Any way to encourage BT to put in better internet?

Madals

Madals

Madals

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I live in a very small village in the middle of the country side (lovely) - we get shockingly bad internet (not lovely). To put it in perspective, off peak hours it maxes at 2mbps download and 0.3 up with a ping of about 50.

Now, the village has about 3-400 people in it and the main road through the village has a large connection wire from a regional exchange to the local exchange running under it. Now, a few months ago BT dug this up and replaced the wire with (i presume) a new fibre cable! The problem is - our net speeds haven't got any better :(

So, I was wondering if anyone on here has any advice on ways to encourage BT to put some better stuff in the area. Honestly, I don't even mind to much if it isn't state of the art 50/100mb and frankly 10mb with decent ping speeds would be great compared to what we have at the moment! Hell, in some countries 2mb/s isn't even legally classed as broad band!

So far, the only possibility I can think of is to get something signed by local people saying they are interested in high speed internet and sending that to BT - the problem is I don't know how many people would need to be interested for it to be economical for them?

Anyway - any opinions/ideas would be great!
 
They may we'll have run the fibre and the actual cabinet upgrade is incoming, it the prices of living in the sticks. I'm in the same boat but with the double wammy of having Kingston Comms being the only provider :(
 
Talon said:
They may we'll have run the fibre and the actual cabinet upgrade is incoming, it the prices of living in the sticks. I'm in the same boat but with the double wammy of having Kingston Comms being the only provider :(
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As far as I am aware - its not (at least when I asked the workers when they did it). It made no sense to me at all, they dug up the road not more than 10ft away from the cabinet but didn't connect it :(
 
To use the fibre there is more to it then just hooking it up. I can't remember exactly what my dad said (works for bt and have read the procedures guide for fttc) but they have to upgrade the cab too, which is probably done by a different team. I couldn't get mine upgraded any quicker so I'd be surprised if you get anywhere.
 
Heh, I wish I had 2Mb.

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Admitted, I normally get more like 0.9Mb/s, but it's pretty bloomin' awful. I'd even take VM, just to get some speed, but they run their cable up to half way through the village and then stop (around 0.5-1 mile away.). Argh.
 
Many factors to this one. The best place to go and find out what the bottleneck in your area is Sam knows. Type in your postcode and you'll find your local exchange, how far you are away from it and what kit is currently in there. Generally (but not always) the reason for slow broadband is because the wire connecting your house to the exchange is too long to support fast broadband speeds.

What can you do about it? Well, the best thing is to show demand for better broadband in your community - it'll either attract private sector investment (BT or others) or show your county council that applying to the government for some cash to sort it is a good idea. See this page under the "what can I do to bring broadband to my area" section:

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/telecommunications_and_online/7781.aspx

As saitrix said, one of the solutions (though there are others) is to install a fibre to the cabinet solution (which is what BT are doing around the UK). What that (very) roughly does is move the kit that connects to your ADSL modem out of the exchange into a street side cabinet, reducing the length of cable connecting your house. From the cabinet back to the exchange, its now fibre optic which isn't affected by the length of the cable in the same way.

There's tons of info on the web about this stuff - could I suggest samknows.com, thinkbroadband.com, and for a good example of communities coming togethe to fix broadband problems broadbandcumbria.com.

Happy to help more if you want.
 
Go though your community counsellor (if you have one)

My parents village had a 10 down/ 10 up wireless service that was arranged through the community itself. Originally they wanted £1000 to install it, but then when they had 50 homes, it was free. £20 a month too.

They could get 1.5Mb at best, so it's worth getting the community involved if there are others in the same crappy situation.

that link above said:
New Government broadband aims outlined in Jeremy Hunt speech.

Nine out of 10 homes and businesses in every county in the UK should have access to superfast broadband by 2015, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced today.
Speaking today at Race Online 2012's National Digital Conference, Mr Hunt revealed the Government’s ambitions for providing everyone in the UK with access to broadband speeds of at least 2MBps and superfast broadband should be available to 90% of people in each local authority area.
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*facepalm*
 
3-400 people? Sorry mate, but you're screwed. Even if you could guarantee that most people would take it up BT have decades worth of more profitable locations (most of them already in LLU or VM areas) that they'd rather upgrade first.

I'm in the same situation, 600 person village. Our only hope is government/council subsidies or a community broadband initiative.
 
wow you have some fast internet there. i live a couple of mile away from a village with a about 500 hundred people and i only get half a meg.
 
Madals said:
I live in a very small village in the middle of the country side (lovely) - we get shockingly bad internet (not lovely). To put it in perspective, off peak hours it maxes at 2mbps download and 0.3 up with a ping of about 50.
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Shockingly bad?... I was paying like nearly £50 a month for that five years ago, back then 2mbps was the dogs danglies and 50 ping is still enough to play any game acceptably.

