Broadband Alternatives

I live on the Isle of Dogs in what can best be described as the "bandwidth shadow" of Canary Wharf. The problems with the capacity at the Poplar exchange are well documented elsewhere, but I was wondering how to improve the internet access for myself and the 150 other apartments in the development where I live. Yesterday I was getting 36kbps (yes k) out of my BT Broadband connection and I never manage to get over 1.2 Mbps.

Would it be possible to buy some bandwidth (say 300 Mbps) via some kind of dedicated line and then distribute that within the building, perhaps wirelessly. This would give each apartment at least 2Mbps and in practice probably much more - especially during the day which would greatly help the home workers who live there.

I would appreciate any advice or even a pointer in the right direction.

Thanks

Tim

Depending on your exact location you could use a wireless provider.

Please feel free to e-mail your postcode to [email protected] and we'll see if we can reach your building

You could indeed lease your own large line from BT or any other wholesaler (such as Easynet). It would need to be an Internet line or to terminate somewhere where you can also by Internet connectivity. Distributing it through the building through wireless may not be the best technology but could be workable.

Unless you have some IT savvy people used to doing this sort of thing though I would suggest you look for a provider. You could even do a little tender for it and get suppliers to tell you how much they would charge to provide what you want.

Be warned though, 300Mb/s internet pipes aren't that cheap. You could easily end up spending well in excess of £100K per annum on such a line (although that is based on pricing for business grade service a fair distance from London so it may be cheaper where you are for what you want).

Hi,
if it helps we have had capacity at the popular exchange via our LLU service for a while now offering up to 24mb.

In reply to a post by vivaciti:

Hi,
if it helps we have had capacity at the popular exchange via our LLU service for a while now offering up to 24mb.

I think they would like a slightly better service than you are offering ...

36kbps is significantly faster than 24mbps.

In reply to a post by MHC:

36kbps is significantly faster than 24mbps.

???

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by MHC:

36kbps is significantly faster than 24mbps.

???

Why the ???

1 kbps is 1,000,000 times faster than 1mbps

If you do not believe me, try working it out or use different units such as metres. 1 km = 1,000,000 mm for example.

So you're just getting pedantic over capitalisation despite knowing exactly how it was meant? And if you can tell me where milli-bits are used I'd be grateful but as I don't believe they exist it is pretty obvious what was meant.

By 36kbps I meant "barely faster than 28kbps dial-up"

Tim

Thanks, but I tried the LLU unbundled service from Bulldog which was worse than BT.

Based on my distance from the exchange, the speed estimators all say that I should be able to get ~4.5Mb/s. There must be some truly awful wiring between my flat and the exchange. Is there something different about your service that would allow me to get a higher speed than I currently experience?

Thanks

Tim