I live in rural Lincolnshire, so fibre is not likely in this decade. Current wifi through the EE landline is 3Mbps on a good day. 4G around the house is about the same. But, if I go upstairs and point my phone at the maston the hill about 5 miles away I can get 24Mb. If I go and park next to the mast It gives almost 80Mb. EE reckon a 4G router will give me 30Mb, but as my phone can't get near that when directed towards the mast I am somewhat sceptical. I know 80Mb is the dark ages for most of you, but do you have any suggestions to raise my speeds out of the stone age and into double figures?
I think 4G routers have a far more robust signal than mobile phones due to their bigger/better external antennas so they could be right in their estimate. I feel your pain, kind of, where I am is no way rural but am a long way from the nearest fibre cabinet so land line broadband is 12/0.4 and seem to be in a bit of a mobile black hole so 4G isn’t great. Luckily also have Virgin fibre so decent speeds through them but it’s expensive as I’m sure they monitor the competition and so know we can’t go elsewhere. Nearly had a 5G mast being installed near me but the locals rejected it. And to prove them all wrong I still caught covid anyway
Depending on the 4G router you could also hook an external antenna onto like this or get a fully external 4G router like this. Allowing features like external attenna may be beyond the regular equipment EE provide. So you'd have to research and provide your own. There are also some satelite broadband providers but they tend to be expensive, poor on upload speeds, slow for gaming but they would be decent for download. https://integra-networks.co.uk/ I can't say I've used anything I've suggested but the company in the first link has UK offices so it may be worth a chat.
If EE are quoting 30Mbs on 4G then that sounds slightly optimistic because I think the average data rate on a good 4G signal is something like 20Mbs. But I guess that may be for an averagely loaded base station and if your local one is less busy then you can maybe expect more. Or maybe 20Mbs is for a phone and Ackers is right that the router has a better antenna than phones. Landlines from EE (now owned by BT?), BT, Sky, TalkTalk etc all use BT’s Openreach infrastructure so are all going to give you much the same performance (depending on your package). Virgin has their own infrastructure and is, IMHO, the best but certainly not the cheapest. If Virgin have fibre in your vicinity then I’d go with them. You can check on their site if they are in your area. 3Mbs sounds a lot worse worse than I’d expect though. You may have been through this already but EE should run diagnostics if you report your crappy data rate as an issue (or they’ll ask Openreach to do it). This will tell you if there’s an issue with their equipment or if it’s an issue in your house. If it’s in your house it’s likely to be bad wiring or something like a missing terminator.
There are plenty of companies out there specialising in rural broadband on the 4g mobile network. Speak to one of those to see what they can offer. They may even offer a site survey. I live in semi-rural Northumberland and a lot of the remote holiday cottages have microwave antennas with line of sight to a supply station for their broadband. We are fortunate that we have a telephone exchange in the village and broadband from the likes of BT etc is not a problem. Recently a company (Alncom) did work in the village to supply a 4g based broadband.
I have Virgin Fibre but only by default. It had already been installed for the previous owners when I moved in almost 2 years ago, Virgin, having laid the cables locally, had a big sales push in the area and all households who signed up had the old BT cabling ripped out to the furthest point that Virgin could manage. As a result reverting back to another provider, using BT Openreach, isn't an option unless you're willing to wait 6-8 weeks as a minimum. Obviously a monopoly tactic by Virgin who charge through the nose knowing the pain that changing will bring to anyone moving in. There are now other fibre-to-premises providers dropping leaflets through the door saying 'coming soon'. My girlfriend, who lives a couple of streets away, has now been given a date that they'll be able to install at hers so I'm keeping a wary eye on what happens here and will not be entering into a new contract with Virgin.
Virgin are not cheap I will admit but I have been using their broadband for years and the speed and service has been excellent.
Zzooomm have installed underground cables here They are supposed to be coming to a place near "you" https://zzoomm.com/
No Virgins fibre round here! up to 3mb is the best that BT or EE will quote for anywhere in the village. Half of the houses have satellite dishes for their internet, but the provider only goes up to 20Mb, normal is around 10 and its about as reliable as an 80s Ducati in a downpour. 4G with external antenna looks like the only way to gain any speed for the forseeable future. EE will not give me anything in writing to back up their 30Mb claim so I will be researching other providers, although they did offer to let me try it for a month then revert back to snails pace if I wasn't happy, but of course it will cost more than the £26.20 I currently pay. Thanks for all your inputs.
