Are you in danger of being left in the dark internet wise?

[DBT85]

I'm living in a village of about 1500 people just 2 miles from the nearest town. That town currently has Virgin fibre and is getting BT in a few months.

Neither seems to have any plans to run fibre to our area and as a result everyone is stuck on a max of 4mb as long as no one else is using it. Of an evening the service drops down to less than 1mb and is frankly appaling.

Using any kind of streaming service in the evening is impossible. Even loading a 30 second intercview on the BBC website can sometimes take what seems like an age and you can't play online without constant fear of being cut off.

Do you think you are in a similar sitaution? Do you want to consume more digial media but can't simply because of the infrastructure in your area?

 

[Skidilliplop]

Samknows says all 3 exchanges surrounding coulsdon have ADSL Max, BT wholesale and NTL/Virgin cable available? :S

 

[DBT85]

Samknows says all 3 exchanges surrounding coulsdon have ADSL Max, BT wholesale and NTL/Virgin cable available? :S

Yep. Sadly where i am the only option is a standard phone line. My in laws on the same exchange as us 3 miles away have 10mb virgin and can get 50mb if they want. There is no Fibre service in our residential area.

 

[Skidilliplop]

You should drum up a few sympathisers and send them a request. If the exchange is already kitted out they can at least run standard 10meg cable to you. Which would be a drastic improvement. If there's litterally no other option and there's demand they'd have a captive audience. 1500 potential customers would probably make that viable.

 

[hyperst]

I am exactly the same, I class my internet only really useable after midnight-9am, after that it is useless, gaming online is impossible in the day, pings can go into the thousands on bfbc2

who do you have your broadband with?

 

[DBT85]

Our broadband is with BE. Its as fast as its going to get.

I've bashed off an email to Virgin to see what they say also explaining that the area is full of young families who have no option but to get crap broadband and SKY. We are 1.6 miles from our exchange by road but that is one dead straight section of the A23.

 

[Craig321]

I'm living in a village of about 1500 people just 2 miles from the nearest town. That town currently has Virgin fibre and is getting BT in a few months.

Neither seems to have any plans to run fibre to our area and as a result everyone is stuck on a max of 4mb as long as no one else is using it. Of an evening the service drops down to less than 1mb and is frankly appaling.

Using any kind of streaming service in the evening is impossible. Even loading a 30 second intercview on the BBC website can sometimes take what seems like an age and you can't play online without constant fear of being cut off.

Do you think you are in a similar sitaution? Do you want to consume more digial media but can't simply because of the infrastructure in your area?

Doesn't sound like your connection is as bad as our 512K connection that drops when it rains. It's been known to run at 90Kbps as well.

 

[Spetznaz]

Things are returning to how they were in 99-02 when major towns/cities got ADSL and everyone outside was stuck on dialup, now towns and cities are getting FTTC (probably have cable already) and more rural areas are left behind. This is what happens when telecomms are left to private companies with little government intervention.

Meanwhile OFCOM are busy taking brown envelopes from BT and pretending to do something.

My exchange was due to have WBC (ADSL2+) in March 2011, this was in Nov 09 but instead BT are spending all their time/resources on giving FTTC to large towns that a large % of which already have cable!.

 

[Duke]

...everyone is stuck on a max of 4mb as long as no one else is using it. Of an evening the service drops down to less than 1mb and is frankly appaling.

Are you syncing at 4mb or higher but only receiving 4mb on speedtests? It sounds like you just have an overloaded ISP rather than it being an exchange problem.

 

[DBT85]

Are you syncing at 4mb or higher but only receiving 4mb on speedtests? It sounds like you just have an overloaded ISP rather than it being an exchange problem.

Everyone here is the same regardless of ISP. If you look on any ISP for a speed estimate they all say about 6mb. I'll download at a max of about 425KB but that is as I said when it is quiet.

 

[KIA]

Everyone here is the same regardless of ISP. If you look on any ISP for a speed estimate they all say about 6mb. I'll download at a max of about 425KB but that is as I said when it is quiet.

Not sure about that.

Post your router stats and provider.

 

[Duke]

Everyone here is the same regardless of ISP. If you look on any ISP for a speed estimate they all say about 6mb. I'll download at a max of about 425KB but that is as I said when it is quiet.

The ISP estimates will all be the same if you do it from the same address, as it is just roughly working out your line length and therefore speed.

 

[kip02]

I'm not in danger of being left behind because of the town I live in but the street I live on. I can only get 3mb LLU ADSL but the next street can get 50mb Virgin cable really frustrating as I can see the Virgin Media cabs from my window! But they won't cable the street.

 

[slowrunner]

We've not really even seen the light here in Hull!

3.5km line, never seen better than 5000Kb sync speed, currently only getting 3000Kb sync / 2.4Mb on speed tests, yet some parts of town are able to get 20Mb.

There's no cable option at all, KC haven't even thought about fttc, though they have now linked the exchanges together with fibre, apparently.

 

[JonJ678]

I think I'm on roughly 4 meg. So far it's been ample for everything I've tried to do with it. I imagine I'd move home if need be though, so I don't feel too worried about being stranded in an area which I don't want to live in.