In London, only 10mbps avail. no fibre or plans for it

My parents can only get 10mbps on ADSL. Many of their neighbours also complain about slow broadband speeds. It's crazy as this is a busy London area, not some obscure rural location.

BT say they have no plans to upgrade their area which is residential area of North London. It shocks me that they don't have fibre yet and the line is so poor as to maximise their speed at this.

I looked at community collectives to pay for fibre installation but they are paused.

Openreach says look at FTTP on Demand but this isn't available I can't see as need FTTC first.

Is there any way to speed up fibre installation? If not is there any options to get a better connection (30mbps+)

Thanks!

Virgin cable or alternative networks available?
What does the wholesale dsl checker show for the address?

No Virgin or anything else I know of is available

Checker says up to 17mbsp (they get around 10-12)

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

WLR is currently available at the exchange

SOADSL is restricted at the exchange

FTTP is not available.

Have you also looked into 4G/5G broadband?

Depending on where your folks are in north London, speeds can be comparable to fixed line broadband.

What’s the postcode?

Yes I am thinking this might be the way to go. I think only 4g available. Will run some more enquiries.

It's mad how behind the times they are. It's part of Finchley Central!

Both EE (partial) and Vodafone (looks solid) are reporting 5G coverage around Finchley Central. Three are 4G only.

You can run some checks with a 5G compatible mobile.

I’ve used a Vodafone 5G Gigacube based service in central north London previously and it worked very well. There’s always the option of buying your own hub and choosing a SIM only type arrangement too.

Yes the Vodafone 5g checker claims strong coverage inside and out at their address...

I think I will get some PAYG sims and test them all first...

Their "gigacube" is a rebrabded TCL linkhub with 3.5/5 on amazon for sale at £399

I know I can get a 4g router that will do the trick for 50-70

So need to see the 4g speeds available first

Don't just look at the download speeds. Look at the upload as well.

Most providers, if not all, are still installing hybrid masts that don't have true 5G upload. The 5G up can be dramatically below the 4G, if that is of any importance to you. Though as long as it's better than the ADSLx upload then it's still better than what you have at the moment.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Don't just look at the download speeds. Look at the upload as well. Most providers, if not all, are still installing hybrid masts that don't have true 5G upload.

This isn't neccessarily a mast constraint, but to do with multiple factors, one being the capacity 5G is currently at 3.5 GHz and so picking up transmissions from a small device (phone, mobile router) from inside a building is harder than from a few million quids worth of industrial radio antenna on a mast. Second the core network is still using the 4G Core for both 4G & 5G. (Known as "Non Stand Alone" deployment. When Standalone 5G appears latency should decrease).

Some networks (e.g. Vodafone) are sharing their 2.1 GHz spectrum with 4G and 5G, so capacity dynamically varies. Other networks (EE, Three, O2) are slowly rolling out 5G at 0.7 GHz (700 MHz) which is better for indoor coverage, but due to lower frequency there is less capacity / speed.

Upload on 4G is usually improved if you can put an antenna in a window.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 06-Mar-22 12:22:58)

Thanks James.

I accept I'm not spot on with the detail, but the point made by both of us is valid to the OP . If upload speed is important to them, 4G could well be better (in particular more consistent) than 5G for that. Though of course consistency is very dependent on the other-user load on the mast at all times.

For example if I run a 5G speed test on my phone (using Three), if I'm near one of their new type masts I get 600-800Mbps down and 81Mbps up, but at any distance I can still get in the lower hundreds down but under 10Mbps or even under 5Mbps up. The upstream distance attenuation for 5G is huge.

As you say, a mobile phone has relatively little transmit power, and although a "mobile router" has mains power it is likely to be lower spec in other ways. An external antenna can help of course, but for me isn't necessary. Speeds on 4G are fine for my type of usage, as per my sig.