Thanks Ducbird - its no surprise that according to their website we are not currently in Zooom's build plans. Lots of providers come to places near me, but none of them want to service 40 properties spread over about 2 square miles more than 3 miles from the nearest exchange.
Some rural communities have organised their own fibre from a relatively nearby node. Depends how remote you are and how well you get on with your neighbours I suppose. An initial collective investment would be required and willingness from landowners to lay a cable. If you are truly remote then 4/5G is probably your only option for the time being. Satellite has huge latency from what I've heard.
Buy a booster. They do work. Easy to install. Just need access to a high point on your building. I installed one here while we waited for the fibre roll out in rural France (here at last ).
I also live in rural Lincolnshire and my landline broadband was so bad it was unusable. For years I have been using EE 4G with an external antenna and it’s a vast improvement. My mobile signal in the house is very bad but by positioning the external antenna correctly I get a good solid signal. Speeds fluctuate depending on time of day and how many other people are using the mast - that’s the nature of the technology. But lowest it drops to is about 20 down and 15 up - the highest 70 down and 40 up. I use a standard EE unlimited data SIM in the router as it’s cheaper than their 4G home broadband tariff. Let me know if you want more details.
A few years back I was with EE (left when BT bought them) and the speed dropped to dial-up level (which was due to one of the leads breaking and took OpenRetch 6 weeks and three visits to fix - and was simple!). Meanwhile EE sent me a 4G router and it was about twice as fast as the landline.
Yeah, depends on the speed of the satellite, at 17,000 mph it’s great for about 5mins and then 90min til it comes around again at my old place in Bournemouth I had 1GB ftth from Fibrecity but it was bloody expensive, they only got to around a 10th of the population before they went bust, that was about 15yrs ago. They are having another go now under CityFibre and are working around Poole making a mess of the pavements but will be a while if at all they get out to me. Atm Vodafone have exclusive right to it but it will open up to over providers. A workmate has it but says it’s great until it goes down and then Vodafone and cityfibre argue over who’s responsible for the outage
I had starlink at my small holding, expensive but well worth it, went from c 1-4 Mb/s on ADSL to 50+Mb/s down and 30 Mb/s up. We had no mobile signal either so this really was a huge step forward for us Also has comparable latency to ADSL as the starlink satellites are low earth orbit, it's only going to get better too as the constellation is grown, talk of 150Mb/s +
As Ivor said, have a look at Starlink. Meant to be the solution for this sort of issue, but not cheap. https://www.starlink.com/
Starlink really is a last resort option if you can’t get a mobile data signal - it’s much more costly and offers greater latency. The OP can get a decent signal with his phone upstairs - if this is the case then an external antenna will easily get a much better signal. I looked into all of the cost options and currently 4G is the best and most cost effective solution. Once 5G reaches rural areas at a reasonable price point it will make all other options redundant as fibre to the premise for very rural locations is a long way off being cost effective. By 2030 all towns and villages will have Fibre to the Premise connections as BT have a remit to phase out copper. They have a target to deliver FTTP to 25 million premises by 2026 - will be very interesting to see if they actually run fibre to ultra rural locations miles from anywhere though as the return on investment wouldn’t be enough to give them a profit. BT aren’t the only player in this and in some locations other providers are getting ahead of them - for the first time FTTP is available at affordable prices to the home consumer. 10 years ago a BT 1gb fibre connection was 18k per year. My parents have just signed up with Lightspeed Broadband - £30 connection fee and £40 per month - and the first 3 months free for a 1gb connection - that’s both Up and Down! It’s not an option for me or the OP but if you live in an area that can get it then it’s a steal. https://www.lightspeed.co.uk/
@98 SPS - You can pickup an EE 4G router on Ebay like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304580346809?hash=item46ea6743b9:g:1I8AAOSwEQxi5VLZ This antenna is good enough for most circumstances at a very good price point. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325285657203?epid=27027202650&hash=item4bbc893a73:g:ChAAAOSwOKJi4qYf Pop any EE Sim in the router to test the data speed you get. If you are happy with the speed then an EE pay monthly unlimited SIM is £30 per month on a 24 month contract. You can also get an extra sim for your mobile phone - £10 per month - their cheapest SIM only deal - you don’t need to pay for an expensive data tariff because you can gift up to 100gb per month from your Unlimited SIM. Doing it this way you can actually save money on your mobile bill to offset the cost. I cancelled my landline as well as part of this.
Not going to help those in Lincolnshire but to add to the list of new fibre to the house startups. There is Swish Fibre covering the home counties. https://www.swishfibre.com/
