Best solution for rural broadband?

Hi guys,

I live literally half a mile from the centre of a town in N.Ireland, but I am considered rural and at best get 15 down and 1 upload speeds which are ridiculous. Forever waiting for the day I can get full fibre.

My question is what’s the best solution to getting faster speeds if any but maintaining a reasonable ping?

Thanks

Dave

Hi

In reply to a post by Davidwilson14:

I live literally half a mile from the centre of a town in N.Ireland, but I am considered rural and at best get 15 down and 1 upload speeds which are ridiculous. Forever waiting for the day I can get full fibre.

My question is what’s the best solution to getting faster speeds if any but maintaining a reasonable ping?

I was speaking to Andrew about this as we might do something as a guide. The difficulty is there's a LOT of if/this/then/that type things here so the answer is very location specific.

You could look at Fibrus (Project Stratum) or Openreach roll-outs. Other wireless/4G/Starlink or broadband vouchers for FTTP. Starlink will obviously have a slightly higher latency than some other options, but it should be much lower than traditional satellite. 4G will vary depending on the setup but a fixed antenna may help. I've always found these flakey myself in cities but not sure I'm best comparison.

What do your neighbours think about what they have? Do they want faster services?

FWIW I live in London and had similar download speeds (I think I had higher upload though). I was able to get it up a fair bit by removing extensions from my house and making sure the router was at the first socket. Really worth checking what your neighbours see speed wise too as if it varies a lot you can possibly improve it locally at very little expense.

seb

Hi
I lve in a rural area only 50 miles from Marble Arch but only achieve about 5mbits download rate and about 500kbts upload much less than the USO. I requested a price for FTTPOD and the informal estimate was "well north of £100k " I then asked about 4G and was told that I was unlikley even with an external high gain antenna to get any satisfactory result. I am about to try Starlink and see how that works.

I have to laugh at "only 50 miles from Marble Arch" because that doesn't really mean much when the part of the country the furthest from the sea are only 84 miles away.

Ok then the exchange is Selborne which is 5km away

In reply to a post by crule:

Ok then the exchange is Selborne which is 5km away

The one near Alton, Hants?