Trying all avenues to improve speeds

Hi, I'm in the middle of moving to a rural location and trying everything I can think of to get decent speeds. I don't mind paying properly for this but seem to keep hitting one snag after another. Hoping the experts on here can help!

I'm connected to GOLDHANGER exchange, cabinet 1. This only has ADSL. Annoyingly cabinet 2 was upgraded to VDSL a few years back, just not the one I'm on. I queried this with the SuperfastEssex team and was told that originally another service provider was going to offer something in my street so they couldn't fund the upgrade, but subsequently the other provider pulled out, leaving it on ADSL.

Trying that connection out on the current owners WiFi (stood next to router) I got 6.5Mbps/0.7Mbps which seems slow given I'm <200m from the cabinet. I've ordered a dedicated modem to tweak the SNR, and have asked BT for a new line install... is there anything else I can realistically do to max that out? Anything special I can request in terms of location or setup when the engineer comes?

Cabinet 1 still doesn't appear to be schedule for any upgrades, at least not from my own digging. Aside from "registering my interest" is there anything more to do to bump it back onto the list?

The village also has a wireless service, connecting to the top of the local church tower. I can't install it just yet but they quote 30/10Mbps service and tell me I have a good line of sight. Better, but I still worry about latency. I'm also annoyed they don't offer any tariffs above this, but were happy if I wanted to order multiple antennas / services at the same time. Seems a strange approach when presumably they could just flip a switch on the first one. Ideally I would ask them to run a line (if possible) from the church to my property but they didn't want to entertain this. In the real world are these wireless services ok or do they flap out every time there's a bit of British weather?

Lastly I've had 2 quotes for a dedicated ethernet circuit, both coming in around £500/month. Ouch. The reason being they tell me they need to run a long line from the top end of the village where there is the right equipment/capacity to the bottom end to my property and the install cost is therefore high. It's about 750m following the road according to google maps. Any recommendations for providers to try would be welcomed, assuming not against rules to ask for these? I can't seem to find this equipment on the BTOR sites so am I right in saying its something else?

Sorry for long first post, but tried to do as much background work as I could before brain dumping. Thank you!

As your are talking about ADSL, the distance to the cabinet is not the limit, it is the distance to the Exchange you need to look at. If your cabinet has a fibre twin, then you will need to order an FTTC (VDSL) service.

Have you consulted the BT wholesale checker?

Have you considered line bonding? Effectively you take a number of broadband lines (usually 2-4) and combine them together to provide an aggregated line. You need to source the lines yourself and then there is the additional requirement of a new piece of hardware (purchased outright or leased), plus the line bonding service. Here's two companies I am investigating for myself. Seems that the hardware purchase comes with 12 months of bonding service...then after that it's about £120 per line per year, which isn't too bad.
https://www.broadbandbonding.co.uk/broadband-bonding...
https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/33806-shared...
Also worth checking here to see if you are due to fall under the new roll-out:
https://www.gigaclear.com/about-us
Hope this helps.

ADSL relies on the exchange, so you have distance to cabinet and then distance from cabinet to exchange.

Wireless - generally they can provide what they say they do, latency need not be terrible usually inline with ADSL type speeds. As for not offering faster, this can increase the cost of hardware and might lead to ability for one person to use all the backhaul from the tower to the main point. Weather wise generally OK, i.e. in same way mobiles keep working when it rains.

Ethernet circuit - expensive per month and unlikely you will see much at a lower than £500 cost.

What's the mobile signal like? Unlimited 4G is possible, might have to try different network sims to see which works best.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/ether...

Edited by witchunt (Wed 19-Aug-20 10:13:04)

They already said their cabinet doesn't have VDSL/FTTC.

Sorry just posting very quick between meetings but thanks for advice so far.

In no particular order:
- Cabinet that I'm on is only ADSL, no VDSL option unless I can somehow get them to move me to the other cabinet (but I've been told this is a big no no)
- Whatever the reason the 6.5Mbps seems terrible. I'm hoping that better equipment and new line will improve it. I'm pretty sure current owner has various extension cables because her SmartHub was sat right in the middle of the house away from an external wall
- I have looked into bonded ADSL lines briefly. Seems that less and less providers are offering it, but that Sharedband solution might work across different providers. Haven't got my head round this one yet.
- In any case I'm getting my own load balancing router so even if I don't do true bonded I'll have resiliency and extra aggregation, just not as good as proper bonded
- I'm also getting a 4G card and will try this as well

Whether 6.5 is good or bad for ADSL2+ all hinges on where the property is

Majority of cabinet 1 is close enough to the exchange that speeds of 15 Mbps should be possible, might be low for this house if outside Goldhanger

Extension cables will not be helping possibly, and might explain a drop in what is possible.

