I have just started looking again at bonding. I thought it would be too expensive but have just discovered Sharedband. So I am interested in your experience.

Why did you find it disappointing? On paper it looks like a great solution and certainly cheaper than satellite although in my case much slower.

General advise is that you'll need line of sight and clearance in the radio fresnel zones. From what I understand, the lower frequency products are better at dealing with obstructions in that 5Ghz doesn't go through many trees, 2.4Ghz will go through 1 or 2 (at a reduced quality) and 900 Mhz can deal with quite a bit more but that isn't available for use in the UK I don't think.

Could you potentially get a signal to somebody on the "rim" of the dip and then from there bounce it to your place? i.e. a Middle point requiring only power and line of sight to host and your place. It complicates things but still only one or two people you need on side as opposed to tens or hundreds to get a wireless ISP involved.

My philosophy was that I could wait until 2020 and then be offered nothing better than a satellite voucher. If BDUK does stretch into my area, it is highly likely I'll be on the fringe of that anyway so putting in my own link has given me access to 80/20 fibre connection now and in future, it is likely to be better than any roll out will be for my circumstances.

Look at AAISP too, If I recall there pricing model was different in that you paid for the hardware to do the bonding your end but they didn't charge you a specific bonding fee per month.

Sharedband does work and if it's just browsing, streaming etc it's fine. I needed Xbox live and PS4 to work and even though sharedband say it's compatible I had nothing but issues with it.

I also think it depends on your home setup. Mine is for a family of 4 and by increasing the overall speed the quality of the steam would increase which is great for one user but not so great if others are trying to also use that connection. Instead by having two single connections i found overall the experience was better for everyone.

I have Satellite from Avonliine. I have had the XXL package for 2.5 years. Its £75 a month for an alleged 20Mbps down and 6Mbps up. Initially sold as 'unlimited' but moved to a 50Gb cap about 2 years ago.

Overnight downloads are unlimited and to be honest, this is the only time you will get the advertised speeds.

Daytime use is slow and uploads pretty awful.

Poor weather takes it offline pretty easily.

My last daytime TBB test wouldn't even start.

If you can schedule work to be up/downloaded overnight then it may suffice but for anything time dependent its awful.

I can Skype my daughter in the USA but we have to remember the 1-2 second delay.

I am really grateful for everyone's comments - all have been really valuable.

On the basis of these and other research, I have now decided to order a second ADSL2 line and consider Sharedband once this is up and running. Your comments regarding satellite broadband have warned me off taking this route.

By installing a Draytek Vigor 130 I have also managed to make a small improvement in my line speed - today it is running at around 2Mbps (according to Speedtest.net). I suspect a Sharedband bonded line giving me around 4Mbps with a low latency would give me a far better result that I could expect to receive over satellite.

Again, many thanks for your contributions.

In reply to a post by craski:

My philosophy was that I could wait until 2020 and then be offered nothing better than a satellite voucher. If BDUK does stretch into my area, it is highly likely I'll be on the fringe of that anyway so putting in my own link has given me access to 80/20 fibre connection now and in future, it is likely to be better than any roll out will be for my circumstances.

You can get basic broadband vouchers now, even if you are not in a BDUK area.

Looks like there is one company on the list that offers 4G solutions, including outdoor aerials. But the rest is just satellite

http://gosuperfastchecker.culture.gov.uk/basicbroadb...

http://gosuperfastchecker.culture.gov.uk/basicbroadb...

I think your choice is sensible. I am also in the Cotswolds 7 km from an exchange and get just 0.8Mb. I installed satellite as well as keeping the ADSL.

I have the same technology Tooway satellite service Avonline offer, but from another seller, Bentley Walker. 20 down, 6 up. If the equipment is accurately aligned (I did it myself) it works OK all the time, but as described above the speed in the day is slow (1-8Mb) and in the evening slower (1-4Mb). But if you use it for downloads at night you get a wonderful service, so you can use Free Download Manager to schedule all downloads to start at 1am, and you can set a Sky box to start downloading catchup TV after 11pm to get the unlimited allowance. So if you can work at night you would be OK.

I'm lucky in that I'm on the Fastershire list for the Gigaclear contract, so if all goes well this summer I get fibre to my house, with a minimum of 50Mb up and down (£40/month). I have opted for 100 up and down, and can upgrade later to 200 up and down or 1Gb up and down. These speeds are not "up to" they are actual speeds (apart from the 1Gb which apparently runs at only 940Mb. So check you are not going to be covered by Gigaclear. The list of 6500 properties is on a spreadsheet you can download here, and it also shows the maps:
http://www.fastershire.com/where-when/phase-two-the-...
These are all digitally deprived properties.

One proviso the speeds are still up to, hence why Virgin Media that also sells fixed connection speed services uses the up to, i.e. broadband is a shared medium at some point for point to point fibre this will not be in the local area but where the fibres are aggregated and then further back in the network.

So while your connection speed is nailed to what you bought, you cannot guarantee that sites will always be at that speed all the time. Hence why Gigaclear charge more for business connections with lower contention or better throughput guarantees

True. Gigaclear give domestic users 25:1 contention and business users 10:1 contention.