streaming has changed my viewing habits - only about 20% of what I watch needs an aerial. Many households have 3 or more streaming TVs, and need lots of bandwidth.

Fast response times feel good too - using the internet is less sticky when data arrives in a blink. The experience is much better than an old computer with a slow internet connection. And because the fast network has more capacity, it's less likely that busy neighbours will cause bother.

High UP speeds are useful if one wants to host a home website or to share video with relatives.

For my purposes, 140Mb/s down 12Mb/s up is more than adequate. I managed well enough with 10Mb/s down & 1.2Mb/s up but the web felt clunky, TV fed with an experimental media server buffered, and major operating system upgrades took hours rather than minutes.

Getting faster internet cured a few problems. I suspect these were caused by time-outs resulting from old school network delays. The faster service isn't perfect where I live, but it's close. I'm tempted to upgrade to full fibre, but can't really justify it. Maybe if I get ill and have to watch TV all day...

Dave

Just an update with some additional info

My original setup was on a short 10cm strap hanging out the back of the pooter but after I put the dongle onto a 2m usb cable and stuck it next to the window I got a really big increase in mobile connectivity

So the dongle location makes a big difference

Just changing from Yackety Yack, can't really warrant £34 a month for "Fast Broadband" - 11mB ( 8 actually) wire service. Alternative is the other isp thief with a name pertaining to young ladies for fibre. Don't understand how 11m can be classed as "Fast". New provider advertise 11mB but state 2 - 4?. Warp factor 9.6 is NOT required, just a cheap reliable service with a bit of honesty and not trying to break the bank in April.

Unfortunately ISPs come on the bottom of the list of Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves, Car, Double glazing and Kitchen salesmen.

Regards Ian.

If I were you I would remove the first word or two (category) from your list.

A quick endorsement for Zen Broadband, and the openreach FTTP engineers:

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This is below spec because my iPad is currently in a different room to the router and effectively screened by a stack of metal drawers !

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The Mac mini is in line of sight to the router, and does much better.

MichaelG.

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Edit: Here’s a different Speed Test [from the Fing App], with the iPad still in the same location:

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Edited By Michael Gilligan on 03/09/2022 12:24:45

I was getting a lousy service with John Lewis (who use Plusnet, who in turn use BT) on a copper line. So much so that I ditched John Lewis (who subsequently continued to debit my account until I noticed it, and were completely unapologetic). I bought a TP-Link 4g router along with a SIM card and package from Smarty (unlimited data only for £16/month), which has been excellent.

Since then full fibre has been installed in our local area so we now have fibre to the premises courtesy of EE for slightly less than John Lewis we’re charging us for their shoddy service. I still have the 4g router as it is very useful when away from home - I often take it with me even for a trip out in the van.

The moral of my story is to cancel your direct debit when you change supplier, especially if John Lewis or Plusnet are involved (revenge is a dish best served cold though, and they paid dearly for their poor service, which is another story )

Edited By Steve Pavey on 03/09/2022 18:54:45

The main reason that I left SKY was that the phone line was unreliable. The cable to the house was forever giving trouble and was about 7 Mbits when it was working. Three years ago, Virgin dug up the street and I was one of their first customers for tv, phone and internet. The internet was 200/20 Mbits and slowly got more expensive. When I threatened to leave, I got a huge discount and changed the internet speed to 100/10 Mbits which is more than I need. I could have gigabit speed, but as I don't have an office block with 200 computers, I thought it rather wasteful. Now the streets are being dug up by City Fibre promising gigabit speeds which are already available if wanted, they are making more mess than Virgin fibre and British Gas new mains put together.

I tried my mobile out on Michaels tester and got 5MBps which has been fabulous compared to my BT broadband

It only needs to be reliable and you can do most interweb stuff

I fully agree about the reliability being more important than sheer speed. That said, when I had 200Mbits, it only took about 4 minutes to download an ISO of Windows 10 pro 64 bit, wheras before it took about an hour.

Is there any "quid pro quo" for that. That is do they compensate the taxpayer for the inconvenience of them making a public mess/inconvenience in pursuit of their profit..

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I suspect that they are perceived as providing an essential public utility: **LINK**

https://cityfibre.com/about-us/rollout

MichaelG.

Will do that V8 when Cher changes the song title and yes Steve Pavey, Yackety sent me a letter stating now I was leaving, they would deduct payment in the normal manner and credit me with any over payment. Now that would be fine BUT DD was cancelled after the August bill was paid. New ISP starts on 13/9/22 so by my meagre understanding of maffs, I will owe 12/31ths of the September bill so it will be interesting to see their calcs. Any problems and they may well have to knock on the door, literally, for the return of their Super router.

Regards Ian.