Quit complaining you have a decent ADSL service considering your village only has 3-400 people. The are 25,000 people in Rhyl and the main exchange is enabled for ADSL2 however a number of my mates get <1mbs due to their distance from the exchange. Your connection is a lot better than most people in your situation would get, man up.
 
ubersonic said:
Shockingly bad?... I was paying like nearly £50 a month for that five years ago, back then 2mbps was the dogs danglies and 50 ping is still enough to play any game acceptably.

Quit complaining you have a decent ADSL service considering your village only has 3-400 people. The are 25,000 people in Rhyl and the main exchange is enabled for ADSL2 however a number of my mates get <1mbs due to their distance from the exchange. Your connection is a lot better than most people in your situation would get, man up.
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I am sorry that I want to be proactive and try to get access to better technology in my area rather than just sit around on forums being bitter about the fact I don't have good internet and can't be arsed to try and improve the situation :( Also, the whole "5 years ago" argument when it comes to technology is laughable - have you noticed the increase in computers/internet in that time? We live in a world that is turning more and more into needing the internet (anytime tv, video meetings, cloud computing) and frankly if you sit back and ignore them you are missing out, I would rather try and get access to them than sit back and moan about how bad it.

Anyway, I think the best approach from the comments is to contact the local council and work through them to try to get something done - has anyone had any success with this through their council?
 
Make sure it's the county council via your county councillor you speak to as they are the ones who can bid for the government money - not borough or parish councils (though getting them on board as well is important).

For examples where it has been done, I'd go to broadbandcumbria.com and see how they did it. A good guide on how to go about this can be found on ruralbroadband.com - I'd really recommend reading through it.

Oh, and go and hassle your MP. If he or she is a Tory or Lib Dem tell them to talk to Rory Stewart (Tory MP in Cumbria) or Julian smith (Tory MP in Yorkshire) as they re both deeply involved in getting better broadband to their rural constituents.
 
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ahar said:
Make sure it's the county council via your county councillor you speak to as they are the ones who can bid for the government money - not borough or parish councils (though getting them on board as well is important).

For examples where it has been done, I'd go to broadbandcumbria.com and see how they did it. A good guide on how to go about this can be found on ruralbroadband.com - I'd really recommend reading through it.

Oh, and go and hassle your MP. If he or she is a Tory or Lib Dem tell them to talk to Rory Stewart (Tory MP in Cumbria) or Julian smith (Tory MP in Yorkshire) as they re both deeply involved in getting better broadband to their rural constituents.
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This was really helpful and some great links there! Thanks

It seems from what I have read that a possible solution would be FTTC - would there be a noticeable increase in speed when the exchange is about 5miles away?
 
broadbandcumbria.com - nice, they want 100Mb/s to the majority of people, and a minimum 30Mb/s.

I noticed that Somerset (where I live) have just received some of the government broadband cash, hopefully they'll be doing the same. I'm on a 5KM line from the village though so not sure what extent they'll go to.

Fewfe3, at ~2 miles your line should be capable of at least 2MB/s (unless you're in an aluminium cable area) check the ring wire / micro-filters. Plug your modem directly into the BT test socket behind the master faceplate and see what you sync at.

Great website for all things ADSL - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm
 
Madals said:
It seems from what I have read that a possible solution would be FTTC - would there be a noticeable increase in speed when the exchange is about 5miles away?
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Very hard to tell as the important distance for FTTC is the length of the cable between you and the cabinet. Where the cabinets are and the length of the cables tends to be an accident of history - you have examples of both very long runs from the exchange to the cabinet (E-Side in the terminology) and long runds from the cabinet to our house (D-Side). You can never tell whether you have one, the other or both!

The best you can do is follow the cable from your house via poles or footway boxes back to a cabinet and guess that is yours - not an exact science I'm afraid. Even the BT plant records about cabinet locations are occasionally wrong!
 
Yeah I live in a town of about 6-7000 people and even then we seem to have no hope of decent broadband. There is no LLU at the exchange and VM's coverage is patchy so it is MAXDSL at best for us. No plans to roll out ADSL2+, BT Infinity etc. Mobile coverage is also atrocious, half the time in my house I can't even get a phone signal never mind 3G or whatever.

Bit strange really as the local demographic is a lot of young relatively wealthy professional families that I would expect to lap up digital services like there is no tomorrow if it was available.
 
Was there not a target date for BT to have ALL exchanges upgraded to 21CN WBC?

I find it very irritating that whilst 10 miles down the road, Exeter are enjoying the recently installed BT FTTC service, i'm sitting here with standard ADSL MAX.

Hmph.
 
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