As above if in house wiring is iffy you can lose 50% + of the speed coming into the house , only a few weeks ago i saw 3 go up to over 36 just by sorting in house wiring.

In reply to a post by edwardpadmore:

Have you considered line bonding? Effectively you take a number of broadband lines (usually 2-4) and combine them together to provide an aggregated line. You need to source the lines yourself and then there is the additional requirement of a new piece of hardware (purchased outright or leased), plus the line bonding service. Here's two companies I am investigating for myself. Seems that the hardware purchase comes with 12 months of bonding service...then after that it's about £120 per line per year, which isn't too bad.
https://www.broadbandbonding.co.uk/broadband-bonding...
https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/33806-shared...
Also worth checking here to see if you are due to fall under the new roll-out:
https://www.gigaclear.com/about-us
Hope this helps.

Unfortunately nothing in the pipeline with Gigaclear. On the bonded side I'm looking at Evolving Networks but will look at the alternative you suggested too.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

What's the mobile signal like? Unlimited 4G is possible, might have to try different network sims to see which works best.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/ether...

I don't know yet, but ordered a 4G sim anyway to try it out as part of the BT business package. On my phone the reception was terrible, but a few people have told me that the 4G router equipment picks up a much better signal, and even better again with an external aerial. I suspect I'll only use 4G for backup purposes though but we'll see.

In reply to a post by MC31:

As above if in house wiring is iffy you can lose 50% + of the speed coming into the house , only a few weeks ago i saw 3 go up to over 36 just by sorting in house wiring.

I'll try and get a new faceplate and location for the new line (into the study this time), but any other things I should be asking the engineer / or avoiding in particular? The house has been extended a few times and seems to have BT sockets all over the place at the moment.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Whether 6.5 is good or bad for ADSL2+ all hinges on where the property is

Majority of cabinet 1 is close enough to the exchange that speeds of 15 Mbps should be possible, might be low for this house if outside Goldhanger

Extension cables will not be helping possibly, and might explain a drop in what is possible.

In my head I've set a minimum target of 10Mbps... fingers crossed! This is based on trying:
- New line
- New faceplate (might have term wrong here)
- No extension cables!!!
- Dedicated Draytek 130 modem, and tweaking the SNR a bit

I think I'd be disappointed if I couldn't get that but will have to see. I wasn't quite following your comment about "might be low if outside Goldhanger" though... I'm in the village, but don't know where the exchange is.

Yep. One socket, and one socket only. Ask if you can have a stand alone NTE in the lounge (near existing power) and new cable between the external feed and the new NTE.

Https://goo.gl/maps/RERzF6HMuuJ4Rdeq7

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Https://goo.gl/maps/RERzF6HMuuJ4Rdeq7

thanks - thats about 700-750m following the path of the road to my house (assuming that's where the lines would follow?!)

Depends on the phone and the router. Many modern phones have very good 4G chipsets and perform better than most routers. Also, when using an external antenna you have to be careful that the length of coax between antenna and router doesn't outweigh the gains in signal strength.

It may also be that one of the other 4G networks gives you better signal than BT (which is EE). Voda, O2 or Three may get better reception and all of them have unlimited data options.

PS - there are a number of people on here that have moved to 4G and tried various routers and antennas - worth looking in the mobile section of the site to see the conversations that have already been had about it, lots of info there.

Edited by ian72 (Thu 20-Aug-20 09:23:26)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Also, when using an external antenna you have to be careful that the length of coax between antenna and router doesn't outweigh the gains in signal strength.

Which can be avoided by using an external router with a built in antenna, like the Mikrotik SXT routers (though the Mikrotik routers don't have as modern 4G chipsets as lots of the indoor 4G routers out there).

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

Which can be avoided by using an external router with a built in antenna, like the Mikrotik SXT routers (though the Mikrotik routers don't have as modern 4G chipsets as lots of the indoor 4G routers out there).

Yes, the mobile handsets are much further ahead than any of the routers, or the Mikrotik products - this is very disappointing, but shows the rate of progress in LTE chipsets.
Netgear appears to be the only vendor making "MiFi" style routers with modern chipsets with "Gigabit LTE" capabilities.

thanks - thats about 700-750m following the path of the road to my house (assuming that's where the lines would follow?!)


Looks like the Broadband comes on a 'Microwave' dish mounted on top of the pole RHS of the exchange.

Putting a post code in
https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/broadbandchecker.php
or
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm

I can see there is ADSL2 up to 17Mbps

PM sent .

As per my mate Zarjaz .

AAISP can do bonding if you have the lines with them but it's nth packet based so it may cause issues with some applications that are sensitive to packet ordering (such as some games) if the lines have differing latencies.


Also if you are technically inclined it's possible to do the bonding yourself with vpns and a server, see https://openmptcprouter.com. The server end will run on a virtual server but you need to pick a host with decent bandwidth and bandwidth pricing.

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