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Poor broadband areas

G

Guest432

Guest
This is more an FYI for others having issues with very poor broadband as I've found that 4G is a very good alternative.

I've recently moved but my new area has no Virgin Media and the vast majority of companies will not offer an ADSL service and those that do will only offer up to 5MB with 1MB guaranteed.

I'm now using a 4G router with an external antenna and get around 45MB down and 10MB up, I'm still in a dead zone between two cell towers so the power level is very low. Some people are reporting well over 100MB download speeds with 4G broadband where the signal is strong.

If anyone else is having issues I'd recommend the following:

4G unlimited data SIM card (I'm using EE but apparently 3 are better as they use (were allocated) the lowest freq band (800 Mhz) which travels further)

4G router - I'm using the Huwaei B525 (300 Mbps) I'm getting around double the bandwidth with this over the one EE supplied.

Poynting 4G-XPOL-A0001 - external antenna (wall mounted about 5 metres high) this is an omni directional antenna as I'm stuck between two masts equal distances apart but if you know where your mast is Poynting also make a directional one you can use instead.

If you go with one of the mobile broadband packages from a carrier you are likely to have a download limit package, I originally got an EE 100GB package which came with a rebadged Alcatel router. After a bit of research I found that you get a 3rd party router and most carriers will offer unlimited data SIM only plans. Most will give you a 14 day cancellation period so you can test and return if it doesn't work very well.

Try and work out where your closest cell tower is by using the Speedtest app on your phone at different locations around the house. There is also a (fairly) good site that shows all the cell tower locations:

https://www.cellmapper.net
 
Agreed, 4G can be a revelation when you're used to uber crap and flaky ADSL - defo getting more available and now unlimited data plans are coming in, a real alternative to normal broadband

We use Draytek 2620Ln Routers - takes 2 SIMs for failover and has VDSL/ADSL - admittedly more for business use. Limited to 150Mbps at present but we just got some beta firmware.

Also use that Huwaei router, will check out the Poynting stuff new one on me, I think we have Panorama
 
You lucky bugger. We get 2-5Mb over ADSL and have no 4g Coverage. And we live in the south east 5 miles equidistant from 2 large towns. Openreach website says our post code will get fibre broadband 'soon'.
 
Have had the same issues here in Ireland, we have an amazing deal with three, €30/month unlimited (well it's capped at 750GB!) on 4G.
 
I used the Openreach test and our speed is a mighty 0.9 a drop of 0.2 since the last check. The good news is that the local "box" will be fibred up soon. How now is soon, I wonder?
 
One of the eternal truths about living in the Uk is that you cannot have a good quality of living and a good quality of broadband at the same location.
 
Interesting. We have crap BB (a flaky 3MB with no fibre in sight). A couple of years ago we could get Vodafone 4G and now O2 as well. We have a Vodafone MiFi for business critical stuff which is capped at 50GB a month (plenty). My wife has just renewed her VF phone contract which is now unlimited 4G data. Great, but they won’t do unlimited data on the MiFi. I guess that will happen in time, then we can get rid of the landline altogether. Can’t wait.
 
i get about 15Mbps on the landline, which is a lot better than most have mentioned here. But what irritates me is that we moved literally 2.5 miles west four years ago. Before the move we were inside the M25, now we're outside. The comparative lack of investment is remarkable. Inside the M25 we had 60Mbps, good public transport, pavements you could walk on without tripping over etc. Just outside in Bucks and all that disappears.
 
France : not any better in the country.

I also have bad broadband (4 Mbps), but unfortunately the cell tower just 800 metres away from my house is saturated. Not any better, about 10 Mbps during the night, with less than 5 megs during the day.
They promised fiberoptics for 2025. Yeah right.
 
Don't get a hang up on BB speed. For most people 5 to 10Mbps is enough providing it is consistent i.e. no drop outs speed drops etc. I have refused to upgrade to VDSL/FTTC as the extra cost just isn't worth it. We have a steady 22.8Mbps down and its more than enough. A few weeks ago our connection was screwed and after about an hours outage was back up but with only 9Mbps down (its since recovered after about a week). We ran two simultaneous HD TVs over this reduced service plus several computers and the drop in speed made no noticeable difference in performance. You really only need a lot more bandwidth for things such as 4K definition TV.

If you can accept SD TV then 3Mbps is more than enough.

Downloads are more dependant on the server bandwidth and the number of concurrent download users and will often be waaaay slower than your own download BB speed.

Cheers,

DV
 
Derek Wright said:
One of the eternal truths about living in the Uk is that you cannot have a good quality of living and a good quality of broadband at the same location.
Click to expand...

You should come and live near me in West Berkshire in that case. London less than an hour away, Southampton and the south coast around 45 minutes and 200mbps on Virgin Media. And two Waitrose stores within fifteen minutes. Ok, it’s a long way from any decent mountains but that’s the only drawback.
 
As DV says 3Mbps is fine for SD TV and concurrent surfing we got fine with that at our last house. Windows updates would be better done overnight similarly updates to TomTom etc.
 
julifriend said:
You should come and live near me in West Berkshire in that case. London less than an hour away, Southampton and the south coast around 45 minutes and 200mbps on Virgin Media. And two Waitrose stores within fifteen minutes. Ok, it’s a long way from any decent mountains but that’s the only drawback.
Click to expand...

It’s a nice part of the world, shame that travellers seem to quite like it as well...
 
Not sure why anyone would want to watch SD TV these days but here’s what I’m getting now from the 4G

Very impressed with it so far

3481373574.png
 
thebiglebowski said:
Not sure why anyone would want to watch SD TV these days but here’s what I’m getting now from the 4G
Click to expand...

that's not bad. We are lucky on VM with 300Mb down. I'd happily sacrifice some that for more up.

Yes I dont know anyone who choose to watch SD TV, unless as a form of punishment.
 
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