Does anyone else recall the deal with fibre broadband?

[CXRAndy]

We use 5g Teltonika router with 4 channel antenna. We are on the limits of reception for any signal. But with antenna we can get a reliable service

 

[the_mikey]

A few years ago (was it 3 or 4?) I recall we were told the 'fibre optic roll-out' was imminent and our costs would increase by 3.9% plus inflation each year to pay for the new technology to be rolled out. I'm sure the idea was that all areas (even rural ones) would benefit from the shared technology. Fast-forward to last year. We live in semi-rural North Norfolk, and County Broadband dug trenches in our pavements and installed fibre optic cables. The effect this had on our copper cables is another story . Suffice to say we had to go onto full fibre or suffer - the upside is we were able to negotiate it to the same price. The weird thing is when Openreach came to make the change, they didn't use the County Broadband underground fibre, but connected to the telegraph pole. I thought the idea was to share all the tech - Does anyone know what happened to the 'deal'

Openreach are and will upgrade all of their network, but that doesn't stop competitors from taking a business decision and getting in ahead of Openreach to provide a competing service and hope to gain all of Openreach's old ADSL customers, some of those competitors won't still be in business some years from now and it's perhaps likely that some of these alternative fibre broadband services are hoping they will profit from the sale of those bits of network to Openreach, or someone else as ultimately their profitability is limited by competition as soon as Openreach arrive.

 

[Electric_Andy]

We've just had OpenReach install in our area. Previous to that, we have been locked in with VM who were the only providers of full fibre. Anything else (30-40mb/sec) would be way too slow as we're used to 250mb+. We had to take out a 2 year contract with them at their horrendous prices, only to hear that a day after our potential cooling off period, we now have OpenReach. Lots of much faster deals for half the price, but we'd have to pay £1200 to cancel. So we're stuck paying £51/month for the next 2 years. I'll be so glad to give VM the middle finger after that

 

[Drago]

I had about 35 megatons at the old place and TBH is was fine.mwe could do the web surfing, watch multiple fillums in different rooms, nary a hiccup.

The new gaff has a lot more megacycles and we've noticed nob all difference in actual use. I mean, what are people doing to need so many megas?

 

[Venod]

We were on Vodafone fibre 100 for £29.00 a month, the often send emails offering to upgrade the speed at a cost of course, got one the other day offering 500 for £26.00 a month, when I clicked on the link the price was not £26.00 but somewhat higher than we were paying, so I replied asking how I got the £26.00 for 500 as per the email, the guy I spoke to ut me on hold for ages as he would have to ask his supervisor if he could honour the offer, we now have 500 for £26.00 per month.

 

[Fastpedaller]

I had about 35 megatons at the old place and TBH is was fine.mwe could do the web surfing, watch multiple fillums in different rooms, nary a hiccup.

The new gaff has a lot more megacycles and we've noticed nob all difference in actual use. I mean, what are people doing to need so many megas?

People have been conditioned that 'bigger is better'. The one that makes no sense (to me anyway) is the memory capacity of music storage (think MP3 players), where some would boast they have xxGB of music storage. Telling them that works out at 200,000 typical tracks, which even if listened to constantly (with no repeats) would last a lifetime had no impact - their response "but it's better"
This sort of thing does nothing to diminish my belief that humans as a race are doomed.

 

[Drago]

Indeed. Its like tv - 4k already goes beyond the human eyes ability to discern detail at typical viewing distance, yet were seeing the emergence of 8k and higher. Other than pub bragging rights to those with no understanding of such matters, why bother?

 

[Fastpedaller]

Indeed. Its like tv - 4k already goes beyond the human eyes ability to discern detail at typical viewing distance, yet were seeing the emergence of 8k and higher. Other than pub bragging rights to those with no understanding of such matters, why bother?

That reminds me of an amusing (but weird) experience we had a few months ago. We were in a big electrical store and saw a large TV we liked the look of, and it was on a special offer of £100 (ISTR it was 32 inches). Anyway, the salesman came over and said, 'I wouldn't recommend that'. Further comments of "but we like it" fell on deaf ears. He then said "I don't think we've got the remote for that" so we responded "can you look for it?". We were getting nowhere, so I asked "Do you get this for yourself at the end of the week if it's not sold?" That got no response, so I said to my Wife "lets forget it, he wants it himself", and we walked out. Very weird experience.

 

[Electric_Andy]

what are people doing to need so many megas?

We get 250mb/sec in the lounge, which is where the router is. We only get around 80mb/sec upstairs because of distance/walls. If both kids are online gaming then that can drop to 35; for some reason the most data hungry devices get the lions share of the bandwidth (I don't know how or why). If all of the above happens at peak times then it can drop to 12-15. So in a worst case scenario, the speed you are paying for can be reduced to 10%. If we only had a 25 gigaton speed, we would certainly struggle.

 

[presta]

I don't know how people get repeatable enough results to know what their speed is, mine varies all over the place from one test to the next. It's just not consistent enough to draw any conclusions about anything.

 

[Drago]

Mine remains fairly steady, fibre all the way to the router.

 

[Electric_Andy]

I don't know how people get repeatable enough results to know what their speed is, mine varies all over the place from one test to the next. It's just not consistent enough to draw any conclusions about anything.

I test mine quite often, especially when a page or site fails to load or is buffering. I'm also a bit of a tight fisted individual and I want to make sure I'm getting a certain speed if I'm paying dear for it! Much of it seems to be device-related though, as in Netflix on the TV can buffer, but I do a speed test on my phone (holding the phone in the same place) and I'm getting 80 odd MB/sec

 

[Dan Lotus]

As I work from home a lot I am heavily reliant on a reliable service. I used to use Plusnet when it wasn't as important, but not that frequently had issues, or outages. Not really an issue when the office was 5 minutes walk from my house, but that's no longer the case.


After carrying out a fair bit of research, I opted for Zen internet - not the cheapest, but really good customer service reviews, and service reviews that I could see - pretty much the First Direct (Who I have been with for over 25 years) of broadband as far as I could tell.
Really good quality and adjustable router provided, dropped the phone line completely, and went with their '500' Fibre connection, which is £45 a month, and I believe there can be no increases. I have now noticed their 900 option is only £5 more, so am considering that, as occasionally if one or more of us is on a video call / watching something online, it can occasionally cause issues.
During my time with Zen, in around 4 years, I think I can recall two very minor outages of sorts, just when my VPN disconnected a couple of times during the day, but aside from that it has been rock solid.
I also had to contact them when setting up the initial router, but they were really helpful, and critically solved my issue, very happy with my choice.

 

[the_mikey]

I had about 35 megatons at the old place and TBH is was fine.mwe could do the web surfing, watch multiple fillums in different rooms, nary a hiccup.

The new gaff has a lot more megacycles and we've noticed nob all difference in actual use. I mean, what are people doing to need so many megas?

People often buy into the service providers promise of superior wi-fi coverage, most people don't really understand why their wi-fi is crap, so will buy into anything that promises more, even if their actual usage doesn't demand gigabits/s.

 

[Dan Lotus]

People often buy into the service providers promise of superior wi-fi coverage, most people don't really understand why their wi-fi is crap, so will buy into anything that promises more, even if their actual usage doesn't demand gigabits/s.

I set up two other routers to run as access points I think they are called, wired straight from the initial router.
One in the garage for Rouvy etc, and one in the living room for the TV to use, and laptop when streaming stuff over vpn, and of course for enhanced wireless connection - works a treat, and only cost me £40, as I had a viable router to repurpose already, then bought a more fancy one for the garage.