Getting clear advice on broadband before buying a house...

I'm looking to move to Devon (PL19 9DG to be exact). The property appears to have dreadful connectivity (~4-6Mbps with Sky according to current owner). However their neighbour gets 18-22Mbps with BT??

I work from home regularly using video conferencing and other streaming services. I also administer our company databases and website and run some necessary client-server apps via VPN, I'm therefore looking for a "decent" upload speed to do uploads etc too (>5Mbps would be good)

Is there any way to perform a survey of the property for broadband connection. i.e. check connection info, proper (not marketing hype!) estimates of expected speed from different broadband suppliers? Ideally I'd need all this done before I exchange contracts. If an onsite visit would be required, I can probably get this orgaised alongside the Homebuyers survey.
Can anyone here advise me please?
Thanks
Graham

Edited by gandalfmeister (Fri 23-Aug-19 09:10:27)

The BT ADSL Wholesale check shows info on postcodes and you can do a slightly more accurate address as well. I assume you don�t know phone numbers?

https://my.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_...

That postcode shows no FTTC or FTTP.

Postcode is served by two VDSL2/FTTC cabinets in fact.

Cabinet 10 is on a waiting list with speeds between 11 and 22 Mbps likely
Cabinet 20 services a couple of premises and is closers at over 30 Mbps

ADSL2+ should be in the region of 5 to 10 Mbps

Waiting list means likely will only get ADSL2+, why the Sky customer speeds are so low, guessing they are on ADSL2+ and never upgraded to VDSL2

In reply to a post by stephengw:

The BT ADSL Wholesale check shows info on postcodes and you can do a slightly more accurate address as well. I assume you don�t know phone numbers?

https://my.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_...

That postcode shows no FTTC or FTTP.

The pure postcode checker ceased to show FTTC/FTTP a year or two ago, because it didn�t work. The page says so!

Postcode only checks will not return any result for Fibre services (FTTP, FTTC:VDSL and G.fast).
Please use the address or telephone number checker.

The Address option however does work at both the full address and postcode only level. Enter only the postcode in that and a drop down list of all addresses in it appears, allowing the estimates for each to be observed.

Many thanks for the quick replies. I do in fact have a phone number (192.com), and that shows the address connected to cabinet 10 - the slower of the 2 cabinets <sigh>

So - I stumbled across "Airband" https://www.airband.co.uk/ who claim I should be able to Avg 40 down and 10 up using their wireless radio connectivity.

I'm unfamiliar with this radio based technology.. Are these rates simply marketing hype - or likely to be possible? Are their other factors I should be aware of?

I am going to note that the checker has been offline since at least 17:00 on the 22/08/2019 and may have been longer. Note the page shows up, but try and do a search. For a number it says it's offline and if you feed a postcode into the address checker hoping to select an address from the drop down menu nothing happens.

You could also consider straightforward mobile 4G broadband. To get some idea of what speeds are like though you would need to be outside the house, or preferably inside, with a Three and/or Vodafone SIM in a 4G-capable phone.

See my sig and numerous relevant threads in this forum. Best to set that forum to display threads active in the last 6 months or even 12 months, as some recent ones are very ambitious and possibly off-putting but still useful once you�ve read the encouraging ones.

This is my post that started a lot of interest and made people aware of the unlimited packages now available. It�s rather long. Best skimmed in Flat mode I suggest once you get the gist .

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

I am going to note that the checker has been offline since at least 17:00 on the 22/08/2019 and may have been longer. Note the page shows up, but try and do a search. For a number it says it's offline and if you feed a postcode into the address checker hoping to select an address from the drop down menu nothing happens.

Working fine here.

Hum, looks like maybe my IP address is black listed. Certainly my desktop does not work, but if I jump on one of the many servers I can use it works. I guess the perils of having a publicly routable IP address on everything (the joys of working at a university). Wonder what I was blocked for. They also seem to have blocked my home IP address. That I can sort of understand as I web scraped it for a bit checking for my G.fast pod going live, but that stopped weeks ago (despite being a full 80/20 I can't get G.fast)