Rural area with terrible speed and unreliable ADSL. 4G broadband an option?

roozor · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:06

Looking at sacking off ADSL completely.

I had to tether my phone to my PC for the last few days as ADSL has been down. 4G speeds are incredible compared to my 400k/s max down ADSL. There won't be any plans to upgrade my exchange any time soon. Very small population village.

Does anyone know of any dongles or plans I could buy, with 50gb or preferably unlimited?

Google not bringing up much.

Sparx · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:25

Which network/s are good in your area for 4G?

roozor · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:30

Vodafone and EE but neither do any high usage tarrifs.

Sparx · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:40

EE do a 32GB pay monthly data SIM for £28 a month?

roozor · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:43

Yes. I've seen those Sparx but 32gb won't really cut it with some games being upwards of 40gb these days!

Ryan111 · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:44

http://shop.ee.co.uk/dongles/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband/4g-home-broadband/details

EE do a 50GB/month plan, its £44/month (I have it for £27/month). There is the option to add 5GB of data for £1 too if you run out, not sure how many times you can do that though...

Sparx · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:48

Well it starts getting expensive otherwise bud.

roozor · 13 Sep 2016 at 22:54

Sparx said:
Well it starts getting expensive otherwise bud.

Yep. It's bound to be a more expensive way but i'm already paying BT £45 a month for 3.5mb of unreliable ADSL.

Doogles · 13 Sep 2016 at 23:32

roozor said:
Yep. It's bound to be a more expensive way but i'm already paying BT £45 a month for 3.5mb of unreliable ADSL.

I kinda feel your pain, something needs to be done in this country with internet because outside of the towns it goes belly up, we might not be that much of the population but we are more isolated. Sorry I have no advice but you are in the right area for some.

benjii · 13 Sep 2016 at 23:34

- nevermind

Meatball · 14 Sep 2016 at 06:55

If I were you I'd be speaking to other families in the village to register interest in getting a fibre service from Openreach or Gigaclear.

MonsterMoshi · 14 Sep 2016 at 09:03

As above, get in though with BT community fibre and get the ball rolling on a self funded installation
We've been stuck with ~1MB broadband for years and are expecting to now have 330MBs FTTP installed by June next year through the scheme
Our cost is much higher at £1500 per property as there are only 8 of us but in the grand scheme of things for something this essential it is well worth it
You will probably find it's your only option is a small community of you want anything within the next 5-10 years

Caged · 14 Sep 2016 at 10:02

£1500 per house for only 8 houses is a lot more reasonable than I would have expected things to cost.

roozor · 14 Sep 2016 at 10:05

The real kick in the balls is my exchange is actually enabled for fibre but apparently i'm too far away. Our village doesn't have it's own exchange. It runs all the way over 6 miles to the next town.

Steveocee · 14 Sep 2016 at 14:36

Have you heard of a company called AB Internet? They are Lincolnshire based and may be able to help you out.

Glanza · 14 Sep 2016 at 14:47

If your in a rural area you could see if someone like http://www.gigaclear.com/ will offer fibre in your area.

joeyjojo · 14 Sep 2016 at 18:37

As above the usage limits make it unsuitable if you want to do some big downloads. Usage limits tend to be 2-32 GB.

See
https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/mobile_broadband/
and
https://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/mobilebroadband/4g-mobile-broadband

HangTime · 15 Sep 2016 at 16:13

Caged said:
£1500 per house for only 8 houses is a lot more reasonable than I would have expected things to cost.

Indeed, £12k for FTTP sounds very cheap. Where I live I doubt I could persuade people to stump up £1.5k each but a total figure around £12k across say a couple of hundred houses would probably be achievable given how truly abysmal the local situation is (unreliable ADSL around the 5mb mark, when it is working).

ttaskmaster · 15 Sep 2016 at 16:19

roozor said:
Yep. It's bound to be a more expensive way but i'm already paying BT £45 a month for 3.5mb of unreliable ADSL.

Cor, that's a good deal...
I'm paying them the same for 0.7Mbps!!

MonsterMoshi · 15 Sep 2016 at 16:36

HangTime said:
Indeed, £12k for FTTP sounds very cheap. Where I live I doubt I could persuade people to stump up £1.5k each but a total figure around £12k across say a couple of hundred houses would probably be achievable given how truly abysmal the local situation is (unreliable ADSL around the 5mb mark, when it is working).

Scratch that number it is more like £1875 I think but it is still very reasonable
It was a £15k anyway
We were very lucky with regards to funding as the total cost for installation was £60k but as with all community programs, BT pay 50% and we managed to get the council's BDUK team on board who agreed to pay 25%
If we didn't have the councils support, I highly we would have been able to go through with it

But as you say in a small village of a few hundred houses it can be a good solution however as the numbers increase it becomes much more difficult for the community to orchestrate and less likely to actually happen
Depending on the size of the OPs village and the amount of time he want to dedicate to getting it sorted I would recommend getting in touch with BT Community fibre. Their usual solution is for FTTC though
Your talking a minimum 12 months lead time so he will still need something else in the mean time